Milwaukee-based Mandel Group Inc. is working on plans to build an upscale apartment tower on a vacant lot that it owns east of Prospect Avenue at the street’s intersection with Ogden Avenue on Milwaukee’s East Side. The site is perched on a bluff that overlooks Veterans Park and the lakefront.
Mandel Group is in preliminary phases of developing plans for a high-end apartment tower on the site, chief operating officer Robert Monnat acknowledged.
“We are working on it day to day,” he said. “It’s a pipeline project. We’re in the process of trying to figure out how the project is going to come together. We don’t have anything to publicly announce yet.”
No details about the height of the building or the number of apartment units have been determined and no timeline for the project has been established, Monnat said.
The project would be targeted largely to upscale empty nester baby boomers that want to move downtown, Monnat said. That demographic was the driving force behind the pre Great Recession downtown condo boom, but after that market collapsed the baby boomer downtown migration has slowed significantly, he said. Now empty nester interest in moving downtown is showing signs of iimprovement, but for upscale apartments instead of condos, he said.
“We know there is growing demand for a higher end apartment project downtown, especially from baby boomers and empty nesters,” Monnat said.
