A vacant industrial building in the Menomonee Valley has been designated as historic by the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission, which will allow a developer to use historic tax credits to rehab it and make it more difficult for the building to be demolished in the future.
The 50,000-square-foot cream city brick building at 324 N. 15th St. has been vacant for about 40 years and has been at the center of a months-long debate about how to repurpose it.
Kendall Breunig of Sunset Investors initially planned to convert the building into apartments, but opposition from nearby businesses and the Department of City Development prompted Breunig to try a last-ditch effort to attract office users to the building, which neighbors say will honor the Valley’s legacy as an employment center.
The building was constructed around 1895 for the Geuder & Paeschke Manufacturing Co., which later became Geuder Paeschke & Frey.
A manufacturer of tinware, the company made history numerous times throughout its nearly 100 years in business, according to Historic Preservation Commission staff, including being recognized by 1920 “as the largest producer of kitchen utensils in the United States.”
The company supplied the U.S. Military for all wars between the Spanish American War and World War II; was an early supplier of automobile manufacturers; made labor history by being among the first companies to officer liability insurance, which was an early version of worker’s compensation; and made the first character-licensed metal lunchbox with Mickey Mouse characters for Walt Disney.
“This isn’t a Mickey Mouse project,” Claude Krawczyk with Milwaukee Preservation Alliance told the commission. Krawczyk nominated the building for historic protection on behalf of Breunig.
Breunig told the commission that the building has environmental and structural issues that will need to be addressed, making redevelopment difficult and expensive.
The Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to designate the building as historic, which will help Breunig secure historic tax credits to help finance the project, as well as make it more difficult for the building to be demolished in the future. The building is also part of the West St. Paul Avenue Industrial Historic District.
If Breunig is unable to find an office tenant for the building by the end of the year, when his contract to purchase the building expires, he will again seek rezoning to residential use.
“If it can’t be used as residential, the building has no feasible use,” Breunig said. “I’d like to put one more stumbling block in the way of demolishing this building.”
