Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Alderman Committee for Tuesday, July 28th, 2026 at 9.07 a.m. I'm Alderman Baumann, chair of the committee. To my immediate right is Alderman Stamper, the vice chair. To my far left, Alderman Spiker. To his right, Alderman DeAndre Jackson. And to my left is Chris Lee, our staff assistant. We'll be joined by Alderman Coggs shortly. First item on the agenda, we'll read them both since they're gonna be held. Item one, 260362, substitute resolution relating to the designation of an area in the 15th Aldermanic District as a rental property inspection program district. Item two, file 260363, substitute ordinance relating to the establishment of a rental property inspection program. Alderman Stamper moves to hold these two items at the call of the chair. Hearing no objection to that, so ordered. Thank you. Excellent. Moving on to item three, file 260368, communication from the Department of City Development, the Department of Neighborhood Services, and the Office of the City Attorney relating to the 21st Century Road to Housing Act and its impact on the city's tax foreclosed housing inventory and related housing policies. I think we got some more people coming on this. I think the Council President and LRB are also. What's our next file? Why don't we go to item, we'll go to item four. Until everybody's assembled. Okay, we'll hold item three to a later point in the meeting. Going to item four, file 260183, substitute ordinance correcting the mixed zoning of the parcel located at 1993 South Muskego Avenue on the west side of South Muskego Avenue, north of West Rogers Street in the 8th automatic district and assigning the zoning to local business LB2 to the property. I think this is a mixed zoning case where you have one parcel with two zoning classifications. Anybody here on this item? All right, looks like this meeting's gonna end real quick. All right, we'll go back to item three. Recall item 3 file 260 363 communication from the Department of City Development Department neighborhood services and the office of the city attorney Relating to the 21st century Road to Housing Act and its impact on the city's tax for closed housing inventory and related housing policies Okay, we're joined by our Common Council president. Do you want to take the leading? Sure. Thank you. Mr.

Chair as many know this congressional road housing act has uh will have an impact on cities and uh we just i i wanted to get ahead of the curb in a sense and uh knowing that there's an enormous amount of codification as it happened in this process for us to compete for whatever grants may be available through this and opportunities wanted to i know the national league of cities is um That's kind of a roadmap that they've laid out for their membership. I'm attending Council President's gathering in August. Housing is top of our issue, one of the top issues that we'll be talking about, and more importantly, wanted to either hear from departments as we move into a budget process, what are the needs, how are we getting ready, what are we doing to compete and just hear from departments what do they need from us and to put out there for everyone else to hear how we're competing for some of these opportunities that come out of the act.

Excellent.

Excellent. Who wants to take the laboring order here? I'm happy to. All right. Good morning. Larry Kilmer with the Department of City Development. At the table, I'm joined to my right by City Attorney Goike and to my left by Decanter from the Department of City Development. I do know in the audience we have representatives from DNS and I believe CDGA. The first item is we want to draw your attention to the attachment to the file. We did submit the Bipartisan Policy Center did a summary and a tracker. We have noticed that many organizations are putting out different summaries. This is the one that we thought was comprehensive enough, but also only 25 pages. So in overview, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act is the final version of prior efforts including the Senate's Road to Housing Act and the House's housing for the 21st Century Act. And I mention this because as you're doing your own research, there are many versions of this out there. So this is the final version, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. The legislation contains a wide range of provisions that would expand financing tools, reduce administrative barriers, streamline development processes, and preserve existing affordable housing stock. However, the Act does contain more than 50 provisions that require new regulations, administrative procedures, and federal guidance before a single dollar can be spent. Additionally, most of the new and expanded programs do not come with authorized funding, meaning that the soonest a few of the programs may have access to dollars is 2027. We also want to note, just for kind of comparison, in 2016, Congress enacted a legislation titled Housing Opportunities Through Modernization Act, or HOTMA. And HOTMA's goal is to modernize federal affordable housing programs generally administered by housing authorities. HUD issued their final rule in 2023, so seven years later after the actual Congressional Act was taken. And just now in 2026, HOTMA is still being rolled out. So I say this all to say a large housing package came through Congress in 2016, and they're still rolling it out a decade later. This experience combined with massive federal workforce reductions over the past year should set everybody's expectations of a long runway for the implementation of this act. So for the next step in the presentation, so kind of giving you an overview, and I'm gonna hand it off to Dee to talk about really what we think might impact the City of Milwaukee. And then after Dee kind of gives her a little bit further in depth analysis, we'll turn it over to Attorney Goecke if he has any kind of concluding remarks from our perspective. One thing to note before I hand it off to Dee is that some of the provisions in the act may impact HACM. So we're not going to highlight the HACM provisions. If you're interested in those, we'll let you proactively approach HACM on the specific items that may impact their efforts. And then although based on our initial review and speaking with our colleagues in real estate, we do not believe the act will have a direct or immediate impact on city tax foreclosed housing inventory. But as I mentioned, Dee will highlight where we might see some indirect activities over the coming years. So with that, I'll hand it over to Dee.

Good morning. Decanter from Department of City Development. Road is largely focused on federal regulatory changes to e-supply side conditions. One of the bigger changes in their regulatory or an example that gets used quite a lot across all of the publications is removing the chassis requirement for manufactured homes to allow them to be more easily built on land. There's other things that they focus on.

What does that mean exactly, a chassis requirement?

Chassis requirement would be for the transportation of manufactured housing, they have to be built to fit on a chassis to be able to fit on the road. So removing the chassis requirement, one, eliminates about a $5,000 to $7,000 cost, but it also allows the housing to be maybe built a little wider, a little taller, without that chassis requirement. But harder to transport. Possibly harder to transport, but HUD and the states will come out with guidelines on how those will work. The states will be allowed to certify to HUD how that will work.

So that's a state responsibility.

It will be a state responsibility to report to HUD at some point how that will work, yes.

Where in the city do we have those type of homes?

manufactured homes I believe there's some out at West Lawn there's other places in the city I'm sure that they are I believe the zoning code does go into that but I'd be 13th district has three well true trailer parks you have some true trailer parks right We're not talking trailer parks, no. We're talking about homes that are brought in, dropped on a site in a crane and then assembled on site. Manufactured homes like he's talking about are not really, to my knowledge, really allowed in that format anymore because of some changes in the late 1970s.

So Alderman, do you have manufactured homes, not mobile homes?

No, I only have a handful of manufactured homes. He has true trailer homes.

But manufactured homes could be what used to be the Christian Center does. They bring it in on first floor.

Well, that's panelized. I mean, there's a variety of types here.

Different types of styles of manufactured homes.

I mean, there's panelized homes where the home comes in in sections on truck trailers, right?

Yeah, and those are the types of homes we'd be talking about as the panelized on a chassis.

Okay. Yes. And then they're assembled, put together on site. On site.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay. So that new provision is in favor of those, correct? Yes. Okay.

Yep. I've been in quite a few of them and they're quite a nice experience. They are.

It's the new wave. Yep.

Yep. But more to the point, there are funding programs that have been created, but they have not been authorized funding at this point. Larry was alluding to, so we'll have to do some further advocacy to see some of these programs. So I'm gonna go into a couple of those programs. There is one program that I think that the city would be uniquely positioned to apply for and readily able to probably get with our experience in NSP and Choice Neighborhoods and Pro Housing and some of the other funding that we've gone and gotten. The Innovation Fund is a competitive grant that's established to help state, local, and tribal governments as well as regional planning agencies implement planning and community development activities. such as updating regulatory processes, increasing capacity to conduct inspections, and coordinate housing development with transportation planning. This has got a short timeframe to implement by HUD. By July of next year, they must establish the program, which means that they have to get out a Notice of Funding Opportunity, or NOFO, ready for how the program can be applied for and then put out on grants.gov for municipalities and regional planning agencies and the like to apply for. It's a $200 million appropriation annually. This is the only program that I have seen in the Road to Housing Act that has actual funding attached. $200 million authorized? Per year. Nationwide? Nationwide. Okay. Through 2031.

Well, we got 390 ARPA money just for Milwaukee.

Yeah, so 200 for the nation.

Yep, per year through 2031.

Mr. Chair, but that's currently what's on the table that they're saying could be available nationwide. It doesn't mean that it's limited to just that.

Correct. I believe the grants that they're looking at is a minimum of $250,000, and I forgot the upper range of that grant.

It's $10 million.

$10 million. Thank you.

Okay. So cities are eligible for up to $10 million?

Yep.

Gotcha.

Whole Homes Repair Act, which is based off of legislation from the state of Pennsylvania. It'll establish a pilot program to provide grants and forgivable loans to homeowners and landlords for home projects and modifications. That program would sunset in 2031. Unfortunately, there is no funding authorized for this program, so this is where the advocacy work would come in from. The biggest strong home loan program, in essence. Basically, in essence. For a compliance loan for things we already have. Yes, but additional funds for it. And down payment assistance.

You said down payment assistance, correct? I'm sorry? You said down payment assistance.

I didn't say down payment assistance. It's a whole homes repair pilot, so it wouldn't be down payment assistance in this case.

That's one of the things we have in place that could make us eligible.

Yeah, this could be augmented, possibly. Yeah. Revitalizing empty structures into desirable environments or reside conversion grant pilot would create a pilot to help local governments convert vacant commercial or industrial buildings into affordable housing, prioritizing economically distressed areas and opportunity zones. Another federal program that puts tax credits into economically distressed areas. Individual grants could range from one to 10 million. It would sunset again in 2031, but there's, again, no funding authorized. The preservation and reinvestment for community enhancement price grant program would authorize price grants for seven years to fund, repair, preserve, and improve manufactured homes and communities like the ones we talked about earlier, the panelized. Is Mario Higgins here? Okay, did you want to talk about the entitlement grants?

All right. Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee. So the effects of... I'm sorry, Mario Higgins, Director of Community Development and Grants Administration. Thank you, Alderman Jackson. The effects of the Road to Housing Act on CDBG, a home, I mean, there's some positive things that are there. For CDBG, it will allow now for new construction of housing. However, it's like 20% of your allocation and it hasn't waived any of the, some of the regulatory things yet. So unless they do that, it still wouldn't be like real feasible to build with CDBG. We use home for building actual construction costs. So that still would be probably more effective than CDBG, but it will allow for that now. So smaller communities for sure who don't get home dollars would benefit from being able to use CDBG. And home is an acronym for something. Home is a housing, I think you can call them anything. It's a goofy acronym, because it's not actually an acronym, it's the Housing- Opportunities. Housing Investment Partnership program, so it doesn't, home itself doesn't actually mean anything. But yes, so for us, we generally use home funds for new construction. It also expands the eligibility under the home program. You can now go up to 100% of county median income or area median income for homebuyers. Only for homebuyers, though, so the other programs that we run for owner-occupied, those would still be capped off at 80%. But you can target then a large... a broader avenue for buyers, for our home buyer programs. I don't know that you don't have to do that. You could still keep your programs under 80 or whatever provision you want in those programs. Right now we do allow up to 80%. Mr.

Chair, when you say that we, what do you mean we about capping it at 80? Those are HUD guidelines?

HUD guidelines currently we're at 80% AMI and so that's where our programs obviously land.

So there's federal... This act that says you could do up to 100, would it impact HUD at all?

Oh, it does impact HUD. That's what I'm saying. Yes. So we could target up to 100% AMI with this new act.

Okay. So we could go up to 100? Correct. Okay. So that's kind of what I was trying to get at. If we look at all the things we could be doing or getting ready to do. Yeah.

to compete for the grant, we could easily go to 100 AMI. Sure, and this may not have any bearing on that. It was more of a relaxation of the activity for home. This was actually in the House bill and came over to the road when they consolidated the bills. So this was part of the House bill. because grantees wanted to see it go to 100% AMI. Again, around the country, folks who use home funds for home buyer wanted that expanded income range because they were probably having trouble selling homes to folks, especially with the cost of housing going up so high. Now you can get buyers with higher incomes.

or cities are losing folks with higher income to other cities. Correct, so it can make us competitive to keep that income bracket here. Correct, absolutely.

Mr. Chair, I'm trying to compare to what's now and what's coming. Is this for new money, are those guidelines for new money or our current existing program?

um i'm pretty sure it's for new money but i can check just to make sure because most of the provisions didn't go retroactive so even things that may feel more penalized those weren't retroactive so i can check just to make sure about sure so thinking next year in the fat plan we'll have two sets of money to apply for Not under this program, no. So I'll get to some of that. You wouldn't have to apply for anything separately, though. There's provision to suspend BABA. I mean, really, technically, it's to do a study. So they would suspend the Build America, Buy America Act, which has... caused a lot of increases in cost on projects especially things like tax credit deals they're you know 20 30 40 percent higher cost because of because of that act so that was something that our national lobbyists and they work with all of the jurisdictions to to uh help try to get at least suspended for a time being until they do a study on it so that would be I think suspended for like three years to do this study um so it's and that was retroactive so any program any projects that were currently and say they hadn't started you could suspend Bible which would obviously save them a lot of money on some of these deals and then the bill now act uh that's the housing production uh production metrics I think the key thing about that one is it doesn't take place for three years. However, that's a pretty big metrics of where communities have to increase their housing stock by building new units, by creating new units. The penalty for that, if you don't create enough units, you could have your CDBG allocation, your community development allocation reduced by 10% a year if you're not in compliance. the caveat or the plus to that is those um those communities that get that 10 reduction the other communities who make their matrices would that money would then be reallocated to those communities so you we could see an increase in our cdbg funds if we produce well and other communities don't so but you wouldn't know what that amount was because they'll be just using whatever those communities um didn't, or their penalty of 10% loss. I think that's, I mean, it's sort of the primary things that was going on with on the block grant side, the CDBG and the home allocations.

So August, Mr. Chair, August 10th is the 30 days after enactment date. So this has started already. On which part?

