December 2015 brought with it a headline that’s become all too familiar to Milwaukeeans over the last couple decades. The Shops of Grand Avenue, the struggling shopping center still known to many as the Grand Avenue Mall, had lost yet another major tenant. This time the fleeing business was Culver’s, which had been a staple of the mall’s food court for 11 years, and as owner Mike Busalacchi shuttered the restaurant to make way for a new one in Greenfield, he didn’t mince words.
“This is our opportunity to get out of the mall—after 10 years of hearing what was going to be improved there, and then it not happening,” he told the Biz Times. That a new set of owners were coming in just as Busalacchi was packing up shop didn’t change his outlook on the mall any. “I’ve been through four owners since Northwestern Mutual sold the mall, and everyone has great ideas,” he said. “There is nothing the new owners are going to do there … I don’t see that mall ever coming back as a retail center.”
Busalacchi was hardly alone in his frustration. In recent years Grand Avenue has gone through more ownership changes than many tenants could even keep track of. Each new ownership group brought with it hopes and promises of change, in spite of a reality that was becoming harder to deny each year: The mall was dying.
Somehow the mall’s last owner was its least inspiring yet. New York investor Alexander Levin bought the property in an online auction in 2014 for $16.5 million, but showed little interest in doing anything other than flipping it. He did just that late last year, when he sold the mall for $24.5 million to an ownership group including Milwaukee developers Tony Janowiec and Chuck Biller, as well as Joshua Krsnak from the Minneapolis-based Hempel Cos.
Despite the new owners’ local ties—a relief after years of absentee ownership—nobody could muster too much excitement about the change. The city had been through this dance too many times before.
That skepticism finally began to melt late last month, however, when the new owners revealed their vision for the property: an ambitious mixed-use proposal that, if realized, could turn the property into a bustling Downtown hub again. Even many spectators who had all but given up on the mall couldn’t help but find themselves excited about its renewed potential.
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A Radical Redesign
The new owners had teased a different vision for the mall, but few expected an overhaul quite as dramatic as what they unveiled in April. For starters, if things go as planned, Grand Avenue wouldn’t be a mall anymore—nor would it be called the Grand Avenue.
In renderings from the Kubala Washatko Architects’ UrbanLab with more than few echoes of the firm’s work on the Milwaukee Public Market and Colectivo’s Bay View and Prospect Avenue cafés, the mall’s underused Plankinton Arcade building would host a much-needed grocery store. The upper floors of the mall’s western building would be converted into modern, open-layout offices, while restaurants and retail would be concentrated on the ground floor, with a much more prominent street presence. Applebee’s would be replaced by a restaurant with more local character, and a grim alley near Walgreen’s would be converted into a welcoming urban marketplace.
Of course, these changes are contingent on the new owners landing the tenants to fill these spaces, and there’s no timeline for when that might happen. The owners have reportedly been in talks with a few promising anchor tenants, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
Meanwhile, Grand Avenue’s new stewards are trying to strike a cautious balance between riding that sudden surge of excitement surrounding the property and maintaining realistic expectations. Speaking to the Shepherd, Biller was careful not to overpromise anything, but he says there’s good reason to be bullish on the buildings’ future.
“The thing we feel good about is our timing,” Biller said. “There’s some great things happening around Downtown that previous owners haven’t had the benefit of. We think there’s a real renaissance happening in Westown.”
Biller cites the area’s recent apartment boom and Marquette University’s impending expansion east down Wisconsin Avenue, which includes a $120 million athletic research center, as huge opportunities.
“There’s the Buckler Apartments, which is 200-plus units, and MKE Lofts, which is 100-plus,” he said. “These are very nice apartments, and we’ve talked to a lot of people in the area, and there’s more on the way. There are just more people living in Westown and in Downtown generally. We just think that creates a dynamic that hasn’t been there before.”
