Several restaurant operators are considering leasing retail spaces at The Couture, according to the project's developer
Rick Barrett, chief executive officer of
Barrett Lo Visionary Development.
Two steakhouse operators are considering leasing space on the first floor of the building and another restaurant operator is considering leasing space on the third floor, Barrett said. He declined to name the potential tenants.
The Couture is the 46-story luxury apartment tower that is nearing completion at the downtown Milwaukee lakefront. The first residents in the 322-unit building are expected to move in during April.
The building also has about 42,000 square feet of retail space on its first three floors including a 2,880-square-foot space and a 10,124-square-foot space on the first floor, a 8,656-square-foot space and a 8,506-square-foot space on the second floor and an 11,809-square-foot divisible space on the third floor, according to marketing materials for the building's commercial space from
Barchetta Real Estate Advisory.
"We're going to curate the exact right mix (of retail tenants) for this building," Barrett said. "We want it to be groups that have a very high propensity to succeed. We have a very unique space."
Located at 909 E. Michigan St. in downtown Milwaukee, The Couture is located just across Lincoln Memorial Drive from the lakefront and Discovery World. The Summerfest grounds and the Milwaukee Art Museum are nearby, as is the U.S. Bank Center and the Northwestern Mutual corporate headquarters campus.
The building's third floor retail space is adjacent to a 1,977-square-foot and a 3,200-square-foot exterior patio that would provide opportunities for outdoor seating for restaurant tenants, with views of the surroundings, including the lakefront and the downtown skyline.
The first floor also has a 2,600-square-foot area for outdoor seating.
Ideally, Barrett said he would like to have a restaurant on the first floor and two on the third floor. He said he would like to have a restaurant and a bar/tavern on the third floor, two different establishments but ideally owned by the same operator.
"I would love to have a restaurant on the first floor and a restaurant on the third floor that has potentially a bourbon-type of tavern connected to it on the southern side, with exterior seating on the southeastern and southwestern side," Barrett said. "I don't know a better place to have food, where that is going to be seen. You can actually see the Calatrava (Milwaukee Art Museum) from that deck, looking over Summerfest. It's stunning. If someone is a great restaurateur they are going to have the best restaurant location at that location to do what they do."
On the first floor, Barrett said, "if we're lucky enough to bring a steakhouse concept, that's our goal." Two steakhouse operators are considering the space, he said.
In late 2021, Omar Shaikh, the owner of downtown Milwaukee steak restaurant Carnevor
said he was exploring options of moving to a larger location and that one of those options was The Couture.
When contacted this week by BizTimes Milwaukee, Shaikh said he is still "exploring all options" for Carnevor's future location, but declined to provide further details and declined to comment on the possibility of moving to The Couture.
Shaikh said he signed a five-year lease extension for Carnevor's current location at 718 N. Milwaukee St. "a couple of years ago." But he said he still plans to eventually relocate because the restaurant needs more space.
Another steak restaurant, Rare Steakhouse, is located next door to The Couture, in the 833 East office building.
For The Couture's second floor retail space, Barrett said he is hoping to attract tenants that would serve the residents living in the building, such as a pet food store, a high end hair salon or a golf simulator.
"Some of those things that work well with residential, I could see all of them being successful on floor two," he said. "That's curation. I think that the way that (the building) ties it in with the residential and the retail, those types of real estate sectors, they go together like cookies and cream. Retail wants to be around 'resi' and 'resi' wants to be around retail."
Barrett said Barchetta Real Estate Advisory co-founder and principal Allison Curtin "has a fantastic handle on what merchandising program we are considering here. She's done a great job
cultivating those relationships and putting those players in front of us as potential suitors for those spaces."
“The (Couture) project is iconic in nature, it’s something we don’t really have in the city and, in my view, this is the city’s best shot at attracting regional and national tenants, outside of just Milwaukee-based industries or companies,” said Curtin.
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