The law. Yeah, so the Buy the Build Now Act, though, that doesn't take place for three years. Okay. So they will implement that. They will start notifying us, though, on what our current conditions are as far as the number of units we've created compared to the number of units that we have, so what that increase would be. So we'll know that within 60 days of enactment. Okay. But again, that part of the bill doesn't go into place for three years. Got you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

um does a city attorney just real quick i have a question um mario or dcd uh the fha small dollar mortgages that are available for smaller whose department would that kind of fall under to help with any of that

The small mortgage provision?

Yeah, there's a pilot for home loans of $100,000 or less with lender incentives and buyer grants for down payment, closing costs, appraisal, and title. And I'm assuming with, whether it's newer homes, the rehab of homes, selling them to first-time home buyers, that could be a part of the program or figure out a way that we're ready to compete for that

It could be a tool to help, yes. Small dollar mortgages would be $100,000 or less and those would generally be endorsed by private banks. So it's a tool that we can use and counterpart with like our down payment assistance programs or like... Improvements for whole homes repair or whatever if the program gets funded. Yeah, it's a compliment to FHA would have to I think within 180 days of the passage of this legislation say how they're going to do that So hopefully by the middle of next year more details will be fleshed out about that and a lot of these other programs. I

Okay, even our partners at CDA, I'm assuming who we work with closely have this on their radar to make it part of the package of helping first-time homebuyers through whatever programs we have.

I would believe so.

And I can add from our read of the small dollar mortgage pilot. There's two components. One is to incentivize lenders. Think of all the efforts that go into providing a mortgage from a bank. maybe there's less incentive to do it on smaller mortgages. So this would help kind of bolster that back end for the lender, but also then on the front end pushing out incentives to offset costs for the buyer. So absolutely on the second part, that would be something that we would work with CDA on or any other take root type organizations that are looking to incentivize and promote home ownership. And currently are strong homes, Does that include landlords for homes for the loan?

It does not. Okay, because the federal grant would want to expand that to landlords.

Would that be a requirement?

That's the access to innovation grants.

I'm sorry? That would be a potential problem. I would not necessarily want to see it expanded to landlords unless there's money that comes with it.

According to our notes or my notes, it's repair grants for owner occupants at or below 80 EMI and forgivable loans to small landlords.

So let me add as well.

No dollar amount is set in law, which what it is, but part of this conversation is just to get us ready and to have these conversations ahead of time. And then in 60 days, I think they're going to kind of say, all right, compete for this. That's the $200 million?

Is there a pot of money for that?

No, this is the Whole Homes Repair Act pilot. That doesn't have funding attached yet.

Let me clarify, Chairman. So the Strong Homes Loan Program, that is locally funded. So if the federal government has a new pilot, it's not going to require us to use our Strong Homes Loan dollars for rental. So to differentiate that, under the Whole Homes Repair Act, there are two components. One, there are grants for, as President Perez mentioned, grants for homeowners with an AMI max of 80%. But there's also a secondary, so that's a grant. There's low interest loans for landlords who have fewer than 10 properties, with less than 50 total units, and that is for occupants in those units of up to 80% AMI. But that would be a pilot program that, to Dee's point, does not have current funding, and that's titled the Whole Home Repairs Pilot.

I'm trying to get my head around what's the point if there's no funding.

Currently there's no funding.

Okay, but I'm not clear. Is the $200 million set aside? That's a different program. Innovation grant programs.

There are a lot of programs that are being created here, and most of them aren't being funded.

You can't have a deadline if there's no money to start.

There's deadlines for different provisions, but they have a number of programs that they're

implementing but not funded so elvin jackson uh thank you mr chair i like this um revitalization of empty structures to desirable environmental so this is a conversion grant for industrial warehouses and things of the nature old factories and stuff

Yeah, I mean, I didn't dive into that a whole bunch, but yes, I mean, they're trying to encourage reuse of older structures. I mean, some things that we've done, I mean, they are even relaxing some of the environmental review processes for some of these programs to help streamline getting projects done.

They're also allowing some looser inspections to get these things through the process, correct?

Yes, there were a number of things. You can tell that they want to get this done, and part of it is we're going to – well, I mean, the act itself is – I forget what the acronym for build was – but it's working with local governments in order to increase efficiency is what they're trying to say. So they wanna get around some of the current processes of environmental review inspections and things like that to make projects move faster.

Mr. Chair, good morning. Evan Gweicki, city attorney. There's a provision of the act that I'd like to touch on. The departments have done a great job of sifting through the many programs that are either created or modified. There are many in the act that have not been brought forward today that touch on rural American communities that we probably are not eligible for. One of the more bipartisan provisions of the bill is a prohibition of the creation of a new definition of something called a large institutional investor, an entity that owns 350 or more single family homes, and a prohibition on large institutional investors from purchasing beyond that 350 single family home threshold. The president in January of this year signed an executive order to a similar effect called stopping Wall Street from competing with Main Street home buyers. Obviously executive orders have more limited legal authority. Here you have Congress enacting this prohibition and so it becomes law effective January of 2027. There are rules that must be promulgated To add clarity, I would be surprised if there is not litigation that ensues over some of those definitions. So very broadly, this stands for the proposition that large institutional investors cannot own or cannot acquire more than 350 single family homes throughout the country. There is a penalty in the act of up to $1 million, or three times the purchase price of that property, whichever is greater. At this point, that does not give the city of Milwaukee a cause of action to step in and seek that million dollars, so take that off your scoreboard, sorry. HUD is really the enforcement agency of this Act. There are 11 exempt types of purchases that a large institutional investor may buy more than 350 properties. They are largely for build to rent or rent to own or major rehab that takes place in that purchase. I'll note that this is a universe of property owners that we don't yet know. The large institutional investors are to self-report by January of 2027. And so this is all brand new. It has a lot of bipartisan support, but there are enormous questions that remain.

This is a big paper tiger is what you're saying.

Yes. It has... The large institutional investors cannot have direct or indirect ownership of the 350 properties. It then seeks to define what indirect means. We're going to see a lot of litigation over ownership ratios, corporate structures, and how these are often huge, entangled, multi-corporate, many tentacles. And when you deal nationwide, You know, I don't I think it in my personal view. It's a step in the right direction I think it has good intention but its implementation is going to be cloudy for the foreseeable future best of all your your knowledges is Do we have any?

property owners in Milwaukee they would come close to fitting the profile that this legislation or executive order would apply to

Well, so it is single family. The act does say single family may be one or two unit. So a duplex may count and that may be further clarified in the regulatory process. I think we have potentially one or two that would meet the definition. One of the challenges is those portfolios move somewhat fluidly and so a snapshot in time where you have 355 homes, a large institutional investor may divest six properties and then become compliant and not have to report because they only have 349.

It's our job to run around trying to identify who these potential violators are?

The act provides that duty to those entities to self-report and HUD is.

If they don't, then what happens?

There is a, well, I don't know that the act outlines a non-reporting penalty, just the penalty if they are caught purchasing beyond the threshold.

Who's gonna ever do that?

As I said, I think the enforcement of this.

Sign me up for a million dollar penalty.

The enforcement's gonna be very challenging.

Mr. Chair, and considering at the scale that these property owners could do this at, is there any way to enlist any assistance from the Attorney General? I'm assuming that they, I don't know if we can or we should be enlisting help from the Attorney General at that scale considering this is federal law and the impact it has on communities like Milwaukee.

I frankly, it deserves and will need an all hands on deck enforcement approach. It is very challenging to identify corporate ownership structures of real estate, especially these are highly sophisticated actors with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate across the country. So to your point, Mr. President, yes and, I'm happy to come back and do a follow up in early 2027 when the regulations are issued and we have some clarity over enforcement. I would not be surprised at all if, as I said, there's mixed results or cloudy enforcement and Congress looks to try to and clarify and really focus.

Thank you, and for the record, I mean, the city of Milwaukee isn't unloading properties to any one person at that scale. We're talking about financial institutions.

These are private transactions.

Private transactions where we need assistance with the private sector.

A large institutional investor is defined as an investment fund or a for-profit entity, and then the various ownership thresholds that are defined.

Okay.

I had a question. Well, in preparation for this, is there a way that we can engage or at least whatever we need to codify kind of the emerging developer community in some of this in a way that makes sense? We already do that with some of our... Some of our programs, I just think we need to codify that in a way that makes sense. For instance, I mean, I still don't, I got entities that kind of dabble in real estate, but I don't have a Latino developer in the community at the level that we see other folks of color doing development, and we gotta create these opportunities for that.

Mr. Chair, Larry or Attorney Gorky, is there anything in this proposal or any provision allow us the ability to hold landlords accountable?

uh negligent landlords the the act does not particularly commercial the act does not touch a state or local government's authority over a nuisance property or accountability to problem properties the the provisions that i outlined are really the the bill is 90 programmatic and whether it's creating new programs investing in existing programs or amending existing programs And then the one kind of enforcement provision is what I touched on, and it does not give us, City of Milwaukee, any additional powers. Or enforcement. Or enforcement provisions. Thank you.

Mr. Chair?

Yeah, all of them.

And forgive me if you already answered this, but what will happen to pre-existing ownership? Are they grandfathered?

Yes. It's a prohibition moving forward in January of 2027. So entities that exceed the 350 single family home portfolio do not have to divest the properties that they have to get under that 350 threshold.

Thank you. And I just had a basic question. What can we do proactively, whether we're lobbying, whether we're talking to our congressional reps, as some of this kind of gets hammered out in the next 60 days, nine months, whatever the case may be, can we do anything proactively to help shape what this looks like?

Yeah, I think.

Alderman, so a lot of the, especially the provisions that how it affected either home or CDBG, like we've been working with national partners and using IRD in order to help get letters to Congress and to our senators in order to make sure we were shaping some of that. So again, I think with CDBG, we landed pretty good and home with the provisions that were out there because we did have a national lobbying firm basically working with us. Who was that? Well, it's NCDA. It's basically all the participating jurisdictions around the country. They work with them in order to... Who were they lobbying? Just Congress? Congress, yeah. So they work pretty heavily, especially when it comes around rules, rule changes. Like I said, some of these provisions in here were encouraged by participating jurisdictions to get added in for the increase in the... income levels and things like that. This is just a partnership we have, or we actually pay them to do this? We have a membership fee that we have to join every year, but we do conferences and everything. It's a really good organization. They've always been on top of all of the changes that happen around home and CDBG funding.

Maybe in the next cycle at our Judd Legg committee, we can get an update on

on some of those lobbying efforts and sure thank you so just to summarize here a little bit the only actual money authorized by this bill and all this fanfare is is a 200 million nationwide competitive grant pool for the innovation grant program at this time yes well that's almost a joke actually I mean, all the fanfare around this bipartisan bill, I mean, this is exactly what I suspected from the beginning. We're not gonna get anything out of this Congress at this point other than headlines. I mean, the Whole Home Repair Act pilot sounds attractive, but there's no money. So what's the point? I suppose money could be added later with different Congresses, I suppose. but not at the present time. So this is just some nice stuff that sits on the shelf and when they get back, at least with this Innovation Grant Program, how do we position ourselves to be competitive for all of the $10 million at the maximum we'd be eligible for?

Yeah, I think, as Dee mentioned prior, we have a very strong track record since NSP of applying for federal dollars in addition to our entitlement programs. So I think just kind of dusting off our past practices, our past efforts, and then really monitoring Because as stated, it's not created yet, right? Even HUD, specific branches of HUD, they haven't created the program for us to even consider applying for. So continuing to monitor, I know Mario mentioned an Oregon Trade Organization. There are a few others that we can connect with and make sure that we're ready when those deadlines come out. But we might have another year before we see any detail.

Using federal money effectively. I mean, memory recalls during the Great Recession, There was the 2008 Housing Act. I think we got 30 some million out of that, just for Milwaukee, 30 some million dollars. Then there was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of March of 2009. I think we got another huge batch of money. Then we got reprogramming money because we were so good at using it. I think the total resources received by the city from the feds 2008, nine, 10 range was about $42 million. Yes, which we use extremely well neighborhood stabilization program gut rehab of housing stock that we acquire through foreclosure. It was an outstanding program I mean there's houses in our neighborhood that would not be standing today many houses in our in The city attorney in my neighborhood and I'm sure all the in Stamper's neighborhood also our neighborhood that would not be standing today but for those programs And then, of course, the American Rescue Plan was another $42 million that we invested in housing, and now we're investing nothing, basically, in housing, at least in the short run, other than the possibility of a $10 million grant with which we have to compete against every big city in the country for. I mean, for all those folks all geared up about, oh, Congress is doing something about housing, they're not.

that's what i think about housing mister affordability go ahead on what are you saying we can at least apply for these and just wait till they pick us or what yeah when the uh... when the funding when a program comes available of course i mean we you know we've got a great track record like alderman bauman has talked about uh... on applying and getting these funds even the last pro housing grant the sort of the grant uh... that just recently came out from HUD. Now I think they discontinued that particular program already, but we did get that grant. So we're always been very competitive, and I think it's because we've had lots of programs in the city that are already model programs around the country, so we can dust things off.

Speaking of that, anybody talking about or lobbying in favor of restoring the HOPE VI program? which was extremely effective in Milwaukee, in my humble opinion, in terms of reviving Carver Park, Hillside, Highland Gardens, some of the other public housing developments in the city, complete reconstruction, all new properties, mixed income neighborhoods, mixing owner-occupied market rate with owner-occupied affordable with HACM rental, Indistinguishable between the two. I mean, Carver Park, I think, is a work of art. Beautiful properties, great design, and there was a recent piece in NPR about somebody did a longitudinal study of the HOPE VI program in terms of whether it benefited children or whether it improved outcomes, and they said that it did. but that the program ended in 2014. Any talk about bringing that back?

I hadn't heard anything on Hope Six. So the next iteration.

Who heard that?

No, but now I want to listen.

Two separate segments, yeah.

So my understanding is after HOPE VI ended, that's when the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative program was launched. So that was the next iteration of HOPE VI. It included a lot more like neighborhoods, schools, commercial corridors.

