Colby-Abbot Building to get new first floor façade

A $250,000 construction project will begin soon to improve the first floor façade of the historic Colby-Abbot Building, located at 759 N. Milwaukee St. in downtown Milwaukee.
Mukwonago-based Campbell Construction is the general contractor for the project. The architect is Milwaukee-based Russell E. LaFrombois III Architects.
The project will remove the 1960s era façade and canopy and will replace it with a floor to ceiling glass façade, said Patti Keating-Kahn, the owner of the building. The project is expected to be done by Nov. 1.
“I think it’s going to be a big improvement for the whole corner,” she said. “Something to add pizzazz to this corner.”
The project will be done to improve the façade of the building’s vacant first floor retail space. The façade for the building’s two first floor tenants, Karl Ratzsch’s restaurant and the Tempt bar, will not be affected by the project.
Keating-Kahn said she hopes to renovate the building’s entire facade sometime in the future.
The building has 4,000 square feet of vacant first floor space and Keating-Kahn said she is in negotiations with four potential tenants. Each would occupy about 1,000 square feet of retail space.
“We have not signed leases yet,” Keating-Kahn said. “But we have four of them that are real close.”
Karl Ratzch’s occupies about 12,000 square feet of space and Tempt occupies about 2,500 square feet of space.
The 134-year-old, 6-story, 52,500-square-foot building has an occupancy rate of about 90 percent, Keating-Kahn said.