In the aftermath of the tragic death of a 15-year-boy in June, when a concrete panel fell off the façade of the O’Donnell Park parking structure on Milwaukee’s the lakefront, Milwaukee County officials are beginning to consider future plans for the structure.
It would cost millions of dollars to repair the facility.
Increasingly, some county officials are warming to the idea of selling the property to a private developer in hopes of attracting a better use for the site.
“This is prime development land,” said Milwaukee County Supervisor Lynne De Bruin, who has been one of the leading advocates for selling the property.
De Bruin says the county should issue a request for proposals (RFP) seeking developers that want to purchase and redevelop the O’Donnell Park site and the county’s bus transit center, located just south of O’Donnell Park on the south side of Michigan Street.
“It’s a hugely attractive site, especially when you combine the two (O’Donnell Park and the bus transit center) together,” she said.
It is easy to see why some consider the O’Donnell Park site a prime redevelopment opportunity. It is located on the lakefront, adjacent to the iconic Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Discovery World and the Summerfest grounds. It is also located just off I-794 and is in the heart of the city’s central business district only a block from the U.S. Bank Center and across the street from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s corporate headquarters.
To many, a parking structure is far from being the highest and best use of a prime site in the central business district, along the lakefront and next to an iconic building.
“This is an opportunity to come up with something better,” said Supervisor Mark Borkowski. “It’s a prime piece of real estate. I think with the creative minds that we have in this city we can make lemonade out of a lemon. I will be very disappointed if we throw this opportunity out the window.”
However, for numerous reasons it will be very difficult to attract a significant development to the O’Donnell Park site, despite the many attributes of its location, according to some commercial real estate professionals.
The biggest problem could be a lack of demand for development in downtown Milwaukee. The U.S. economy remains weak, and demand for office, retail and residential development in downtown Milwaukee is soft.
“The market’s not there today to do something there,” said Bill Bonifas, executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis. “I don’t see what could go down there and be successful.”
Several developers have proposed office buildings in downtown Milwaukee in recent years, but a new multi-tenant office building has not been completed downtown in about seven years. A handful of potential anchor tenants are in the market for new office space, and most commercial real estate professionals expect one office project, at the most, to obtain enough tenants to build a new office building in downtown Milwaukee.
The downtown Milwaukee retail market is even weaker than the office market and the downtown Business Improvement District (BID) has created a plan to give away retail space for free in an attempt to attract stores.
The O’Donnell Park site could be an ideal location for a hotel, but occupancy rates of downtown hotels will have to return to pre-Great Recession levels to attract a hotel developer.
“You couldn’t ask for a better site to position a hotel on,” said Greg Hanis, president of New Berlin-based Hospitality Marketers International Inc.
Residential development downtown has dropped dramatically after the condo development boom ended with the collapse of the housing market that precipitated the Great Recession. Condo development downtown is essentially dead, but some developers are working on apartment projects.
However, developers for some significant apartment projects are seeking government loans because they are struggling to obtain financing, despite high apartment occupancy rates downtown.
That demonstrates another problem with efforts to attract development to the O’Donnell Park site: the capital markets for commercial real estate development remain extremely tight. Any development proposed for the site will likely need a significant public subsidy to obtain private financing.
“I don’t know if it’s feasible without some public and private support,” said Mike Mervis, vice president of Zilber Ltd. “I don’t know where that will come from. Without significant private and public support, it won’t happen.”
The process to redevelop the O’Donnell Park site will take some time, and the space and capital markets should improve eventually, De Bruin said.
“The recession is going to end,” she said. “It will be years before it comes to fruition and something gets built.”
Another problem is that the O’Donnell Park site covers a large area, approximately an entire city block. The bus transit center, which De Bruin also wants to see redeveloped, covers an additional half of a block. Larger properties are harder to develop, and the county has had zero success attracting development to its large vacant blocks in the Park East corridor.
In addition, any proposal to turn a park property over to a private developer will face objection from parks advocates.
Also, the parking spaces in the O’Donnell structure are critical for the area, so any new development will likely be required to replace those spaces. The bridge that connects Wisconsin Avenue to the art museum would also need to be preserved as part of any new building. Plus, the needs of the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum and the Coast Restaurant also would need to be addressed. The RFP could include those and other requirements, De Bruin said.
A tall lakefront development could create complaints about lake view obstruction. Alderman Robert Bauman said that in order to preserve the view down Wisconsin Avenue of the Calatrava and the lake, no development on the O’Donnell Park site should occur on the portion of the site that is north of Wisconsin Avenue. He said he would support development on the site south of Wisconsin Avenue.
The city’s new downtown master plan includes a catalytic project for the area that calls for relocating the bus transfer center near the Milwaukee Intermodal Station and improving the public connection between the lakefront and the central business district. The plan also calls for private development of the bus transfer center site and for part of the O’Donnell Park site.
The O’Donnell Park location along the downtown Milwaukee lakefront is so important that any decision about its future must be made as part of an open, public process, said Richard “Rocky” Marcoux, commissioner of the Department of City Development.
“Everybody should have a role and a say in this,” Marcoux said. “There is a significant amount of money that needs to be spent there. Rather than spend money to fix what was not a good solution, let’s rethink it. It needs to be done right. (The lakefront) is our front door to the rest of the world. We have an opportunity do make it even better.”
However, Bonifas suggests the county take a more realistic view and simply repair the parking structure, which provides parking spaces that are needed for nearby businesses and attractions, and preserve the park.
“It would be one thing if we had no other sites available for development downtown,” said Bonifas.
There are, of course, several other vacant or underdeveloped properties downtown.
“I would rebuild it as a parking structure,” Bonifas said. “I see the glamour of having a lake view and a view of the art museum, but I don’t see the demand for it. Unfortunately, you can make grand plans in Milwaukee, but it never seems to manifest.”