Any of this benefit Housing Authority? No, they're not here and we technically don't have jurisdiction over them. But I'm curious, why am I curious? Because just today there was a story in the Journal Sentinel about the Merrill Park public housing development, which is senior disabled on 33rd Street, formerly my district, not anymore. They have no water. Haven't had water in three days. I said, what's going on? Hackam seems to be going backwards, not forwards, despite all the... Beecher Court didn't have heat during the winter for five or six days. I mean, any of this potential improvement for... HACM to allow them to better maintain their facilities, to make sure they have water, kind of basic stuff?

As I mentioned, we didn't dive into the Housing Authority components, but there are a number of provisions that could potentially affect HACM on many different measurements. Okay.

all right well and if part of the communication today which i appreciate everyone coming out is you know especially on our side if if we have to codify anything including stuff for hackham that you know we know about it ahead of time we're talking to one another and um anything else i'm glad um that everyone feels ready for the money that's out there, but we want to make sure that we let the public know that we are and what we're doing to compete, if anything, when the time comes.

Okay, well, very good. I guess there's nothing, yeah, Alderman Sandberg. No, I'm good. All right, everybody's good?

Move to hold the call of the chair?

Alderman Jackson moves to hold his call of the chair. Hearing no objections to the order, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. For explaining this to us, I guess. All right, moving on to item four. Thank you. Item four, file 260183, a substitute ordinance correcting the mixed zoning of the parcel located at 1993 South Muskego Avenue on the west side of South Muskego Avenue north of West Rogers Street in the 8th Aldermanic District and assigning the zoning of local business LB2 to the property. If I recall, this is a mixed zoning parcel.

it is indeed good morning committee i'm tanya fonseca city planning director from the department of city development this property previously consisted of two parcels two two two four west rogers street which was zoned rt4 and one nine nine three south muskego avenue which was zoned lb2 and in 2018 the city owned rogers street property was sold to the adjacent owner of the Muskego Avenue property. And as part of the sale deed that was recorded, both sites were joined upon sale, which created a mixed zoning situation. And that just becomes an X for anyone interested, kind of a thing that just comes up from time to time. So this was recently discovered and we worked with Alderpersons Amaripa to have a file introduced to correct the zoning to the site and assign the LB2 zoning designation. Given the existing commercial mixed-use nature of the property, which includes the La Jamanca Bar that is in the process of adding a commercial kitchen to their space, which is exciting, the LB2 zoning context at the intersection of Muskego and Rogers. This site is within the near Southside area plan, in the plan's Mitchell Street District area, and the corrective rezoning of the site to LB2 is consistent with the plan's recommendations. Alderpersons Amaripa is supportive of this file, and the property owner is aware of the steps we are taking to correct the current zoning error on their site. City Plan Commission held a public hearing regarding this file at the July 20th meeting, and at the time, no one was present from the public to provide any testimony during that hearing.

and city plan commission unanimously recommended approval of the file okay very good this is scheduled a zoning change so schedule for a public hearing anybody wishing to testify on this matter i don't see anyone responding uh that said alderman stamper moves passage hearing no objections Item five, file 252189, substitute ordinance relating to the change in zoning from two-family residential RT4 and local business LB2 for the properties located at 410 West Concordia Avenue and 3301 and 3307 Northville Phillips Avenue to detailed plan development DPD and the first amendment to the DPD known as the Bader Philanthropies to add the subject sites to the DPD that currently includes 3300 North Martin Luther King Drive on the north side of West Concordia Avenue, east of North Martin Luther King Drive in the sixth automatic district.

Good morning, members of the committee. Good morning. Tanya Fonseca, DCD Planning. I'm joined here by the applicant team, Dan Bader, Sandra Bednars, and no, I'm missing one person.

This is a good morning. I'm Daniel Bader. I'm president and CEO of Bader Philanthropies, Sandra Benares, who's operation director, and Jim Just, who is a consultant to the foundation, answers as our construction manager.

Thank you. So this property at 3300 North Martin Luther King Drive was rezoned from RT4 and LB2 to a detailed plan development in 2016 to help facilitate Bader Philanthropies relocation of their global headquarters to this location. The DPD zoning was subsequently modified in 2020 to allow a digital monument side. So this custom zoning means we come back from time to time. Representatives from the Foundation are here, of course, to touch base on anything I missed today or any questions you may have. In 2023, Bader purchased three properties adjacent to their headquarters at the corner of West Concordia Avenue and North Velar Phillips Avenue. This file would rezone them from DPD and amend the DPD to approve the plans that they have for the site. Bader intends to construct a small accessory parking lot on the north portion of the sites to help supplement the parking needs for their staff and vendors. and free up additional parking for guests near the main entrance of their building and that parking area is also a shared parking area. The remaining portion of the site along West Concordia Avenue would remain as open space for their campus and the public. The accessory parking lot will be constructed with permeable pavers and will be set back nearly 50 feet from West Concordia Avenue. And it will be screened with an ornamental fence and gate with access from Bell R. Phillips with significant landscaping. A new pedestrian walkway shown on the site plan will also connect the parking lot to the building. Additionally, this file will memorialize the small building addition at the southeast corner of the building that has already been constructed. The subject site is within the northeast side area plan, and it is consistent with that plan. The plan recommends developing uses that are welcoming places for people to gather and serve as landmarks in the community. Goals for the Harambee neighborhood include strengthening neighborhood identity through community programming and outreach, and improving coordination among institutions and organizations to create a strong social network, promote leadership, and develop programs to strengthen the community and employment. Since the establishment of the original detailed plan development, Bader here has been an important partner in advancing the plan's vision for Harambee. While the proposal does increase the amount of surface parking by 10 area spaces, the applicant's exhibit provides a strong justification for the additional need in parking. And staff concludes that the proposed zoning change is consistent. We don't typically recommend the demolition of structures for parking, but given this comprehensive redevelopment and the goals for the community, we think that it does achieve a balance.

And they've already been demolished, so this is all academic, correct?

Correct. This is located within the 6th Aldermanic District and Alderwoman Coggs is a sponsor of the file. Thank you. City Plan Commission held a public hearing on this item at its July 20th meeting and at that time nobody from the public was present to give testimony and City Plan Commission unanimously recommended approval of the file.

Alderwoman Coggs, do you have any commentary?

I have no objection to this file, and at the appropriate time, I will move approval.

Okay. Do you have anything to add, or there's no need to add anything?

Good morning, Alderman. Good morning, committee. Good morning. I just wanted to express our thanks to the City of Milwaukee for helping us with this. We have a strong commitment to the City of Milwaukee, to the Harambee neighborhood. This last year, we spent approximately $15 million in grants in the City of Milwaukee, and about 10% of that was for directly the Harambee area. We're actually expanding our geographic zone in our immediate engagement area, so we'll be adding three new neighborhoods, which are Portrait Field, North Division, and Arlington Heights. What we have done, one of the things that we've done not necessarily in response to the demolition of these three homes, but just as part of our entire strategy is we invest in housing, so we work very strongly with Habitat for Humanity. Directly across the street from where these houses were are actually three new Habitat homes that we helped construct. There's also additional housing on adjacent avenues as well. So we have a strong commitment to the neighborhood. We have a strong commitment to housing. We will continue to do that moving forward. We appreciate the support in this. In addition to serving our own needs as a convener and engager with about 5,000 visitors a year, we are also providing neighborhood amenities. We have green space on Concordia Avenue, which will be expanded, which will be doubled, actually. It's well used and well appreciated by our neighbors, and we continue that commitment to the neighborhood.

Very good. This is scheduled for a public hearing. Anybody present want to testify? Nobody's on the big board? All approved. Very good. Alderman Coggs will move passage and hearing no objections to the order. Thank you for coming down.

Thank you very much.

Moving on to 6, file 260432, resolution approving amendment number 4 to the project plan for Texas Economic District number 75, Reed Street Yards, and authorizing expenditures in the 12th Aldermanic District.

All right.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, Dan Casanova with the Department of City Development. Good morning. The item before you today is amendment number four to the Reed Street Yards Tax Incremental District. This is in President Perez's district, and we haven't had a Reed Street Yards file in front of you for six or seven years, so I'm just going to briefly go through the history of the TID. That's a good question. I've had it for a long time. But the blue circle is where the Reeds Street Yards is today. So it was previously marshland adjacent to the Menominee River. Then the Menominee River was straightened and canals were put in. But the site has never been properly developed. In the 1950s, it was a rail yard. In the 1990s, it was a truck terminal. And then by the early 2000s, it was vacant land, 17 acres of vacant land adjacent to downtown that had never been developed because it never had city infrastructure. There was not a public road or utilities serving the site. So in 2009, we partnered with the ownership Peter Meade and General Capital to create tax incremental district number 75. It initially funded $6 million of infrastructure, then was later amended to add $7 million. So a total of $13 million of infrastructure to date.

And the private owner kept ownership. Correct. So he basically improved somebody else's property.

Correct, correct. But as you can see here, the base value of the property at the time was $26 million, and now it is over $340 million. So a $315 million incremental value created here, which is 24 times our investment of $13 million. This is the road going through the site. It also provided access to the tannery buildings west of the Sixth Street Viaduct, which previously did not have public access. The Hank Aaron State Trail was extended through the site, connecting the Menominee Valley to Walker's Point. In 2016, Zurn moved their headquarters from Pennsylvania to this site, and a number of the surrounding buildings were redeveloped. The Iron Horse Hotel, the Bricks apartment building, the Global Water Center, and many others.

So all those are included in the KID? Correct. Ah, okay.

And then more recently, Wright Height purchased a majority of the property and moved their headquarters here, as well as their research and development facility, but you can see there's still several large development sites remaining.

And they would have purchased the property from the private owner?

Correct.

Okay.

Correct. So just some shots of the Hank Aaron State Trail. There was a ramp and staircase added to the Sixth Street Viaduct to make that connection through the Reed Street Yards. Global Water Center building was redeveloped in 2013. We already talked about Zurn in 2016. The Tannery buildings west of the Sixth Street Viaduct were redeveloped into apartments. and then more recently the Wright Height headquarters.

So that brings us. I'm just curious, you know, because I raised this back at the time. This deal was very favorable to the private owner. We basically made his property valuable to facilitate development. Do we ever, in structuring these TIDs, do we ever share in the back end return that a property owner realizes?

On this one we didn't. In most scenarios, like the Menominee Valley or Century City, we're the property owner when we're putting infrastructure in. Maybe the beer line would be a similar example where we've helped put infrastructure in and improve private property values that way. In this instance, there was a water use restriction on the property for seven years where they could only market to water-related companies as part of the partnership with the Water Council, which is what led to Xur and the Global Water Center. So there were some restrictions on their property, but instead of us acquiring it and marketing it ourselves.

Which stalled development, in my opinion.

I'm just curious if we ever include a provision to share on the back end return.

That's something to think about for sure in the future. Mr. Chair, other than the tax increments?

Property owner Smith owns a piece of property that has no city infrastructure, no roads, no water, no sewer. It's a wasteland, basically. It had been a railroad yard since 1849. And he comes to the city and says, yeah, if you, the property's basically worthless. It's undevelopable. City comes in and says, well, we'll build all the infrastructure, we'll put in a road, you gotta give us a right-of-way, so that's deducting a little bit from your holding, but you gotta give us a right-of-way, but we'll put in a road, we'll put in sewer, we'll put in water, we will make your land developable. And he in turn, Mr. Smith, does in fact sell the land the right height for $50 million or whatever he sold it to. Well, maybe not, probably not that much. But he sold it for a significant price. And the question is, since we made that price possible for providing the infrastructure, do we share in the back end? return.

Is that possible? In this case, that wasn't part of the agreement, but in the future, it definitely could be. So we're eligible for that?

Yep.

Okay.

That's awesome.

Move that moving forward.

And then the same with the property west of the river at the tannery development. That's also his property.

Correct, or it was at the time, yeah.

And that was the building that, half the building, the top burned off back in, I don't know, the 90s, 80s. And they restored it, classy example of restoring these fire-damaged buildings, but now that's usable and it's rented and it's generating return on investment, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Chair? Yeah, Alderman Cox.

You said sometimes we are able to do that. Is there a reason why we didn't pursue that in this case?

I think Alderman, I think you said it, stalls development.

Well, this happened way before me when this deal was. That's true. When this was done, but I mean, we've gotten some benefit from investment like on Pfizer Forum or getting a cut of the parking.

That's a good example, the cut of the parking, yes.

And it is possible to do. It wasn't done here, but it should be something we look at at every TIF, especially with this type of investment, that $315 million increase in value.

So is there a reason that we didn't pursue that here?

I'm not sure why it wasn't done at the time, but we did get the $315 million of tax base out of it.

Thank you.

Okay. Very good. So that brings us to the amendment today, which is $17.2 million in public infrastructure projects to support the success at Reed Street Yards and within a half mile of the district. And like always, we met with DPW and the local alder to go through The projects, you can see them listed here. I'm gonna go through some of them real briefly. Others are more placeholders for the future. But the first one, similar to the Reed Street Yards, would be funding to provide public infrastructure to develop the Neyland properties. These are city-owned, so what we were just talking about doesn't apply here, but similar situation where this site does not have a public road, utilities, And once developed per the Menominee Valley 2.0 plan there should be a river walk along the Menominee River here And so the funds would support making this developable It's 15 acres total 10 acres are developable because of the freeway over vision in industry here I mean nobody's gonna build condos under that freeway, right? It's envisioned for industrial or commercial type uses. Okay, but there isn't a restriction on it like right and Next project would be rebuilding this section of 2nd Street. The majority of 2nd Street has been rebuilt or repaved, but this section between Florida and Oregon underneath the railway underpass and the bridge abutments has not been touched yet, and so this would fund the reconstruction of that. Just the abutments, which are the city's responsibility.

They are? Really?

Yes, and...

If you want more detail on that Kevin's here to talk about that We own the first four feet of that bridge and the rest is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway

Chairman, members of the committee, Kevin Mews, City Engineer, Department of Public Works. We are responsible for the abutments holding up the sidewalk, not the columns coming out of the sidewalk. So we're providing the foundation for the bridge from a structural.

Is that typical? That's strange.

