The Greater Milwaukee Committee will move its offices from the Matthews Bros. Building at 301 W. Wisconsin Ave. in the Shops of Grand Avenue complex in downtown Milwaukee to a 4,000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of the Global Water Center building in the city’s Walker’s Point neighborhood.
“Our move over there helps meet the space needs for the building and helps support a major initiative of ours (to support water technology business development in Milwaukee),” said Greater Milwaukee Committee president Julia Taylor. “We can also help provide (the Global Water Center) with connections to the corporate community.”
Also, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state business development organization that replaced the Department of Commerce, will move its six-person Milwaukee area office from 2645 N. Mayfair Road, Wauwatosa, into a 1,800-square-foot space on the fourth floor of the Global Water Center building.
Construction began recently on the Global Water Center, which will be established in a seven-story, 98,000-square-foot, 106-year-old Walker’s Point warehouse at 223 W. Pittsburgh Ave. The $22 million project is expected to be complete in late spring or early summer of 2013.
The facility is part of the effort to create a water technology business accelerator center and to establish Milwaukee as the “Silicon Valley” of water technology businesses are gaining momentum. The tenants in the building will be a mix of larger firms, smaller firms, start-ups, business promotional organizations and university researchers. Milwaukee water industry supporters hope having all of those entities in one building will create synergies that help spur water technology innovation and business development in Milwaukee.
Development of the Global Water Center is critical to create tax increment to provide TIF funds for infrastructure at the Reed Street Yards, which will be developed as a water technology business park, Taylor said.
The Greater Milwaukee Committee will move to the Global Water Center in 2014. By then its offices will have been located in the Matthews Bros. Building for 10 years.
“The space has been great for us and if we didn’t have the opportunity and the need to support the Water Council we would not be making the move,” Taylor said.
