Milwaukee commission gives go-ahead for green apartment building

Listen to this article

By Kirsten Klahn

Milwaukee’s City Plan Commission on Monday approved plans for a five-story, 20-unit apartment building on a vacant site at 1509 N. Jackson St., Milwaukee.

The apartment building consists of one studio, seven one-bedroom and 12 two-bedroom apartments, said Christopher Adams, co-owner of Milwaukee-based Dominion Properties LLC, which owns and manages 200 apartments in Shorewood and Milwaukee.

The building will focus on using green and sustainable technology, he said.

“We are attempting to get a building that has no We Energies bill at all,” Adams said.

Dominion Properties is hoping to accomplish zero energy dependance by using Waukesha-based Nature Tech LLC and Hartland-based Lightweight Structures LLC, Adams said.

The building will include heat pumps to hydronically heat the floors and cool each unit, said William Sellars, owner of Nature Tech.

Sellars said it will be one of the most energy efficient and green buildings in the city.

But there are concerns from neighbors about parking spaces and the building’s density, said Joel Agacki, the project architect and designer and co-founder of Milwaukee-based Striegel-Agacki Studio.

To address those concerns, Agacki said he focused on adding as many parking spaces as he could to the project plans. There are now 30 spaces for tenants, he said.

It was challenging and expensive to find room for that many spaces, Agacki said. But, he said, neighbors voiced strong concerns about a lack of parking in the neighborhood.

“We felt we needed enough to make people feel like we were making an effort,” he said.

To give the building a smaller appearance, Agacki said, the fifth floor of the building will sit further back from the rest of the apartments. The top floor, he said, has four units and is pulled back from the street.

The building is going to be one-of-a-kind, Adams said, by using the geothermal technology, as well as buying green, local products for the project.

“We want to prove we can do this,” he said.

[related-posts numitems=12 collection=”mke_jobtrac” metatag=”categories” value=”Apartments/Condos/Dwellings”]