I think it's because again, we're the one maintaining again the public right away element, which is the sidewalk piece, right? But their structural foundation is integrated, yes, into our walls.

Are we gonna attempt to lower the road so there's better clearance under that bridge?

We can explore that. We hadn't considered that. This was primarily focused on, as you can see from the photo, the pavement is not in great shape in this block and then the walls themselves.

Is this bridge gonna be rehabbed in connection with this Mosquito Bypass project?

Yeah, so that's a state-led project in cooperation with Canadian Pacific, Kansas City. I think there will be some changes. Generally speaking, the bridge is structurally sound and it's current shame. Correct, although in this case, because there's a federal grant and the state DOT is investing some money in this, I think there's more cooperation on that piece. There are some safety enhancements on the railroad side that I believe are gonna be within the scope of the Mesquite Yard bypass. They've got some requirements now about making sure there's enough space for employees to walk alongside while there's a train and those types of things. But again, the state probably would be the better entity to speak on that as they move through design.

Okay, well, I just would like the court.

No, I would think that if you take a look, all you see is paint from vehicles that either get stuck there.

Well, that's why, yeah.

Yeah, I would assume that you'd figure out a way to... to avoid that as possible. Although it's a small portion, it feels very blighted. You have a lot of energy on both sides, development on both sides, and then you get this patch here, so we're hoping that some beautification and lighting, and it makes sense, because it's not, and it's dangerous when you look at some of the trucks that have collided with the bridge.

So that's number two on the list of projects sold, okay.

Correct. Next one is the 6th Street roundabout. There's been a lot of safety concerns with the roundabout and there's been some temporary measures put in place, but this would allow for some more permanent There's nothing but the debris and markings and and tire markings on those Jersey barriers, it's astounding and

Yeah, I mean, prior to those Jersey barriers, there was a very constant video of vehicles even getting airborne, traveling near the roundabout there when they get to the southern end of the viaduct. The Jersey barriers have been very effective, and we tried to make those look nice, Walker's Point.

I go past this all the time now, since it's the only way to the south side anymore.

Yeah, the Walker's Point Association led the charge with trying to beautify them to make them as, you know, a little better to look at, but they've been effective and we're looking forward to seeing what permanent improvements we can do.

So we're going to narrow the road, actually, permanently?

Yeah, so what this project of the amendment would cover is we've been doing some work on the larger 6th Street corridor. Of course, we had the federal grant, most of which was rescinded by Congress. But we did have a small portion of that to start the public outreach on this. During those conversations, and obviously in conversations with Alderman Perez and Walker's Point Association, The temporary solution which as the alderman said has been very effective from a safety perspective Is not necessarily the desired permanent condition and so next steps on this and what this would fund is additional outreach focused really on the roundabout itself determination of should we do a narrowed roundabout which we have a concept design for from the larger 6th Street project or Or should we look at a different intersection arrangement entirely? Should it be signalized? Should it be something else? And we want to have those public conversations and then proceed through design. And this would cover construction as well.

No, I mean, look, from an infrastructure, I mean, it's a problem because you get to the end and there's height and the lack of visibility, and when you get to the top of it, boom, you have to turn, which a vehicle went through wine merchants right through the building at one time. Before the Jersey barrier, so.

Project four.

Keep going, these tracks in Canal Street, this would remove those tracks which are a big safety hazard for cyclists along the Hank Aaron State Trail and also motorcyclists with the Harley Davidson Museum.

That was brought up a couple years ago and the argument was made that that cement plant on the north side of Canal Street may be reactivated at some point. That's off the table now?

There's gonna need to be some conversations with them but this would put the funding in place.

But we're not sure we can actually do this yet. We believe we can, but. And the flangeways were filled in by a temporary.

Temporarily, yes, yes. But there are still reports of crashes, particularly for people biking in this area. And then both ends of this track piece now are disconnected from the rails on either side. They both are? Yeah. Both ends, okay.

All right. Then the former Forthin Mineral Playground, now the Clementina Castro Park, recently renamed. This would fund replacing that playground through the MKE Plays program. Some improvements to the pedestrian underpass on Seaboth between first and second. Painting, lighting, potentially some signage as well. Working with Zocalo, this would just fund some initial design and engineering cost estimates to look at the alleyway behind their property, actually that whole block, and look at making it an activated alleyway and extending the success of Zocalo into the neighborhood.

And just for the record, I mean, Taxco, Hotel Madrid, and other nearby stakeholders have all been engaged in this process. The alley's in really bad shape, and if we're going to reconstruct it, then let's take it to another level.

And then the rest of the projects, I don't have a particular slide on any of them. Some of them are placeholder items, but funding for future public art or a memorial, that would have to come back to the Common Council for approval, but this would put the funding in place. Some streetscaping dollars, neighborhood traffic calming dollars. funding to look at the feasibility of a parking structure in the walkers point area not just finding the location but really looking at cost estimates and ownership and financing structures for a potential parking structure in the neighborhood a fee the parking feasibility cost that much um Just a study? Our goal with this would be to have preliminary designs and cost estimates, so we'd get a real good handle on what a structure would cost.

So it'd be the study and some design?

Correct.

Okay.

Correct.

Thank you. Yep. It does sound expensive. Yeah, it is expensive. And some background, many years ago...

Doing a whole boundary or just that area? Just Walker's Point area, yeah. Somewhere within that circle.

Correct. Yeah. I don't know how old the study is, but Walker's Point did team up with DCD some time ago and did an extensive study of the entire area of what a parking structure could look like. Many of the leadership and businesses look at the third ward nearby. They have three, right, and considering some of the same you know synergy and businesses how feasible can one be in walkers point they laid out some areas and now this would be phase two um of what we could do with a couple sites and actually figuring out how to manage it in the similar way like the third war did okay so the income would be to the city well that's one of the things they would look at is how would it be financed how would it be owned and how would the revenue

where would that flow? And the third word, the bids own those and the revenue goes to the bid, for instance. But there's other examples out there.

Is anyone here concerned that there's an opportunity? I mean, this is all great stuff. These projects all make sense. What's the total amount of the amendment again? About $17 million. $17 million. Okay. Is anyone concerned about there being an opportunity cost specifically related to someday in the future when state law is amended and we have a different Federal Transit Administration extending the streetcar through Walker's Point? Wasn't that one of the reasons we were holding back increment on this particular TID?

Yeah, that's correct. The TID has been very successful and it's

the end of its life now and so um this would allow the tid to extend the administration is not concerned about a opportunity cost in terms of being unable to fund local share of streetcar expansion through tids that we've now used up basically i wouldn't say it's not a concern administration decision i mean this is

Forget it, these are all worthy things, but. I think if we weren't doing an amendment like this, we'd have to look at closing the TID out, because it's at the end of its life.

Mr. Chair, on that note, I believe there's still some room even after this, I mean, because let's say the parking acquisition does work, or some law does change that we can use TID for streetcar.

I just hope some people are thinking about this thing, because in... three months, we could have a different legislature. Could, I say with a big capital C. Sure, and if that happens, then I think we'll have that conversation. And that could result in an amendment of Act 12, right? in terms of our ability to use tax incremental funding to fund local share? Could. But is no one thinking of these possibilities and scenarios, assuming streetcar expansion is still a priority because it's the only way to make what we've invested to date useful,

We also need the federal government to change leadership too.

But at least study money. I mean, at least get this process started and as we've discussed, we gotta front those costs. We have no way to front those costs. Well, this is a way to front those costs, right? the project development phase because you can't go to construction until you've done two, three years of project development and we're at ground zero, we haven't done anything. So the ball's not moving down the field at all at this point and the expansion is now 2035 if we're lucky.

I think there's also an opportunity cost to not moving forward with this amendment though, because as DCD has noted, Dan just noted here that it's at the point where it would be ready to close without an amendment. And so that being said, as the Alderman indicated, there is additional, you know, there's possibility for additional amendments in the future. And so that is something we're considering. It's not something we're ignoring.

Well, I recall back in, 2018 2019 when we were discussing expansion one of the arguments to not draw a line further into walker's point was well we have no tiff available we have no tid available right you recall that oh yeah The Reed Street Yard is, we don't know how much increments it's gonna generate. Well, it generated over $300 million in increment, right?

Well, I don't, I mean, I know that's what we were told. I don't agree with that assessment, but. I didn't either. I think all along, they knew there was money there was promised for something else.

Mr. Chair. All right, enough of that. Yeah, Alderman Stamper.

Refresh my memory, did we, Design, Walker's Point and Bronzeville, streetcar design?

Nope.

What happened to that discussion and what happened to that? We started it. We got it all. What happened? We didn't vote for it?

Your colleagues might actually know more than I do because it was not approved at the time.

Not to design money either.

Not that far. Not those extents. Okay. Not out of Westtown, basically. Gotcha.

All right. Anything else? Well, just to your capacity question, with this amendment, the total project cost in this TID would be about $30 million. it would still be projected to pay off next year in twenty twenty seven and it's it's uh... generating between six and seven million dollars of annual increment so there's there's definitely capacity looking forward well that's right it was a refilling exactly uh... when does this uh... cancel out and then we could move into the

public housing part.

Well, so right now it would be projected to be able to close out next year if we didn't do any further amendments to it for other various projects that may come up.

So every time you do an amendment, you extend the TID?

Correct, correct. The expenditure deadline is 2031, so that would probably be closer to the time when we'd be able to do the housing amendments.

Okay, because we do get the additional year of housing on the TID, right?

Correct, potentially two years.

Yeah, plus there is a million dollars for housing projects in there that we want to look at affordable housing to help subsidize.

All right, excellent.

Any other questions or comments?

Hearing none, Alderman Jackson moves to recommend adoption and hearing no objections, so ordered. Moving on to item seven, file 260436, substitute resolution approving a project plan and development agreement authorizing expenditures and creating tax income on district number 135 for 11101 to 113 West Historic Mitchell Street in the 12th Aldermanic District. Is this the building we're going to tear down once upon a time? Okay. Good. Well, I'm glad we're not tearing it down. Good morning again. Mr. Chair? Yeah, Alderman.

Yeah, if I could just, I want to thank Ms. Cotton for working with DCD, our office, and the historic Mitchell Street Business Association. This is a long time coming. For many years, the TIF was underwater. uh got back in the black through some donor tids and we've been very conscious about dipping back into the tid until we have a development and i think we're we're really happy to see the reuse of this building and look forward to um miss cotton getting to the finish line on this and creating some housing opportunities for the community

Excellent. Thank you.

Good morning again. Dee Cantor, Department of City Development. This would be for consideration of creation of TID number 135 for 1101 to 1113 West Historic Mitchell Street. It is located on the southwest corner of 11th and Mitchell Street. Historic Mitchell Street is a, as we know, a very vibrant commercial corridor. This proposal would seek to do a single parcel creation of a TID to benefit the building on the site and turn it into up to 25 workforce housing units.

uh... i'd like to introduce as you wanna cotton of bbd investment and development to allow her to tell her you a little bit more about her project and her firm good morning my name is when a cotton and i'm the building owner i have over two decades experience residential real estate uh... as a former educator I also am a acre alum and I purchased this property in Mitchell, on Mitchell in 2020. So like the alderman said, it has been a long time coming, trying to bring workforce housing to the area. A little bit about my background. I did complete a renovation of a building on 10th and State, a 59 unit multifamily downtown. It's fully occupied now. The historic 10th Street Residences. I worked with my mentor, Q El-Amin, who was also the owner's rep on this project. the team that's helping me develop this property they have a lot of experience in historic um adaptive reuse and that's continuum architecture firm and cali construction as the gc and how karis as the attorney and like the alderman said i've worked with the bid for years with On this process, I've attended meetings, I held community listening sessions at the bid, also at the building, and so they are in full support of this development. And so what we propose is converting the second floor of the old Grand Apartment store. So this building, portions of it are over 200 years old. I mean, part of the building was built in 1891. And we're gonna take the entire second floor and convert it to 25 workforce housing units. There will be 12 studios, all of them will have dens that you can use as a flex space or a sleeping area. And then there'll be 13 one bedrooms and 10 of those one bedrooms will also have dens and the rent will be up to 60% AMI. We'll also have a fitness center, coin laundry and community room on the second level with the apartments. On the first floor, we will have a daycare moving in, Sesame Street Child Center. They have a location on the north side. They're opening up a south side location. In addition to that, the same owner is opening up the Empowered Family Network, which is a prenatal clinic. The whole goal is to decrease the infant mortality rate for minorities, and so they'll connect patients with nurse practitioners, help them get diapers, parenting classes, milk for their children. And so I believe this development preserves a historic landmark. by adding a right size housing component with high quality workforce housing. And it really brings density to the corridor that is needed and that foot traffic along Mitchell Street. We plan to start construction this fall, so we're really excited about that. The part two for the part of the capital stack is historic tax credits has been approved. We've applied for the WIDA financing. We'll find out about that this week. And so we're gonna start construction in the fall. It should be completed by late 2027.

The TID would be created to support the 25 workforce housing units. It's a $9.4 million investment on the part of Zuena and her firm. It'll be a first mortgage, and as she alluded to, historic tax credits, a WIDA competitive grant, and deferred developer fee. We'd be providing up to $480,000 in a developer financed TIF for up to 15 years. at a 5.75 interest rate. She is doing human resources requirements of 40% RPP, 25% small business enterprise participation. There is a cost savings provision and a clawback provision in the development, the term sheet as well. Yes.

I think this is a fine project. I'm just curious. That's an awfully small PID. That's the smallest one I think I've ever heard of.

We have done some smaller TIDs in the past and I'm forgetting the one that was an example. You're right, it is a smaller TID, but I do believe that this is a neighborhood scale project and it might be appropriate to do TID this way.

And why only 15 years? Was that a negotiated term? Because that also seems fairly short by the normal standards of TIDs we get through here.

We size the TIF based upon a number of factors, including industry standards, but we want to make sure that we're putting the right amount of term on it and the right amount of size of TID on it so that we're not over-enriching developers, but we're not... Under enriching either of the workforce housing tid's are also structured not to go more than 20 years so that we can take advantage of some of the extensions of the tid's that you're seeing to for affordable housing purposes and public infrastructure.

