The City of West Allis is offering more than $1 million in incentives for Glenn Rieder Inc. to move its headquarters from Milwaukee’s 30th Street Industrial Corridor to 1960 S. 67th Place.
Glenn Rieder, a provider of architectural millwork and custom interior finishes, announced earlier this week it would build an $8 million, 120,000-square-foot building for its manufacturing and office operations. The building will be located on an almost 12-acre remediated brownfield site in West Allis.
Michael Floyd, Glenn Rieder chief executive officer, said earlier this week that West Allis was “very aggressive” in putting an incentive package together for the project.
Patrick Schloss, West Allis community development manager, said Wednesday the company and its representatives approached West Allis about relocating to the city. He said the incentive package includes $833,000 in TIF money, along with $200,000 for architectural work and $70,000 for a new road. The remainder of the incentive comes from covering some real estate costs, for a total of $1.4 million.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was first to report details of the incentive package.
The proposal still needs to be approved by the West Allis Community Development Authority and Common Council.
The move takes Glenn Rieder out of Milwaukee’s 30th Street Industrial Corridor, an area the city of Milwaukee has spent millions of dollars trying to redevelop over the past decade.
Department of City Development spokesman Jeff Fleming declined to comment on the relocation, citing city policy against discussing conversations with businesses. He did say the city remains optimistic about the corridor moving forward.
Glenn Rieder will be moving to a property the City of West Allis has long sought to redevelop. A May 2015 West Allis Community Development Authority report says a number of proposals have been reviewed for the site over the years.
Those include a 150,000-square-foot electric foundry and a 124,000-square-foot industrial facility that did not materialize because of economic conditions and the availability of competing parcels in the market, including in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley.
The report says the CDA was in final negotiations at the time for a 150,000-square-foot flex space that would have included a tenant occupying 80,000 square feet, 40,000 square feet of speculative space and room for expansion.
The property itself is a former rock quarry that then became the site of a carbide gas manufacturing plant. It also spent time as a waste storage and transfer facility, oil and hazardous waste trucking terminal and salvage junkyard.
West Allis has been able to leverage more than $1 million in state and federal funds to help with the cleanup of the site.
At one point, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District paid to truck the limestone created by the carbide gas plant away for use in wastewater treatment.
The CDA purchased the property when the then-owner proposed converting it to a rubble dump, potentially making the site unbuildable, after all the limestone had been removed.
