A long-vacant retail space near downtown Milwaukee's Deer District could soon be home to a Yemeni coffee shop.
According to a permit filed with the City of Milwaukee,
Haraz Coffee House plans to occupy a 2,300-square-foot space at the
Aloft Hotel, 1230 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Haraz Coffee House, based in Dearborn, Michigan,
recently opened its first Wisconsin location at 2900 N. Oakland Ave. on the city's East Side. A location at 6840 S. 27th St. in Oak Creek will also be opening soon, according to posts on Haraz's social media.
Last August, Haraz CEO
Hamzah Nasser told BizTimes that the company was planning more than a dozen franchised locations in Wisconsin, but declined to share other locations.
Nasser did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Aloft location.
Haraz centers its offerings around Yemeni coffee, sourcing beans from its namesake village. The café serves spiced coffee and tea drinks, along with a selection of pastries. The company emphasizes a communal café experience, with both dine-in and takeout options available.
The 160-room Aloft Hotel, built in 2009, includes two retail spaces that have sat vacant for years.
According to marketing materials from commercial real estate firm CBRE, the hotel includes a 1,500-square-foot space along MLK Drive and a separate 2,300-square-foot space along Juneau Avenue and the Milwaukee River, which is the space Haraz has signed a lease for, according to CJ Goldberg, first vice president at CBRE.
Although the hotel was built with retail space included, those spaces were not marketed for tenants until recently and have mostly been used as conference rooms, Goldberg said.
The hotel is located directly across MLK Drive from the site of a planned mixed-use apartment development with ground-floor retail, set to break ground this fall, according to developer J. Jeffers & Co.