And is this contingent on WIDA tax credits, which you've not received yet?

It's not, we did tax credits. It's the vacancy to vitality, zero interest loans. And so we, I apply for those, but the project is still financially feasible if we're not awarded that.

Okay, very good.

All right.

This project is also consistent with the Near South Side Area Plan and the housing element of the city's Milwaukee Comprehensive Plan and it's compliant with zoning and it promotes orderly city development. Any additional questions that we can?

Any other questions or comments?

No, Mr. Chair, I will say that this building is somewhat challenged. As Ms. Kahn said, the initial building on the corner was built, and then there were some kind of additions to it, and it makes the rest of the building challenge for some of the floors to be level. It's been a long time coming, but we're glad to see this moving forward. I agree. And like Ms. Kahn said, she did tax credits. That didn't work out. She's been at this a while. Yeah. But I'm just supportive of seeing this move forward in order to get this project done.

I see you're keeping the second floor window arrangements. Is that historic? It is historic. I'm just curious, were you able to work around that existing window arrangement for your type of units?

Yes. On the west side, I'm sorry, on the west side, southwest side, we are adding two windows, and so it's not on the Mitchell Street facade, and then we're also adding skylights in some units.

Skylights. Okay. Got it. All right. Okay. So some units may have no windows and just a skylight? Correct. Correct. Oh, that's interesting.

Yes.

That was tried at the Grand Avenue over here, actually. We were just talking about that. Yeah. Okay.

It's part of the challenges with this building. Yes.

I agree. All right. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Mr.

Chair. Yeah. Hey, who's going to manage your RPP and SBE?

We're looking at the Prism Company, Randy Crump.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, all in stand for moves adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Good luck.

Thank you. Good luck.

Congratulations.

All right, moving on to... That project is a good project.

Item eight, file 260433, resolution approving amendment number one to the project plan and authorizing expenditures for tax incremental district number 121, Bronzeville Arts and Tech Hub in the sixth automatic district sponsored by Alderman Coggs. All right, what do we have here?

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, Lori Lutzka with the Department of City Development. I'm here with Michael Editorial, the developer. I will kick off the slide presentation, give you a little bit of insight on the project we're presenting today, and I'll have Michael then introduce himself and give you a little history of the work he's done. So you may have remembered in 2024, the Bronzeville Arts and Tech TID was created and provided a $700,000 developer financed TIF for the residential portion of the larger mixed-use development that includes new housing and commercial space in the Bronzeville Cultural and Entertainment District in the 6th Aldermatic District represented by Alderwoman Cox. The development is located on former vacant Rackham-owned land at the northwest corner of West North Avenue and North Sixth Street. The developer, Michael Editorial of Fit Investment Group, responded to an RFP and the proposal, the Bronzeville Arts and Tech Hub, was selected. It was viewed as catalytic and the Arts and Tech Hub met the vision of the Bronzeville Cultural and Entertainment District. Here is a picture of the first phase, the housing component, now completed, and it includes 61, two, three, and four bedroom units across affordable income levels, and it includes 48 units that are affordable to families with incomes below 60% of the area median income. The building is almost fully leased with the live-work units remaining. Amendment one to this TID will fund the commercial component of the project. It will be a creative industry hub and includes approximately 29,000 square feet designed for nonprofits, creative industry startups, and entrepreneurs. The space will contain office, co-working, studio, production, and performance space, as well as a cafe. The Bronzeville Arts and Tech Hub aligns with the vision of the Bronzeville Cultural and Entertainment District highlighted in the Northeast Side Plan. The Bronzeville Cultural and Entertainment District is a redevelopment project plan to revitalize a commercial district and surrounding neighborhood in the historic heart of Milwaukee's African American community. The hub also supports the cultural arts and entertainment uses proposed in the plan. The site is also identified for redevelopment in the Equitable Growth through Transit Oriented Development Plan, an official amendment to the Northeast Side Plan. Again with me today is Michael Editorial and I will have him introduce himself and give you a little insight of the developments that he has completed in the city.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Editorial with investment group. We are affordable housing and community development firm based in Milwaukee. We're really passionate about community development, working on projects that are impactful, that have big impact, multiple layers of impact, that are transformative, that address challenges. I think this project is really a good project that highlights some of those elements. The theme of this project was really centered around supporting entrepreneurs, elevating arts in our creative community. And so as Lori mentioned, it's a mixed use project. Phase one is a WIDA project that we completed that just completed construction, fully leased up. And then phase two is this creative hub that really is centered around supporting entrepreneurs. And so this financing is really the last piece of that that's needed. And so we're really excited to be moving forward to this phase of the project. Some of our anchor tenants include the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. One of the things that was really important to me to this project is finding uses that support programming and opportunities for our young people. I think growing up, for me, it was really cool to be able to walk to camps, music education, and things of that nature. This is really trying to do that same thing here. Another one of our anchor tenants is Black Arts MKE, who is a very well-known black theater group in Milwaukee. And so they're gonna be, this will be their new office location as well as a space for programming. And they also have youth camps, et cetera. So we are on track to start construction and close on a project this fall. And so we're just looking forward and really excited to move this forward.

Thank you, Michael. So the Arts and Tech Hub will be constructed within the current TID boundary, which is located between North 6th and North 7th streets, just north of West North Avenue. This phase of the project will be constructed on the southeast corner of the site. Here you can see the boundary of the TID. Okay, as Michael kind of indicated, but I'll give you a little bit more detail. It is a new construction of a commercial component of the overall project. In total, it's approximately 29,000 square feet. It's four stories. And again, it's designed for nonprofits, creative industry startups, and entrepreneurs. Michael named the tenants announced to date, and he will also have a cafe. Estimated completion is the winter of 2027. So overall, a quick construction timeline. So the financing, in total, the development costs are approximately, or actually they're north of $29.3 million. This phase of the project is $11.1 million. We are proposing a $1.645 million developer finance TIF, amortized over 25 years at a 3.5% interest rate. Sources for the project include new market tax credits, a first mortgage, loans provided by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Northwestern Mutual, Rackham through their Brownfield Revolving Loan Program, Legacy Redevelopment Corp, Milwaukee Development Corp, and the Developers Equity. Because the TID is greater than $1 million, a human resource agreement will be entered into with the requirement of 40% RPP and 25% SBE. So with that, we are going to open it up for questions. Thank you.

Chair? Yes. Congratulations, man. I'm excited for you, for the district. Could you break down a little bit about that 11 million for the arts and tech stuff? Like, is that brick and mortar? Is that for programming? I mean, that part of this project sounds so exciting, so I just wanted to...

Yes, so that have you expand on some of that that budget is is entirely construction and build out related. So that's supporting the construction site work and then build out of all the spaces. So we'll have office creative office, some studio spaces. um the cafe as lori mentioned um and it's four stories so just all of those spaces the only space that isn't um initially built out is the the fourth floor which we're um we're still working on identifying a tenant for that space and so we're going to work with that whoever that tenant is to to build out that space okay but floors one one through three will be built out and then and then

I'm assuming through other entities or opportunities, you'll look at what that space, how you fund that programming of that, right?

Yeah, so I think one of the things... You know, we wanted to make sure we left some room for growth and wanted to find the right partners. I think the tenants, the partners that we have right now, I think everybody set the stage for the quality that we're looking for. All of our leases are 10 years or longer. Just from a sustainability perspective, that was important. And so that's really the goal. And I think it, you know, we'll have the time to, you know, we'll expect whoever that tenant is to bring in some of their own funding, but we'll also help fundraise for them as well.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Yep.

Any other questions or comments? Hearing none, go ahead, Mr.

Chair. Mike, who's doing your management of your RPP and SB?

It'll be cross-management. They did the housing for us, so they'll do the commercial as well. Were they successful with that one? Yes, so I think... I think the final numbers are still going to be summarized, but we did improve. I think throughout the project there was constant improvement, but from what I looked at last, I think we were in the mid 30s, which was higher than even the previous maybe couple quarters, so significant improvement.

Okay. Any workers continuing on this project from our first development to construction to this one?

Correct.

Yeah.

So for the for the second phase, we're actually working with a new contractor. We're going to be likely working with JCP on the on the second phase. But yeah, so that we're basically going through the planning for that right now and just getting everything pulled together. um our basic building permit but some of the build our permits are still being pulled together yeah now you said it's leased up are people in there say it again you said it's leased up are people living there oh for the for the housing yes yes yeah the housing is um 57 of the 60 are leased up uh the only remaining units are the live work units

Okay, I mean, I pass all the time. Where's the parking? Is it in the back? Yeah, yeah. I saw you out there one time, but I don't see nobody going in and out the building.

Yeah, so we have indoor garage parking. Okay. So it's indoor. Most of it is indoor, and then I think a portion of it is behind the building. Smooth. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Congratulations.

Any other questions or comments? No, sir. Hearing none, I'll move the COG moves that recommend adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. All right, Mike. Thank you. All right, moving on to items nine, file 260435, substitute resolution approving a project plan and development agreement authorizing expenditures and creating tax incremental district number 136, the Imani Homeowner Initiative in the 6th, 7th, and 15th automatic districts.

Okay, look.

we use all the chairs All right. Good morning. Larry Kilmer with the Department of City Development. I'm joined here at the table by Brittany Roberson of the Dominican Center, Brian Sonderman of Habitat for Humanity, Michael M.M. of the M.M. Group, and Frank Martinez from the CDA. So TID 136, the Imani Homeownership Initiative. Here's a general map, kind of getting a sense of where in the city we're talking about. So the Imani neighborhood, so just north of North Avenue, we're looking at between 18th and 26th Street up to Burleigh. a little bit more specific of the map uh... so as you can see here began uh... eighteen to twenty six three minor key to burleigh uh... there are three hundred and fifty eight total parcels within uh... this proposed t i d uh... and just on our mind the committee that uh... uh... this uh... this effort uh... uh... for the most part mirrors what you've seen over the last two years of the concept of a backbone TID. So last year was the Harambee TID and two years ago was the Midtown TID. So the overall approach, again, is somewhat similar to the last few years where there's a coordinated and targeted effort to support new construction of housing on city vacant land. And as I mentioned, this year we're looking at the Amani neighborhood. This is a unique collaboration between the partners that I mentioned up here, including Habitat and the MM Group, Waukee Community Crossroads, and Ezekiel CDC as the development team, in addition to the convener and the funder of the Community Development Alliance. as a quick snapshot and then we'll go into each organization's detail and come back to the project and the funding. Quick snapshot, Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity will be considering 50 new homes. The MM Group will be considering 40. Milwaukee Community Crossroads will be four homes and Ezekiel CDC one home.

Over what period of time are these houses gonna be delivered?

Sure.

And please distinguish the districts.

Over a period of time so I believe it's a five-year period of time through 2020 2031 I think I have some more details here, but yeah, let me I'm happy to get that If you don't mind if I have each of the groups introduce themselves, and I'll pull out that information I don't want to prolong this too long.

I mean, I think this is gonna pass So, I don't know if we need a whole lot of salesmanship, but I'm just curious about there's there's three model of houses that are being designed and built and

Yeah, I'm happy to have each of the team members. Brian, if you want to talk about your homes, and then Michael, if you want to talk about your homes, and that's the vast majority of what's being proposed. And then there are a couple additional development teams that I mentioned. But Brian, if you want to talk about your models and timeline, and then Michael, if you don't mind.

Yeah, Brian Sonderman, CEO of Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity. Our plan is to build 50 homes over probably three and a half years is what our projection is, which is well within the deadline of how the TID is structured right now. We anticipate at least three house designs. They'll be consistent with other homes that we've built throughout the city, probably five to six different designs total, including 1,000 square foot ranch home to a 1,500 square foot four bedroom two story home. So very, very similar to the products that we have delivered. We have 60 Habitat homeowners in the Imani neighborhood already, so we have not built in the neighborhood in over a decade. In addition to the work that's being considered for this TID, our commitment is to continue to offer the repair program that we offer in most of the neighborhoods of the city of Milwaukee. In Imani and we will have for instance in the last three years We've done 15 to 20 projects and we will continue to offer that for existing homeowners in the neighborhood all these homes gonna have basements They'll all have basements, correct

And what's your typical construction cost? I know since they're different sizes, it's hard to estimate, but on a per foot basis, construction cost estimated?

Yeah, I can use raw dollars, probably better, would be about 200,000 to 225,000. for materials and labor. And then with some level of overhead, we anticipate all in probably the subsidy level is 100 to 125,000 depending upon the house.

So you intend to sell them at what price point then?

Well, Habitat's policy nationwide and one that we follow is we sell based on appraisal. So a recent appraisal in the neighborhood, and again, it's going to vary by house design, but ultimately we make the home affordable, oftentimes using a second mortgage that we provide that has no cost and no interest. So we'll scale for affordability so we ensure that homeowners don't have to pay more than 30% of monthly income

Okay, and that's true for everybody? Same model?

Well, we're the home ownership, yeah, for our 50 homes, we also are able to provide lending products below market, no PMI, no down payment, between three and 4% interest, 30-year fixed. So that's how we make it affordable. Mr. Chair. I would add. Hey, Brian, you know how many are under 15? in this TID or how many we've done total in the 15th district. You know that? Now you're really stretching it. Did you know that?

Yeah, off the top of my head, I do not. Okay. But I will follow up later this afternoon and provide hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

Yeah, for sure. In the fabulous 15th. For sure, for sure.

Alderman Sam Brown. I'm happy to, specific to the TID, Michael will talk about his 40 units, so all 40 of Michael's units will be in the 15th. I believe approximately 45 or so of Habitat's units will be in the 7th, and then the other five units, 10 units, will be between the 7th and the 6th.

Okay, I thought we picked about 10. Tell me I picked a few. houses for habitat, but it's only five? You said none?

I will have to get back to you on that. I just know we have selected the lots and I have to determine how many are in your district. Whenever you get a chance.

All 40, I believe, all 40 of the MN properties will be in the 15th, I believe. And then the vast majority of habitats, I believe, will be in the 7th.

