ThriveOn King has opened its doors to the public – a monumental milestone for the catalytic development aimed to lift up Milwaukee’s underserved communities.
The 470,000-square-foot former Gimbels-Schuster’s store building, located at 2153 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, has been redeveloped as a community hub called ThriveOn King. The organizations behind the $120 million project – the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Medical College of Wisconsin and real estate developer Royal Capital Group – joined forces to create a partnership called the
ThriveOn Collaboration.
In 2018, the GMF and MCW first announced their shared initiative to address social determinants of health in a neighborhood facing particular health disparities. They went on to recruit Royal Capital as the developer and announced plans for the project in 2019.
“With us being in the Historic King Drive BID, we are a centerpiece of the community in the way that it used to be, and we’re able to showcase people’s aspirations, hopes and dreams,” said Greg Wesley, president and CEO of the GMF.
Wesley, a founding co-chair of the ThriveOn Collaboration, formerly served as senior vice president of strategic alliances and business development at MCW before taking over as the GMF’s new CEO in August. He leads the collaboration with founding co-chair Kevin Newell, president and CEO of Royal Capital, and Dr. John Raymond, president and CEO of MCW.
The ThriveOn King project, for which construction began in 2022, has three main parts: commercial space, 90 housing units and a parking structure.
The commercial space at ThriveOn King officially opened its doors to the surrounding community on Oct. 15. The housing component will be complete by early January, Newell said. There will be affordable housing units for families and people 55 and older, as well as apartments dedicated for MCW students. MCW’s new Health Equity Scholars Program and its inaugural cohort of five students will be based at ThriveOn King.
In recognition of the progress it has made in developing and opening ThriveOn King, the ThriveOn Collaboration is the BizTimes Milwaukee 2024 Best in Business Community Leader of the Year.
Improving social determinants of health
The ThriveOn Collaboration’s ultimate goal is to improve the social determinants of health for the underserved neighborhoods surrounding ThriveOn King, which is nestled between the Halyard Park, Harambee and Brewers Hill neighborhoods. Social determinants of health include access to healthy food, quality affordable housing, economic opportunity and early childhood education.
ThriveOn King houses the GMF’s offices, MCW’s community engagement programs, Versiti on King, JobsWork MKE, Malaika Early Learning Center and Kinship Cafe. The presence of these organizations at ThriveOn directly targets social determinants of health. There’s also about 10,000 square feet of community space on the first floor of the building.
“… (We) wanted to demonstrate that if we really want to move the needle, you can’t have it sitting in these silos,” said Wesley. “It can’t just be a community engagement effort. It needs to be an economic engagement effort as well, and it cannot ignore the folks that you are partnering with – (it) can’t create this negative gentrification component.”
The ThriveOn Collaboration connected with members of the surrounding communities to get input on their needs for the space. Raymond said area residents wanted focused investment in early childhood education, healthy food and job training. The possibility of gentrification was also a concern among community members.
“All of us collectively heard from the community that they didn’t want the area to be gentrified, they didn’t want people who had lived in and around the area for generations to be priced out of their homes,” Raymond said. “And so, we did create an anti-displacement fund to help people pay for taxes, and we’re working with the city to do everything we can to prevent people that have lived there for a long time to have their homes become unaffordable because of the tax burden.”
‘A place of convening’
To Newell, ThriveOn King stands as a landmark for its community.
“It’s a place of convening,” Newell said. “It’s a place that folks can do everything from donate blood, grab a cup of coffee, engage with community leaders, learn about research, apply for a grant, apply for an opportunity to get some job training, bring your kid for early childhood learning and also be able to live there. It’s a very comprehensive community that we built inside of the community.”
ThriveOn King ultimately “symbolizes the community’s investment in itself and the community coming back to life,” Raymond said.
“If you just go into the ThriveOn King building, any time of day, you’ll see people from the neighborhoods convening there, having business meetings, walking through and looking at the artwork, the murals, just feeling pride in their neighborhood,” Raymond said. “I’ve been there a few times in the morning and just observed people coming through. It’s a source of optimism, of pride, of energy. All those things are being realized, and we’re only just beginning.”
