The property at 3116 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Milwaukee has been waiting for a developer for more than 20 years. Now, it has four.
A development team is proposing a four-story building with 67 apartment units, a mix of affordable and market rate, and commercial space on the first floor for local businesses – a project type that is becoming increasingly common in Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood.
The development is being proposed by a team of four local developers – Martin Luther King Economic Development Corp., led by Nicole Robbins; KG Development, led by Anthony Kazee; One 5 Olive, led by David Griggs and Greg Davis; and EA Development, led by Elaine Familia – all of whom are graduates of the Associates in Commercial Real Estate Program, better known as ACRE.
They are among more than 300 people in the Milwaukee area that have come out of ACRE and are transforming Milwaukee’s real estate industry. This year marks 20 years since the program was founded at Marquette University, and its mission has remained the same: diversify Milwaukee’s commercial real estate industry.
While Marquette remains the lead education partner of ACRE, these days the program is a partnership between Marquette, Milwaukee School of Engineering and UW-Milwaukee and is administered by LISC Milwaukee. On a yearly basis, the program admits a small group of adults of color and trains them on the basics of real estate development, investment and management.
“The goal is to give people a lot more tools and understanding of the real estate space – typically at an introductory level but enough to be dangerous – and to give them networks they otherwise wouldn’t have,” said Andy Hunt, Veith director of the Center for Real Estate. “For the first time in their real estate professional lives, for a lot of people, they’re surrounded by others that look like them in an industry that is not at all diverse. That ends up being the differentiator.”
After two decades, the program has helped produce a network of people of color in real estate, which has allowed for partnerships between emerging developers, like the one at 3116 N. MLK Drive. Some early graduates that have founded their own companies – such as Kevin Newell, who founded Royal Capital Group – have hired other ACRE graduates or brought them on as interns.
“For a city of Milwaukee’s size to have this many minority developers, there’s something to be said about that,” said David Griggs, co-founder of One 5 Olive. “It’s hard to be what you can’t see.”
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While ACRE has produced some well-known names in the real estate development world, Hunt estimates that only about 10% to 15% of the program’s graduates become developers. Many graduates go on to work in banking, appraisal or institutional firms like Northwestern Mutual, or go into public sector work like Lafayette Crump, the city of Milwaukee’s commissioner of city development. About half of the program’s graduates use the program to expand their knowledge and skillset but are working in another area.
Beyond helping to create a more diverse pool of real estate professionals in Milwaukee, the program has played a part in changing what types of projects are built in the metro Milwaukee area, and where they are built.
“It is human nature to go and build in and invest in where you grew up,” Hunt said. “In Milwaukee, because of the level of segregation, that means that a lot of our ACRE alums grew up in disinvested neighborhoods and invest in them in their professional lives.”
For instance, MLKEDC has completed six projects in the King Drive area, most of which include affordable housing and space for local businesses or community organizations. Likewise, KG Development is under construction on an affordable apartment building on King Drive and Royal Capital recently completed the first phase of the more than $120 million ThriveOn project – also located on King Drive – which includes affordable housing, office space and community space.
“With everyone from ACRE who is developing in these areas that other people don’t see as attractive to develop, it helps to fill gaps,” said Nicole Robbins, executive director of MLKEDC. “It also makes it more attractive for established developers who might not have a minority background or mission help those populations too, or partner with emerging developers.”
“It’s really important to have people doing work in the community that look like you and that understand what that work means for the community and without ACRE, I wonder if that would be possible in a city like Milwaukee,” said Davis, co-founder of One 5 Olive.
While ACRE is one of the earliest Milwaukee programs in real estate focused on diversity, other groups have also entered the space. NAIOP, a commercial real estate development association, has launched a summer program for high school students from underrepresented backgrounds to explore real estate, and the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin has started a foundation to help provide scholarship money for underrepresented students, among other initiatives in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, according to Hunt.
“All of these things are creating a larger ecosystem where we can actually tackle these things in big ways,” Hunt said. “There’s always more work to be done, but it’s creating a heck of a lot more people of color in the industry.”