Gotcha.

How many are in the 6th again?

I believe it's six.

And that will be by. Habitat Street.

Oh yes. OK.

Good morning. Good morning. Michael Amem, CEO of Amem Group. Happy to be here with you all today. As Larry had stated, we are involved in a project building 40 single-family homes as well. Our homes will be geared towards eventual tenant home ownership. So this is a project that is financed with low-income housing tax credits. We were awarded $1.2 million, 9% credit. We can at least own that. yes so we will operate these homes uh... for the first fifteen years uh... and then and then work with uh... you know nonprofits uh... to sell the homes uh... to to our to our tenants in fifteen years correct no sooner than fifteen years we have turned them up fifteen years but we're gonna start working as we approach that that deadline to habitat are direct develop and sell to our occupants yes right out of the gate why the lease to own component why don't why don't we have habitat do it all

for sale right out of the gate.

I'm happy to let the development team answer that.

The goal here is to

Okay. So, I mean, I think for, I can only speak for, you know, us as a developer. I mean, we were using the resources available, you know, to us with the affordable housing, you know, tax credits. Habitat is addressing the immediate, you know, home ownership need. This is a longer term, you know, home ownership need to, one, provide quality affordable housing to people who may not be ready for.

Home ownership need is way more than 55 on the north side of Milwaukee, right? I mean, that's a dent. Good dent, but it's a dent. I mean, this is building rental housing, essentially, albeit for 15 years. I get it, okay.

You're absolutely right. I'm Frank Martinez with Community Development Alliance.

Real quick, Mike, tell them how you convinced me. Tell them. No, we've been through this, Alderman, and it was convinced on the better good. But why don't you go ahead and convince them while we're public? Because I appreciate what we discussed and why we're moving forward with this versus the future, how you're going to focus on homeownership and selling right away. So we got some stuff in the plan, but go ahead and expound on why this is a benefit. Expound.

It's a benefit because there's two needs. Yes, you do have an immediate need for home ownership, but there's going to be a continual need for home ownership. We want to provide affordable housing opportunities for individuals currently living in the neighborhood. to get them ready. And we believe that delivering the product now is still a good thing to do. There will be buyers or residents that may not be ready to purchase a home right now today. um so we're committed to partnering uh with the the community organizations uh on that home buyer uh readiness i mean we're responsible uh developer and responsible landlord in the community this is a community that you know i'm from you know this is the community my mother moved to on 23rd and clark when she you know came to milwaukee in the 80s this is the first house that i lived in is right here at the heart of this community so i'm passionate about you know seeing the personal improvement in this community and we believe that this is just one of many tools in the toolbox to address the housing need.

Also, that's excellent, but also what was paramount is We're putting up reserves for repairs, so it won't go on the homeowner in the future.

Yeah, so, yes, I can speak to that. So, you know, we're working out a lot of the details. Yeah, so we're working out the finer points of the back end of the deal. But through collaboration with the Community Development Alliance, we are offering, we will be offering down payment assistance for the homes, and then we will be capitalizing some... Correct, in 15 years, but we also will be ensuring that those homes are not aged 15 if there's critical repairs that are necessary before we sell those homes to the new homeowners, and we're committed to making those investments in the properties. And these homes will sell for $100,000. In 15 years, they'll sell for $100,000? In 15 years.

That's one of the agreements. Additionally, it'll lack in a current price now for future value.

Brian mentioned what...

Yeah, I assume.

Correct. So what we have modeled is in the TID model, we assumed assessed value of $130,000, right? So we're underwriting the $30,000 as our contribution to the eventual homeowner. So their cost is $100,000. Right. We also are looking at, in addition to that, some down payment assistance so that they avoid PMI to make it even more affordable to the homeowner. So these homes will be less expensive than any of the other homes that have historically been developed, if you just go look at just appraisals. The average appraisal in recent times, and Brian, you can speak better to this, but I think your appraisals have been between $150,000 and $180,000 for the Habitat homes. Our homes will be significantly less, and that's today's money compared to in 15, 16, 17 years out. We're still committed to selling these for $100,000.

And one last thing, Mike. The first right of refusal will be to the homeowner, to the renter, to the homeowner.

Yeah, we cannot sell these units. One, we cannot and we will not displace residents. That's number one. And in order for us to remove the restrictions that we have from WIDA associated with the tax credit financing, we must sell the units.

to a tenant if it's a vacant unit then we can work with a non-profit to sell the unit to a qualified buyer but they still must meet the the income you know requirements to be able to purchase the the homes thank you to the city why didn't we insist on all owner occupied out of the gate we we're providing we can modulate the amount of the subsidy if additional funding was required i assume we could increase it why are we why are we in the business of developing rental properties at all They want to do rental properties in cooperation with WIDA, more power to them. That's their right. Private financing, separate track. But now we're in the business of subsidizing rental properties? I thought CDA was all about home ownership. This is not home ownership. Maybe in 15 years, yes. Not right away.

I understand your concerns. One thing that I want to share, we definitely tried to make a big effort to listen to the residents. Starting in 2019, led by Amman United and Dominican Center, and the city came together and put together the Fond du Lac and North Plan, which the Common Council adopted. With regard to housing, that specifically says that the residents asked for two things, home ownership opportunities and higher quality rentals. So this brings both, and then ultimately after 15 years, not our rule, but the WIDA tax credit is a substantial amount of money that will help build these homes here in Milwaukee rather than another part of the state. that will be home ownership later. And there's also an aspect of offering a menu of options to the residents of Amani. Not all of them are ready for home ownership right now. Some would just prefer to be in a higher quality new rental at maybe a lower price than what they're paying for rent in a dilapidated, neglect the landlord unit now. And we also have a few other different options including from Ezekiel Hope, I know Jim is here, and Milwaukee Community Crossroads. So it's about a menu of options for the residents as well as developing something, Council President Perez mentioned in an earlier item, the capacity for some of the emerging developers or I would think in terms of MM Group emerged

at this point so that there's really options both in terms of the builders and what's available to residents with this initiative okay i get your explanation what's the city's explanation yeah i guess i guess the uh the two-fold one uh the vast majority of the tid efforts that we do are for rental um right so in terms of in terms of our overall tid portfolio the majority of the units that are being delivered are rental properties And then the second part is, you know, I think this is the team that came to us with the application. Certainly if a different team comes to us with similar opportunities for direct home ownership, if their capacity is out there from the development community, we would absolutely entertain that application.

That doesn't sound like a very good answer. What's our priorities? So we just hand out money, any team that comes to us, no matter what the plan is?

So programmatically, our priorities, we do prioritize homeownership overall, right, for all of our programs citywide. When it comes to TID, we are, right, we are reacting in many cases to a developer that comes to us with a proposal. And many... of those developers are coming to us with rental property, right? So the vast majority of the TIDs that you see in front of you are supporting rental units.

Mr.

Chair?

So just for clarity, you're normally coming with a TID for an apartment building.

Yes.

A multi-unit apartment building. Even if there was no habitat attached to this and it was just the MM stuff and he was coming with these homes for rental, your point is the majority of our TIDs go to rental anyway because we're usually doing apartment buildings. It's just in this case, the goal is to sell for home ownership after the 15 years. In this case, these are single family homes. The point is Most of the TIDs that we see are for rentals. It's just that they're usually multi-unit apartment buildings. Is that the point you're trying to make?

That's absolutely right.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. I would add, too, two years ago, so in the first background TID, the MM group was also part of that with Habitat, and the 20 units that they delivered were similar, right? LIHTC for future ownership. So we've done this before, even in the three examples of the backbone TID. The first example had a similar structure. But yes, Alderman Cox, absolutely. Our bigger portfolio for TID is affordable rental.

And Mr. Chair, I will say... I've had some of these in my district. And not too different from you, Mr. Chair. At first, I didn't like the 15-year thing. And so I pushed it out of some areas and made them pick lots in other places and all of that. But what I learned over time and watching sales and watching and talking to residents and all of that, I had to go back. In one case to Habitat and in other cases to other developers and be like, okay, now you can't come over here. Because when I start watching just private sales and the skyrocketing of the values and the concern that so many residents had about gentrification that caused displacement. I welcomed the 15-year thing because at least it allowed an opportunity for residents who may not be able to afford purchasing a home in this moment to stay in the neighborhood and it balanced out some blocks that had we not allowed for that. may have ended up pushing out those residents to help build those neighborhoods. So it's like I literally had to sit down with DCD and look at maps and look at neighborhoods and stuff to really think about how a combination of things, Habitat, the 15-year thing, and just what was happening with private sales could help balance a neighborhood. And without it, we would have had a lot more gentrification causing displacement had we not done it. The amendment group was not the developer of the ones in my district, but still the same concept. So I think, I don't know, you know, I get what you're asking, Mr. Chair, and that's for DCD to answer, but I will say as a person who didn't like it at first either, I began to see the value of it with trying to accommodate the mixture of residents and whatever their economic situation was at the moment and helping to keep the balance and the character of the neighborhood.

Okay, sounds good. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, I'll make a comment. I think for me what's confusing about the 15 years is, and maybe there's some lessons learned. I remember when the city had a kind of rent to own or lease to own program, my recollection is it didn't go well. So what lessons could we learn from that? And even though they're different projects and we mostly inherited these properties as is and we didn't want the renters to leave, that we could make that option available for them. So for me, that didn't work out well when the city ran it. I wanna make sure that we're doing that. And then if the goal is renters into home buyer, then maybe we should ramp up even the multi-unit of you know affordable housing how are we tracking that that is a stepping stone to home ownership to you know increase revenue that that we're we're keeping track of that or is it that um with the low-income housing tax credit it we don't see the movement the upward movement that i think people expect from that being an opportunity to to move into home ownership

Yeah, so on the first part, and I don't fully remember all the details of the city version of the lease to own, other than I believe there were units that were probably in fairly rough shape. I think the positive piece here is these are going to be new construction. And as Michael had mentioned, uh ramping up on the back end of uh a reserve uh with a down payment component um so i think some of the lessons learned would be how to transition from that 15th to that 16th year to set that current occupant up for successful home ownership i think lessons learned on the front end of the city program and again i don't recall the details but i think those are going to be Existing units that we had to put a lot of money into and as the city on them we had additional requirements for hiring And the costs were pretty high.

Yeah. No, I look I went through a home buying program right out of college and I think most people think you can walk in take a class You'll be certified be ready to buy a home not understand what it takes. There's a huge transition I also think there's a challenge between someone being in a home for five or eight years and then finally saying, hey, I'm ready by now. I want to purchase it. I don't want to wait for the 15 or there's just, there'll be a time where there's some tension about that and I think we should be ready for it.

I have a question or statement. Am I allowed to? I raised my hand. No, I don't know. It wasn't acknowledged. My name is Helen Reynolds. I'm an Imani resident, 14 years.

on the way is it okay to continue speaking no we did there's no public there's no public hearing on this so no okay you're not right okay so my issue with go ahead okay this is not a public hearing this will pass don't worry about it everybody will support this okay so my issue or concern is also the 15 year um it's typically for a conventional mortgage you're paying for 30 years so if i'm renting for 15 years Thank you. Okay.

So thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to thank the Amani Group and everybody involved for getting this project, what you call an underserved community. Wow. I was over there during, I think, Election Day, I still have curves over there that are brick. I still have brick curves over there located on 24th Street, things like that. Terrible infrastructure. So I just think this push and this uplifted in the area be able to foster other projects. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay, very good. Any other questions or comments?

Mr. Chair, hold on. Alderman Stamper. Rennie, what would you like to say?

So, Brittany Roberson, Dominican Center. First, I would like to say thank you, Alderman Bowman, and thank you, Alderman Bowman. You both made very valid points. I think as we've been going through this, right, I've been a part of this for the last year. This has been an ongoing thing for the last two years, right? So we have been learning a lot as we've been working through it. I do have to commend the team that has been putting this all together because It's been a lot. We have seen a lot of different iterations of what this was going to look like. Were any of us really excited about it being rental for 15 years? No. But it was better than the model they first started offering us where it was going to be condos and we were definitely like, no. We are at a place where we are understanding we do need a lot of different housing in our neighborhood. Now, to be fair, Amani Home Ownership Initiative may be a little bit of a force, right? Because really it is more of a housing initiative because we have those pieces about rental. Even for 15 years, we're looking at resident. First, we have a very transient neighborhood. So we consistently have people moving in and out of our neighborhood. And sometimes that's not by choice, right? That's by force because they can't afford to stay there. And so we are looking at ways to make sure that if people want to stay in our neighborhood, that they can. especially those who we know income is around $30,000 or less. Housing is always going to be a struggle for you, but we want you to be able to have decent housing. We want you to have quality, no matter where you're at in your walk, whether that's home ownership or rental. And so, again, I just commend my team. I thank you all for asking questions, and I thank you for seeing us today. I appreciate those comments.

Real quick, Brenda, would you like to see this move forward?

Yes, I think she does.

I think that... Hold on, man. I'll talk to her.

Yes.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions or comments? All right, Mr.

Chair. One comment. I have Crystal West, Housing and Economic and Development Chair for Amani, also long-term resident, a homeowner, free and clear, of well over 20 years and 49... I'm sorry. Can I just... We have very active residents in our neighborhood. Those two ladies who are on, who want to speak, are actually those who stay in the TID boundary and where this would be developed. They were unable to make it here in person today, but I would encourage you to talk to them if you have the time to. I'm not saying right now. I'm just saying.

Larry, real quick, can you go over some of the things that we discussed in the background as far as the equity part of the plan that we talked about?

