Next Generation redesigning office building project

Next Generation Real Estate Inc. plans to sell the 55,000-square-foot building at 317-327 E. Wisconsin Ave. in downtown Milwaukee to Jackson Street Management LLC for its proposed 200-room Marriott hotel development. The building has a vacant former Walgreens space and is the home of the Downtown Books store.
Next Generation had planned to demolish that building and three others on the block southeast of Wisconsin Avenue and Broadway to build a 6-story building with office space, retail space and structured parking.
But now that Next Generation plans to sell the 317-327 E. Wisconsin Ave. building, it is redesigning its proposed office building, said owner Michael Levine.
Instead of six stories, the proposed building will probably be about 16 to 17 stories tall, Levine said.
“It’s going to be significantly taller,” he said. “It will be more of a high-rise.”
The building will have about 200,000 square feet of office space, 18,000 square feet of retail space along Wisconsin Avenue and Broadway and 6 levels of structured parking with about 400 parking spaces, Levine said.
Next Generation still needs to attract an anchor office space tenant in order to obtain financing to begin the project. The most prominent anchor tenants currently in the market: Godfrey & Kahn, Von Briesen & Roper and Baker Tilly Virchow Krause are looking at other projects.
In August, Levine said Next Generation is shifting its focus for the project on tenants whose leases will be up for renewal in 2014-15.
The Marriott hotel project would help revitalize the area, Levine said.
“We think a hotel on Wisconsin Avenue east of the river is an excellent catalyst for the area,” he said. “It will add a lot of energy for that desolate corner of Wisconsin Avenue. If people care about our downtown they are going to support this project.”
Ald. Robert Bauman, who represents the downtown area and opposes the Marriott hotel project because five buildings that are more than 100 years old would be demolished, has also opposed Next Generation’s office building project, for the same reason. The buildings have great historic significance and should be restored, he says.
“These developers are bound and determined to destroy that historic block,” Bauman said.
But Levine says the buildings on the block have been altered dramatically over the years and no longer are architecturally or historically significant.