The Harmony Initiative (the collaboration of the Milwaukee Ballet Company, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Medical College of Wisconsin), which plans to establish a 70,000 to 75,000-square-foot location in downtown Milwaukee, is considering a location at The City Center at 735, which is the new brand name for the 735 North Water Street and 731 North Water Street buildings that have been consolidated into a single complex by Compass Properties.
The Harmony Initiative is also considering the 60,000-square-foot Blatz Washhouse building at 1101 N. Market St., in the former Blatz brewery complex downtown, according to a commercial real estate source. Earlier this year the Holter Financial Group moved out of the Blatz Washhouse building and relocated its offices to 25,000 square feet of space in the 100 East Wisconsin Ave. building. The Blatz Washhouse building is owned by SSG Properties LLC.
The 340,000-square-foot 735 N. Water St. building has about 90,000 square feet of available space. The 80,000-square-foot 731 N. Water St. building has about 17,000 square feet of available space, including a 7,800-square-foot seventh floor office space and a vacant floor above it where the floor could be removed to create a seventh floor space with 30-foot ceilings that could accommodate a small performance center that the Harmony Initiative wants in its space, said Sheldon Oppermann, vice president of Compass Properties.
“I showed them how I could do it,” Oppermann said. “We can actually pull it off.”
The City Center at 735 complex is two blocks south of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, which is where most of the Ballet’s performances are held. The Harmony Initiative is looking for a location in the Water Street corridor near the Marcus Center.
The Harmony Initiative plans include a sports medicine clinic. The clinic could partner with the Gold’s Gym health club that just opened in the 731 N. Water St. building, Oppermann said.
There’s a lot of reasons to want to do (the Harmony Initiative) here,” Oppermann said.
Another location that the Harmony Initiative is considering is a mixed-use development project that the Marcus Center for The Performing Arts hopes to build at the site of its parking structure, located northwest of North Water Street and East State Street, said Marcus Center president and chief executive officer Paul Mathews. For years the Marcus Center has wanted to redevelop the parking structure site with a mixed-use building, but no project has ever materialized.
Another project within that area that the Harmony Initiative is considering is the mixed-use development proposed by developers Bruce Westling and Gary Grunau (Rainier Properties LLC) northwest of Water Street and Knapp Street, along the Milwaukee River. The Marcus Corp. plans to put a multi-screen movie theater complex in that project.
Milwaukee Ballet executive director Dennis Buehler confirmed the Harmony Initiative’s interest in the Rainier Properties project and in the Marcus Center parking structure site, but he declined to comment on any other sites. He said the initiative is considering 4 to 5 sites.
“We’ve been approached by any number of people with ideas," Buehler said. "A number of people have a number of ideas in that (Water Street) corridor.”
On Tuesday an advisory committee for the Harmony Initiative’s site selection held its first meeting.
“I expect the (site selection) process will take a couple of months to work through,” Buehler said.
The initiative hopes to make a decision about its site by early 2011 and hopes to move to the new location in 2014, he said. The Harmony Initiative site would provide a new home for the Ballet’s headquarters, currently located at 504 W. National Ave. in the city’s Walker’s Point neighborhood. It would provide space for the Ballet Company’s offices, studios for the Ballet and its school, a small performance center with about 300 to 400 seats, and a sports medicine clinic.