Yeah, absolutely. So on the dollar side, so each tract is a little different, right? So the direct-to-home ownership, that's going to be funded through. So overall investment, $30 million for the 95 homes. The direct-to-ownership version, that's going to be funded by home sales proceeds, volunteer support, in-kind gifts, philanthropy, and TIF. and on the the light tech component the mm group component that's gonna be more of a traditional light tech deal that you've seen in front of you first mortgage light tech equity deferred developer fee philanthropy and TIF I do want to mention that on the philanthropy side Northwestern Mutual Foundation has committed three million dollars to this effort so want to definitely recognize As the team and the CDA is fundraising, that is a very large component of the philanthropic money that you're seeing in this capital stack. Up to a $3.57 million developer finance TIF. So the development team going through the CDA is able to get a 2.5% interest rate up to 25 years. And then on the human resource side, the MM group will have the requirements of the 40% RPP, 25% SPE, And then best efforts for Habitat, MCC, and Ezekiel of 40% RPP and 25% SPE. So those are the financial components. I'm happy to, if there are any other specific.

So listening to the residents and the mining group, one of the concerns was you build four new houses on my block and I've been living here for 20 years. What are you going to do for me? Or how can you help me out? Those are some of the products I want you to insure my people that we can have.

Yeah, so from the city side, we're absolutely happy and ready to connect with you on doing outreach for our existing programs. We do have a portfolio of rehab programs available citywide, and then I'm happy to turn it over to the development team to talk about other efforts more specific here to Imani.

You mean for the incumbent occupants?

Yes, exactly.

Well, when we did Lindsay Heights years ago of memory serves, there was a...

We had a bunch of tear left.

And it included new construction like this, but it included grant opportunities to existing homeowners. Yes. Now, of course, Lindsay Heights fell apart and became a huge underwater because of dramatic drop in real estate values during the Great Recession. So in the end result, it failed. But during the failing, I'm sure there was investments still made that are still in place today that are benefiting the city. Is that what we're doing here, that some of this money will be sprinkled around to the existing homeowners?

So a couple pieces. One, in the Lindsay, thank you, Chair, for bringing that up. In the Lindsay example, because we approached it as a square around the neighborhood, That is a major part of the reason why we saw as property values dropped, that TID was failing because of that. So the strategy around the backbone TID is to not simply just draw a box around the neighborhood, right? It is very specifically targeted at trying to draw the boundary around as many city owned vacant lots as possible. So you can go from a zero increment to the full increment when the house is built. What that does, though, is it does limit the number of existing owners that are in the TID. Now, there are still a lot because we can't just simply draw around the random lots. It has to be contiguous. So for the reason we saw some of the failure in other examples, the backbone TID is trying to solve that in numbers. the very complex boundary itself. Now that doesn't provide us the opportunity to have another fund because we are very targeted on how that boundary is drawn. Because it is developer financed and because we are going up to 25 years already, there is not really increment for another pool of funds for the TID. Now knowing this is coming up, knowing that this concern has been brought to the alderman's attention, We have talked as the development team about what other avenues aside from the specific boundary of the TID and the dollars from the increment of the TID can be accessed. As I mentioned, happy to continue to promote our programs, NIDC's programs with the aldermen in the neighborhood. But I do want to turn it over because I know the development team has additional information they do want to share on that topic.

So yeah, referenced earlier, Habitat's critical home repair program, which is, we fund through private philanthropy, so there are no city dollars that go into that program. We currently serve the Amani neighborhood and we'll continue to serve the neighborhood. And I would anticipate that we'll probably do even more projects because we'll have that presence of building in the neighborhood. People will see our signs. We'll be able to go door to door. We will work with community organizations, residents to make the program available. And so that's our commitment. You know, we have that program. We also partner with the city on a healthy homes program as well as NIPP. And that's another avenue for us to serve homeowners in the neighborhood. So that's something that we consider as part of our overall strategy, right? When we build homes, we want to also do repairs because we know that not everybody is, we have a lot of long-term homeowners, especially on fixed incomes. And that's about 80% of the families we serve are on fixed incomes and have already paid off their mortgage. They want to stay in the neighborhood.

So you're saying in this boundary group, building new houses, you'll be able, so these people will move up on a list or are they,

We'll do targeted marketing to homeowners in the Imani neighborhood. That's our commitment, and we'll offer that program. It can go up to $20,000 in scope, so we do a lot of roofs, we do a lot of porch repairs, a lot of accessibility of bathrooms for seniors. Very targeted, very successful program, and we'll continue to grow that.

Are you committed to any of the other calls for long-term neighbors, long-term residents?

We currently don't have a funding source allocated to us to address critical repairs in the neighborhood. but I'm committed to developing in the neighborhood. We, separate of the amendment group, we have our own construction management firm, which we will be building this project, so we're vertically integrated. So we look forward to partnering with Habitat for Humanity on some of these critical repair projects in the neighborhood. And I would just add, going back to President Perez's question about more looking at the back end of the deal, i didn't get into specifics but i think this is an important you know part two to address on the first midtown uh home ownership initiative we partner with milwaukee habitat for humanity on the front end on the construction but we also have a separate agreement with milwaukee type milwaukee habitat for humanity to partner with us to assist us with selling these units to qualify our tenants when we do approach that 15th year through their regular you know program that they already have established We're not trying to invent the wheel. They have serviced hundreds of families in the Milwaukee community. We have an outstanding relationship with Habitat for Humanity. And we're committed to extending that relationship on the Imani project to essentially replace our investment partner in the project with Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity to get these homes into the hands of these tenants and residents in the community as quick as possible.

Has the money, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, has the money ever applied to be a 10, a targeted investment neighborhood? Not from my understanding, no. It might be, and we could talk offline, but it might be something worth pursuing because I know through the 10, and Larry, correct me if I'm wrong, usually it's up to 10,000, I think, that homeowners can get for repairs and things of that nature. I would think a money could make a good case I sit on NIDC, too, on board as well. I think that can make a good case to become a team.

I appreciate that because I was just doing the math on the $20,000 because right now we have a critical repair program that's going. If we're talking roofs and porches, the highest we've seen because our housing stock is old and our homes are large. Our roofs are coming in at like $32,000, $34,000. That's expensive, yeah.

Yeah, but Mr. Chair, on that same program, when I got elected, we were offering $10,000 TIDs to the neighborhood, so the value came back, and we had a successful surplus, and many residents got $10,000 towards their homes. So it was possible for the TID to provide that funding.

If it was a contiguous problem, there's leapfrogs around the vacant lots.

if the value doesn't include the entire neighborhood but it's based on the value and the income is correct and let me speak to that thanks larry um uh if i may uh chair bauman uh lafayette crump commissioner of city development um mostly for the benefit i think all the alders understand this but so that it's very clear for those watching one of the specifics of this tit has been discussed is that it is committed to deep affordability and it's closing the gap on the construction costs via the TID, and what that means is that the TID is not producing necessarily the increment that might otherwise be created if the deep affordability was not committed to. This is a unique situation, like all of the backbone TIDs are, where there would not necessarily be those additional dollars available that has been done maybe in some other TIDs, but we're still committed to assisting existing residents through other programs that we have. Thankful to Habitat for the work that they're doing to provide other resources. Northwestern Mutual as well, helping with rehabs in the area. Sure.

Mr. Chair, so who's managing your RPP and SB?

It will likely be cross-management. We may end up doing it ourselves, though. Our last project, we exceeded both the SBE and RPP requirements and look forward to doing so on this one as well. Excellent. And then the management of the property management, are you doing that as well? Lutheran Social Services is our property manager. Okay.

All right. Real quick, Mr. Chair. Jim, it's good to see you. So you get a property.

I will be doing a property. You got to be up at the microphone.

Yeah, Jim, come on up real quick. I'm happy to see Jim got a property. Jim has been asking for years.

Well, is everybody in here that knows me? My big thing is putting people to work, getting them off the streets. My name is Jim Gaylord. I am the vice president of Ezekiel CDC and a lead trainer. I've been pushing at this stuff with the city for years and years to get affordable housing, decent affordable housing, because being a master electrician, I work in a lot of these houses in the Monty area, and I wouldn't put my dog in some of them. and i love what they're doing is getting some decent that's the only part about the rental that i do like now we've got decent rentals here okay and and the other part of the home ownership piece of my company stands for home ownership partnership and employment this is the partnership i'm doing employment anybody's welcome to come by our job sites and see them putting people to work they never thought they would be electricians carpeted dry water and so on and so forth One of the big things is putting people of that community to work on that community. I'm trying to target that house that we're working on right now to one of our workers that live rents three houses away.

I like your program because you use people from the community. I just wonder if there's any opportunity for some of his trainees to get some experience on electrical work during all of this development. I'll let you all work that out.

I love that, but you know I've been at it.

I'm happy for you and your house, man. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Okay, I think we've examined it pretty thoroughly. Alderman Jackson, moves I recommend adoption. Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. Thank you.

Congratulations. Thank you.

Moving on to item 10, file 260434. Substitute resolution approving a project plan and development agreement authorized expenditures in creating tax incremental district number 132 the Midtown Commons in the second aldermanic district sponsored by alderman chambers, I know all of the chambers is in support of this so let's Proceed expeditiously All right good

Good morning again, Larry Kilmer with the Department of City Development. So now we'll be looking at TID 132, which is Midtown Commons. I am joined by the development team, including a representative from Gorman and representatives from One Five Olive. I'll give them a moment to introduce themselves here in a few minutes and then go through the project and happy to answer any questions. So the general map for TID 132 Midtown Commons located here, so approximately 60th Street just north of Capitol Drive. zooming in on the parcel itself so in a single parcel here you can see 132 the boundary includes a large parking lot which is all part of the one parcel on the northern half which is shaded and then the former Walmart building to the to the southern half of the boundary The development itself for housing, so looking at, the development team is looking at purchasing the northern portion, the parking lot, and building two 100 unit buildings. Here you can see the footprint of each of those buildings with parking in between. These will be phased, but phased by a matter of months. So both have funding lined up, but in terms of construction timing, phase one is targeted to start later this summer. Phase two is targeted to start at the end of the year, early next year. Existing conditions, it's a parking lot. All right, so I'm gonna hand it over to Ted from Gorman and then to 1-5 Olive.

Is the next file connected to this?

Yes.

All right, we'll call that too. I thought it was. Yeah, that's item 11, file 260485, resolution approving a term sheet authorizing the City of Milwaukee to enter into a lease with AFS Milwaukee LLC for a portion of the property at 5825 West Hope Avenue in the Second Aldermanic District. All right, they're both before us.

Thank you. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, thanks, Larry. Ted Matcom, Wisconsin Market President for Gorman & Company. This opportunity was presented to us by the owner of the Walmart, who you probably all know. from many public hearings regarding the adaptive reuse of that facility. The lease is coming up which will address that as well. Our portion was the northern parking lot where what I've always thought in living in and around Glendale when I saw Bayshore Mall and what Bayshore Mall did to try to revitalize that mall is to put apartments and people butts in the seats in terms of using that mall. If you've been in that mall recently, what they did there, which was very interesting, I thought, geez, what are they doing there when they first did it? And the actual effect and consequence of that development has changed that mall dramatically in terms of the traffic. And we thought this would be a good opportunity here with a 10 acre sea of asphalt to try to redevelop this into a kind of residential campus with the Walmart having city uses complimentary across Hope Avenue, which is right south of our parcel there. and having kind of a comprehensive redevelopment of the Walmart parcel to benefit them all. We've got Children's Hospital there. We've got a lot of, we've got a great family grocer there. We have a lot of restaurants and things there that could benefit from this, and the residents could benefit from that. So we thought it was a perfect fit in terms of how to adaptively reuse the parking lot. So that's kind of where the background came from.

David Griggs, one half of One Five Olive. Greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here with you all today. We've been doing a lot of projects in the city of Milwaukee, a lot of tax foreclosures, single family homes, duplexes, small commercial projects. But we really see this as an opportunity for us to grow and the opportunity that through the QAP that we'd had to incentivize larger developers such as Gorman to work with smaller developers such as us to give us the opportunity to really learn about the process of doing a larger development. And just the risk associated with doing this work can be incredibly high. and the barriers to entry also incredibly high as well. So we're just thinking about these type of opportunities to just be able to have a seat at the table is extremely important to us and wanna take advantage of every time that we have that opportunity to do so.

Greg Davis, other half of One Five Olive, second everything that Dave said. Again, we've done partnerships with Gorman on projects outside the city of Milwaukee. We grew up in Rufus King neighborhood. Again, our company name is One Five Olive, growing up on 15th and Olive. So being able to put forth affordable housing in communities that we grew up in that we work intimately with was something that we just couldn't pass up. We're really, really excited of how this project has transformed and excited to get started.

Who owns this parking lot at present?

The Walmart owner.

And you'll be acquiring it? Correct. Okay. At a rate that doesn't involve This has happened before where the city puts in a TIF. It's a dollar. The price goes up a dollar. Thank you. Yeah. All right.

Just wanted to make it clear. Real quick, Ted, I'm interested in how this would compare to the 20th VLIT project, because you completely turned that one around. Oh, okay. As far as difficulty.

What's the difference between the two? Yeah, how would you?

The VLIT here, by far, I would assume. Well, it's the VLIT one.

Yeah, the VLIT one, of course, was historic. This one's new build. Okay. But both of those are predominantly three- and two-bedroom. to service the families so both similar in size is going to be similar in size in terms of the units yes wow well the historic one always is a little a lot more square footage we have to deal with because we have lofted units there so it's probably apples and oranges in terms of the configuration of the units but these are pretty large three bedroom units and two bedroom units per weed of standards you know gotcha do we have the rents do

for these units yet?

Yeah, so on the screen right now, so I'm happy to give you the dollars, but the actual AMI bands are on the screen. So new construction, 200 total units. Between the two phases, there's 40 one, two, and three bedroom units capped at 30% AMI. There's 88 units, one, two, and three bedroom units capped at 50% AMI. And then 72 units, one, two, and three bedrooms capped at 80% AMI.

It's a very complicated question because it depends on your income in terms of the rent. So we have 20 in each unit that are 30% AMI, which will be a really good affordable rent there for those incomes. That's good.

And then the estimated completion. Oh, sorry.

No, go ahead. I was just telling him I'm good, but go ahead.

