Earlier this year, we surveyed real estate industry professionals to ask them which communities in the area were the best to work with for development projects, and which ones were the most difficult.
While admittedly an unscientific poll,
the results were nonetheless interesting. The City of Milwaukee was the most common pick for “least development-friendly” municipality.
Lately city officials have been doing things to reinforce that perception.
Take the
odd controversy surrounding plans for a hotel at the former Bradley Center site in downtown’s Deer District. A developer plans to build a seven-story, 156-room hotel. It’s a solid if unspectacular project that makes perfect sense in an entertainment district.
But some city officials have been pushing back, saying the planned hotel isn’t big enough. How exactly do government officials know how big a hotel should be?
The downtown hotel market has shown signs of trouble, including The Marcus Corp.’s decision to
take 175 rooms off the market at the Hilton hotel and several other hotels in bankruptcy in recent years.
Any new business is a risk. But some city officials want this hotel developer to take a bigger risk. What if a larger hotel is built and it fails? Will the city bail the developer out? No, of course not.
Fortunately, the hotel project
recently gained approval from the full Common Council, but Ald. Robert Bauman, who represents the downtown area, remained opposed, which sends a negative message to developers considering plans for downtown projects.
Meanwhile, just across the Milwaukee River from Deer District, there’s still no update on
plans for a major development to replace the Marcus Performing Arts Center parking structure. Last year, the Department of City Development announced that it had chosen a Madison-based firm to redevelop the site. The company, called Neutral, has ambitious plans including a 55-story building and two other towers, with a combination of 750 residential units, 190,000 square feet of office space, 40,000 square feet of retail space and a 300-room hotel.
Since then, the Common Council has for some reason taken no action to advance the project. Meanwhile, Neutral has secured financing for a 31-story apartment tower next door and recently completed a 206-unit apartment building in Madison. But the Marcus Performing Arts Center parking structure site project remains in limbo.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson has an audacious goal to grow the city’s population to 1 million residents (it’s currently 563,531 and has been falling since the 1960s). That goal isn’t realistic, but the idea of trying to drastically increase the city’s population is a good one. Johnson’s administration has been pushing a plan, called Growing MKE, to change regulations making development of certain types of housing easier.
Despite the huge need for more housing options in the city, the mayor’s plan has faced notable opposition.
DCD recently released a new housing plan and also unveiled a
new policy to assist workforce housing developments, which has been
criticized by some developers.
Milwaukee urgently needs economic development throughout the city, and officials need to help and not hinder it.
Andrew Weiland is the editor of BizTimes Milwaukee.
