A California investor has purchased the top four floors of the former Bon-Ton Stores (the parent company of Boston Store) headquarters building at 331 W. Wisconsin Ave. in downtown Milwaukee for $14.4 million.
Branded the Boston Lofts, the apartments had been owned by North Wells Capital, the investment management affiliate of Chicago-based Urban Innovations Ltd., which sold the apartment section of the building to Irvine, California-based
Trinity Property Consultants this week, according to state property transfer records published late Thursday. The 74 apartments, located on floors 6 through 9, had been managed by the Mandel Group.
The deal does not include floors 1-5, of the building, which includes retail and office spaces under the name
HUB640, after the building’s Vel R. Phillips Avenue address. Current tenants of HUB640 include technology and engineering staffing company Brooksource, Calculated Hire, and North Shore Health Care.
The Boston Store department store that formerly occupied the lower floors of the building had been part of the former Grand Avenue Mall, but the building was always separately owned by the now defunct Bon-Ton, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and later closed all of its brick-and-mortar locations.
The 429,000-square-foot building was purchased by North Wells Capital out of Chicago in 2017. Following the bankruptcy filing,
the company shifted its plans for the building to the first-floor retail, upper-floors-office-space plan that is currently in place at HUB640.
Zach Fox, director of asset management at North Wells Capital, said Thursday that the company has no plans to sell the lower five floors of the building.
