New Land wants to build 500 units in Milwaukee, seeks city assistance

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A developer shared plans for a 500-unit apartment complex in Milwaukee‘s Bay View neighborhood and is seeking help from the city through tax increment financing.

Milwaukee-based New Land Enterprises proposed a major mixed-use development and requested rezoning of a five-acre lot from industrial heavy to industrial mixed at 2252 South 1st St. Plans include up to 500 units in two buildings with room for ground floor commercial space.

The project site will extend from the east side of South 1st Street between East Becher Street and Lincoln Avenue. The Corliss, a major affordable housing development underway by Kenosha-based Bear Development, is east of the site.

All apartments will be created for workforce housing and are designed to work with the city’s latest workforce housing guidelines, said Tim Gokhman, managing director of New Land Enterprises. The city requirement targets projects with units for those making 60-100% of the area median income to secure tax increment financing.

While the city’s recent guidelines put it ahead of other cities, ground-up construction is still difficult to launch even with a 20-year TIF, Gokhman said.

“We were hoping for more,” Gokhman said. “Because the way construction numbers work with economies of scale and requirements that come with this program, it’s harder to build smaller projects.”

While other projects have been financed with low-income housing tax credits or historic tax credits in addition to TIF, the developer said a ground-up project has yet to be completed under the new guidelines. So far, 100 East in downtown Milwaukee has been the only one approved.

The proposed complex would be a different price point than the 140-unit, market-rate Kinetik and The Corliss, which uses LIHTC, Gokhman noted. “This is filling a really important gap,” he added.

Long, horizontal buildings between five and seven stories – sometimes referred to as a five-over-one – can hit a sweet spot for building efficiency which smaller or larger projects struggle to hit, Gokhman noted.

The city hasn’t received a TIF application for the project yet, the developer said.

Urban infill development tends to run into buried oil tanks, old foundations or sometimes unrecorded utilities when crews dig for foundations, which can add up to hundreds and thousands of extra construction costs, Gokhman said. A larger project has a better chance of absorbing these anomalies, but they can hurt small scale development, Gokhman added.

Retail use could include a grocery store, restaurant or a café, and Gokhman noted there was a lot of desire from the surrounding neighborhood for a grocery store. The eventual use will impact on the design of the building, including parking, so the team is working to narrow down options. There are no current plans for underground parking, Gokhman added.

A small warehouse is located on the site, which is mostly a flat lot.

As directed by ordinance, the project must use the Residents Preference Program and engage small businesses if it gets more than a million dollars in TIF.