While most U.S. cities see apartment development shifting away from their downtowns to other neighborhoods, Milwaukee is standing out by continuing to build multifamily housing heavily in its downtown area, according to a new report from RentCafe.
Since 2020, 76.2% of Milwaukee’s new apartments, totaling 2,431 units, have been built in the heart of the city. That places Milwaukee third nationwide in terms of downtown-focused construction, behind only Washington, D.C. at 79.9% and Long Beach, California 78.6%.
Recently completed apartment buildings include The Couture with 322 units, 333 Water with 333 units, Ascent with 259 units and Nova with 251 units. Others have opened on the Lower East Side, Third Ward and Walker’s Point.
The report did not specifically define Milwaukee’s downtown, but said areas were defined using “specific zip codes that correspond to the downtown areas of the major cities in (the) analysis.”
It’s also worth noting that the report focuses on projects completed only in the City of Milwaukee, not metro wide, where several suburbs have also seen an uptick in apartment development.
This trend isn’t new for Milwaukee. The downtown area has attracted most of the city’s apartment development for over two decades, with 86.6% of units built downtown between 2000–2009 and 85.3% from 2010–2019.
Other cities attracting most of its new apartment development in their downtown areas include Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco. Meanwhile, some cities like San Jose, California, have significantly ramped up downtown apartment development, growing from 35.5% last decade to 63.8% today.
Still, only 13 of the 50 cities studied had at least half of their new apartments built downtown, the report shows.
The RentCafe analysis of the 50 largest U.S. cities also highlights Milwaukee’s leadership in adaptive reuse, converting older buildings into housing. About one-third of the city’s new downtown units since 2020 were created through such projects.
Those projects include the former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offices at 333 W. State St., which was transformed into a 141-unit apartment development known as Journal Commons, and a neighboring former Journal Sentinel building was turned into affordable student housing for Milwaukee Area Technical College. An office building at 740 N. Plankinton Ave. was also turned into 129 apartments in 2024.
