The prospect of redeveloping a municipal-owned parking lot in Wauwatosa's village district drew the attention of prominent Milwaukee-area developers, who are pitching ideas that could add potentially 100-plus new residential units and new retail space to the bustling neighborhood.
Wauwatosa received four responses last week to a
request for proposals for the redevelopment of the Blanchard Street parking lot. The lot is located northeast of Blanchard Street and Wauwatosa Avenue.
The four responses came from Milwaukee-based
Barrett Lo Visionary Development; Milwaukee-based
Cardinal Capital Management Inc. and Watertown-based
Bethesda Cornerstone Village LLC; Milwaukee-based
Mandel Group Inc.; and Madison-based
Palisade Property Management LLC.
The proposals are
scheduled for discussion on Wednesday by the Community Development Authority.
Each proposal includes details such as unit mix between market-rate and affordable, potential city financing contributions and developer qualifications, among other things.
Barrett Lo's proposal calls for a nine-story, mixed-use project consisting of 170 residential units and approximately 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. The firm said 67 units would be priced at $988, or roughly 24% of the Milwaukee County median income.
Mandel has proposed 95 residential units, which would include mostly apartments and four for-sale townhouse units. Twenty percent of the units would be affordable. The townhouses would replace the Swan Interiors building north of the parking lot, at the southeast corner of Harwood and Wauwatosa avenues.
The Cornerstone-Cardinal Capital team has proposed 79 apartments with street-level commercial space. Of those units, 20% would be affordable and would be for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Palisade's proposal consists of a four-story building containing 80 apartment units, 10% of which would be affordable units targeting teachers, nurses, firefighters and others.
In its RFP, the city included a lengthy list of evaluation criteria. The city called for inclusion of affordable housing units, stating it would give preference to projects with a greater percentage of those types of units.
Proposals will also be evaluated by other factors such as: Most appropriate use of the site; construction contracts with minority-, women- and veteran-owned firms; estimated property tax revenue generated from the project; "best" design; project completion schedule; and level of public subsidy requested.