Milwaukee’s City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux shares that outlook, and credits the ownership group for having the vision to capitalize on the area’s growth.
“Clearly the last owner was a last absentee owner who purchased the mall with no real plan,” Marcoux said. “A series of owners all came in with good intentions. But what they lacked was a clear vision, and a connection to what makes those buildings so special: They’re right on Wisconsin Avenue, which is the main street in our city and has some of the most gorgeous architecture in the city. You didn’t get a sense from the old owners of how to take advantage of that.
“This ownership group understands that,” Marcoux continued. “They know we have to get that connection to the street back. I think the idea of bringing retail down to the first floor primarily, especially with a real emphasis on getting first-floor retail onto a real street, not this faux-street that was created, is genius, because it brings back the original genius of Wisconsin Avenue. That street works best when it connects to the pedestrian.”
Marcoux also credited the new owners for their community outreach. As part of that effort, the owners have partnered with NEWaukee to assist with the property’s social architecture. The organization has had some recent success on Wisconsin Avenue with its popular summer night markets, which NEWaukee president Angela Damiani cites as proof of the area’s potential. Damiani said that unlike previous owners, the new group is taking community input seriously.
“This time the owners are not only local, they’re across the street,” Damiani said. “Two of the prior owners were just holding companies. The mall itself was just an asset on a balance sheet. But these are individuals who care, and have already invested in Milwaukee, and are convinced that the time is right and it’s now.”
Damiani believes they’ve come up with a vision that takes full advantage of Wisconsin Avenue’s confluence of tourists, Downtown office workers, students and growing residential population. “I can’t think of another area of town where such a diverse mix of people regularly convenes,” she said. “I think what you’ll find with the renderings and the vision is a real thoughtful response that considers all those potential users.”
The View from Wisconsin Avenue
Tucked away in a quirky second floor skywalk of the mall is one of the Grand Avenue’s oldest tenants, the Brew City apparel shop. When Brew City opened in 1986, the mall was at capacity, recalled Frank Keppler, who runs the store with his father Rick and his brother George. The mall’s floors were crowded with more than 70 pushcart vendors, and the waiting lists for store space sometimes ran more than a dozen businesses long. Given what it’s become, it’s easy to forget Grand Avenue was once a prestigious destination.
In the decades since, store after store has fled the mall, but Brew City has carried on, selling colorful novelty T-shirts to a mix of locals and tourists. The business went through a few lean years during the recession, Keppler said, but these days it’s benefiting from a groundswell of local pride among Millennials. These are good times to be selling Milwaukee apparel.
Keppler said he’s encouraged by the new owners’ plans for the property, explaining they reflect what many Grand Avenue tenants and the Westown Association have long requested.
“For years people have been saying the owners need to be more open to creating a mixed-use space, and these owners seem to be listening,” he said. “They need a couple puzzle pieces to come into play. They’re not going to blink their eyes and do $10 million in build outs. They need that first puzzle piece, whether it’s a brew pub or a brewery or a large office, then those other puzzle pieces will start to move around, but I think the sketches are really encouraging.”
Gary Witt, executive director of the Pabst Theater Organization, which runs the Riverside Theater just east of the Grand Avenue, said the new owners have their work cut out for them. His organization recently invested around a quarter of a million dollars on a new marquee for the Riverside, in part as a display of its pride in the neighborhood. But other local players have shown less interest in the area.
“One key for me is that West Wisconsin Avenue needs to reflect what makes other areas of the city successful,” Witt said. Right now that’s not happening. The same prosperous coffee companies and restaurant groups that have imbued other neighborhoods with a hip, youthful character have been conspicuously absent from that stretch of Downtown. Despite its proximity to the convention center, even iconic Milwaukee brands like Harley-Davidson and Miller don’t have a presence in the area.
“We want to be able to help out in any way we possibly can,” Witt said. “It’s a big job, and they’re going to need the assistance of the whole city to do what they can to make this area successful.”