Estimated completion is spring of 28 for phase one and fall of 28 for phase two. The financing package, so together, just over a $61 million investment. The sources are first mortgage, LIHTC equity, federal home loan bank funds, deferred developer fee, Rackham revolving loan funds, sponsor equity, and the TIF that you're considering today. The TIF is for up to $3.95 million. It's developer financed up to 20 years with an interest rate of 5.85%. And then it will require 40% RPP and 25% SVE. The development is consistent with both the housing element and the Westside area plan. Sure. And with that, we're happy to take any additional questions.

Very good. Any other questions?

Real quick. Greg, Dave, have you all ever done work with RPP before? Or is it your first time?

This will be the first time for us.

Very good, good.

Who are you going to use, Ted? We have not signed an agreement, but we're interviewing both Carla Cross and Randy. Gotcha. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay, Alderman Stanford, who's the recommended option? Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you. The lease file, who's the tenant and who's the landlord here?

uh good morning dave misky dcd and as a follow-up to the previous item just to give you a little more background so the walmart building and the property itself 10 acres would be sold of the parking lot for the previous item the building itself as you followed probably with your colleague alderman mark chambers and seeing the self storage component that was approved by cpc a week or two ago What we've negotiated for the past year or so is to have a municipal use along the northern portion, northern third of the former Walmart building. So the Walmart building is about 160,000 feet. About 50,000 then would be leased to the city of Milwaukee. So we would be the tenant. The landlord would still be the owner of the property currently. It would be for $1 for a 30-year term. We can use it for any number of municipal needs or government uses. Certainly the Capitol Drive Library is a consideration as are a number of other functions. We're working closely with Public Works and their facilities management team to determine what the best uses are. One of the things that is happening currently is looking at the assessment or assessing the property itself, the building conditions. So DPW has hired a contracting firm to look at the roof conditions, the utilities, things of that nature that would have to be separated out. We view this similarly to the condos that we've done with the library system over the past 10 years or so. So the term sheet is in the file. I'd be happy to answer any additional questions.

How do we add this lease if it turns out there needs to be $200,000 worth of roof work?

Yeah, that's a great question. So today what you'd be approving is the opportunity for us to sign a lease option. And so during this due diligence period, if we make the determination, Chair Baumann, we could back out at that point.

Got it. Okay, that's more reassuring. All right, well, Alderman Stamper moves the recommendation.

Real quick, Dave, any word on the lows? On the low, so it's currently owned by Phoenix Investors. They lease it to Sellers Absorbance. So it's a company that's invested tremendous amount of resources and money up in the northwest side over the last 20 years. So they lease it from them. It's used as kind of a distribution center. They have several employees, but it's mostly warehousing and distribution. Does it affect this project any? Yeah, you know, I think it does not. I think with the combination of the housing piece that you just heard and then the activation of the northern third of the Walmart space, I think that'll prove to be very useful and activate the mall itself. But yeah, no, it doesn't seem to be any...

to any research on pick and save and if they're staying? We have inquired about that. They haven't really given us a good answer, yes or no. I hope they stay or we figure out something there because that would be a huge loss.

Commissioner, you spoke with them? Mr.

Chair.

No, okay. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Is that all of Mr. Chambers? Yeah, all of Mr. Chambers, you're on. Go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair, committee members. To answer Alderman Stanford's direct question, I've been in conversation with Kroger. They are excited about this project pending approval, which I think I did. Thank you for that. But there's some other changes that I have asked of Kroger as far as getting some more updates. I know they recently remodeled that location. It doesn't really look like it. So there'll be more conversations to be had with Kroger, but I do not foresee them leaving anytime soon. I think they renewed their lease for another 15 to 20 years in 2014. So I guess, To answer your question, I don't see them leaving, but anything could happen. I do think that this addition will give them ample reasons to stay, but I just want to thank y'all for having the opportunity of speaking on this, and this has been a long time coming, this project, and thank you for moving it forward.

Okay, very good. Excellent. So all in favor of the recommended adoption? Hearing no objections, so ordered. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we will jump ahead. So retrieve Alderwoman Dimitrievich who stepped out. We'll take her item. Oh, speak of the devil. She's in the back room. Item 17, file 251924, substitute ordinance relating to a temporary pause in the establishment and development of data centers sponsored by Alderwoman Dimitrievich, Alderman Brower, Alderman Stamper, and myself. Yes. All right. Got a big crowd here to tell us why it is we can't do anything, OK? Wait a minute.

Let's do this by. I'm not trying to hear that.

All right, who wants to take the laboring order?

Hold on, I'm just paging through my, I'm going to cut down my 30-minute speech here. Hold on one second. Okay. All right, may I? Okay. Thank you. Good morning, colleagues. I wanted to first of all start by thanking Chairman Bob Bauman, who has been very understanding and patient as this entire process has just been long and ever changing. And if it feels confusing, that's because it is. So we'll get to that. But I just truly thank you for allowing us on the agenda and allowing just a few speakers to speak. I'd also like to thank the co-sponsors who have been on this item since it was a regulatory piece, which I'll mention. Now we're on a moratorium, or my preferred language is pause. And I just thank you for being there. Really the first person was, of course, Alderman Russell Stamper. Yes, sir. Suhu was right there. And if you haven't caught it, we also had an editorial piece that we co-authored talking about this issue.

Thank you.

Last but definitely not least, I have to thank Dave Galtine here to my right, who we've now spent, I don't even want to count, hours and hours and hours and hours. He has become, this is a testament to our Legislative Reference Bureau and policymaking, an expert, smarter than AI. Just a little joke there. Okay. This is working, right? Okay. No, but seriously, become a local expert and has helped me learn a lot through this process. And it's not often that we get to really thank our Legislative Reference Bureau. When you have an idea and you have to keep changing it, we're on many versions. So, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, I will actually keep it pretty brief here because... We're at kind of a crossroads in the pause. We're pausing the pause a bit. But many of you I reached out to months ago, months ago, because I was absolutely committed to trying to find a true regulatory path to data centers. And when you look around the nation, the kind of easiest way was to do a moratorium. I said, okay, I'm open to that, but I knew that you couldn't do a moratorium forever and that we'd eventually have to roll up our sleeves and take a hard look to regulating this new technology and economic trend, really. Well, the reason that many have chosen the moratorium path is because it is incredibly complicated. It should not be easy to mess with the zoning code. I've had to learn that pretty much the hard way. It takes time and ZTC and CPC, every acronym we could think of, and you'll hear a little bit from the city attorney how we have to keep noticing it and going back. And so, you know, I'm not frustrated with that, but I wanna make sure I let you know why we're here. So what I've chosen along the way is really a simultaneous path. The regulatory part of this, it's kind of known as Substitute B right now, and it's living within still is under legal review. We're not necessarily noticed for it here today, but I just wanted to let you know that that's still going forward. But because that's taking more time as it should, right, as it should, I have introduced the pause in the moratorium. That is before us today. What I need you to know about the one year moratorium is that upon adoption by this body of the regulatory ordinance, then the moratorium would be immediately rescinded. So just trying to understand that we're doing both, but the moratorium like many cities have done is in place until we figure out how to regulate it. The regulation like I mentioned is extremely difficult. We are not trying to stop innovation here or investment. What we're trying to do throughout this pause and then the legislation is to really center people. We've seen examples, like I said, throughout, really let's just look at the state and Mount Pleasant being one of the largest, Microsoft investing billions of dollars. This is where we also saw people literally being dragged out of public hearings. What happens in local government when the economy moves so quickly, and some of this may be hard for all of us to hear, but is that we're not at our best. We've had to catch up to corporations. This is the actual consistent theme here. Like the empire of Juul for vaping, right? Like short-term rentals. It's been incredibly difficult. Thank you to all the Roman Cogs who's led on that effort. And every step of the way is a legal... challenge as well as corporations trying to move quicker than we can regulate it, right? And that's how I feel the same way here. Madison has done one year, Dane has done I think 18 months, and the city of Minneapolis has also done a moratorium. As you know, data centers are not in our current zoning code. They're also not like anything else that we've really experienced. They're not your average office building or warehouse. And what makes them so unique, Mr. Chair, is their unique land use, power uses, energy uses, water, to those things that we have big question marks. We don't know. We don't know how it may impact any of those items that I've listed there. And we do need regulation before this rapid expansion. I think that if we're responsible and we don't just chase new technology, but we actually protect public interest, this is the way we can welcome innovation into Milwaukee. that actually fits in Milwaukee and not the other way around. So that is where we're at right now. I think that the one year moratorium and pause represents the time that we need to put in good, strong rules and policy and place people first. I've had so many talks along the way on the regulatory piece, and I've learned a lot. And again, it is my hope that we regulate it. But in the meantime, we must pause until we put people first and have the correct regulations in place. So again, like I said in the beginning, if you're confused, it's because it is confusing. But both items are hopefully set to go forward. I wanted the pause because I have experienced I'm able to say that it has been much more difficult to get these regulations, right and Legally acceptable.

So in the meantime, we should pause and make sure that we do it right and put the people first Just curious if the defect here is lack of notice Mm-hmm There is no issues with the actual legislation itself, assuming proper notice is given?

Yeah, good morning, Mr. Chair, Evan Goyke, City Attorney. We have a communication in the file and part of why we're here is to state essentially that. I'm not here to say that the body lacks the power to enact the file or to put the moratorium on. It's just how that a file like this proceeds through this body

The file is believed to be legal and enforceable. It's just not noticed properly for today or action next Friday.

Correct.

Then why don't we hold a special meeting in August?

Why? How so?

ACA Joseph Dobbs is with me today. It has not had a public hearing. The moratorium itself has not had a public hearing at CPC, and I don't believe that the proper notice has gone out in advance of today. I think we were behind a deadline that we could not meet given state law's notice requirements.

So for the moratorium, it would be... I understand why for the... the other legislation. So the moratorium itself will have to go before CBC? I just got that information.

I'm sorry, that's correct. This is because of or an issue that has become more apparent in recent case law. A number of court cases that include the Summit case which affected short-term rentals have shown that the Wisconsin courts are taking a broader view of zoning ordinances than maybe they did in previous years. So our opinion is that even though the moratorium might not look like a traditional zoning ordinance in that it's directly making the zoning code itself look different, it still has effects which are similar enough that it needs to have the same notice requirements that are imposed upon zoning ordinances by state law.

which is a class A, right, the 30 day? Class one.

But you're telling me that's debatable. There's one clear case on point and there's nothing in the ordinances or statutes that say that.

I believe the current case law strongly says that the moratorium is a zoning ordinance. I believe that most other municipalities that have tried to do moratoria or pauses like this have taken the same approach.

So they've done it to CPC first?

Yes.

I would like to see those cases up on the CPC next week.

Do they meet in August?

We do meet in August, but we wouldn't be able to make the class one notice because that that would need to be in time for the Z and D hearing for who hearing the Z and D hearing. So the, the path that we're scheduled for is that this would both pieces would move forward for the September 28th city plan commission meeting. And be noticed as such and then it could be dizzy and D by October 6th And then of course to Common Council by October 13th. You can't do any this in August We cannot because of the the noticing requirements for the moratorium.

What's the penalty for doing it now?

We would be breaking 66 1 0 0 2 of the state statutes, which is our development moratoria statute that we have to follow and

And that's based on your case law?

Courts have found that zoning ordinances are completely void if they fail these notice requirements.

And you're saying this is a zoning ordinance based on, there's no change, it's just stopping from building. There's no change in zoning or regulation.

Right, it doesn't change the zoning ordinance itself, but courts have held that a pervasive land use prohibition is a zoning ordinance. So because this is sort of downstream of where we normally look at zoning, it doesn't look like a zoning ordinance in quite the same way, but the effects are similar enough that courts have looked at that and said, it needs the extra notice requirement. It doesn't mean that we can't do it, it just has to have that extra public hearing.

So what action by a developer triggers their property right? filing of a application for occupancy permit, for a building permit, what actions trigger a property right which then becomes unalterable by subsequent zoning action? What action by a developer or property?

A developer who's filed a permit before the moratorium takes effect would have a vested right under the code and state law.

Got it, but what type of permit? Building permit, occupancy permit, what type of permit?

If they require a zoning permit, that would count. If it's an occupancy permit, I believe that would count as well in most cases. I would have to.

The concern is enterprising property owners seeing this on the horizon will rush in here, file speculative building permit applications to lock in their right to do what they please in what's now an environment where there's no regulation whatsoever to avoid being regulated down the road. That's a potential, right?

Potentially, yes. Those applications would still have to be complete and satisfy the rest of the code, so there might be other issues with their ability to get them together that fast.

May I just add, so from the many memos you received from Jim O on this, you saw that things changed even the last two weeks. In fact, I had spoken to colleagues two weeks ago mostly about Substitute B, which was the regulatory path. but now it is the opinion and I can let them opine of the city attorney that even the substitute B has to go back for a CPC hearing because it changed significantly from the first. And that is where at that point I was full of frustration and decided we need, it's gonna take longer on the regulatory piece so we need to move forward on the moratorium.

That's a fact question. That's not always true. We've changed files before that have gone through CPC and then have to go back to see who makes that judgment.

The regulations have not been to city plan commission yet. They've only gone through ZCTC, the zoning code technical committee. So we are now on the agenda and that will be noticed. That's a class two notice. So we're prepared to do the noticing for that in early September. And we're committed to working with the lead sponsor and other sponsors to continue advancing that.

because the concern I think is vertical data centers I mean we don't have there's nowhere in the city Milwaukee with enough empty land to support the thing like the thing they're building in Port Washington or correct and the proposed legislation is for much smaller square footage but you build a ten-story one that's a different story right

It could be, correct, depending on locations. We don't currently have formal inquiries for one right now. So we certainly want to get really strong regulations in place.

I think that's unlikely, but it's not impossible that people do speculative permit applications just to lock in their right...

There's reason to be concerned on industrial or former industrial. And these are the talks that I've had with my colleagues. And the whole idea is to get out in front of it. Often we're too slow and reactive, and this is to get out in front of it. So why I start off by thanking you, Mr. Chair, none of this is not shocking to me it was shocking to me a few weeks ago but i wanted to come to this committee and have at least a hearing and have the city attorney say it in open session the challenges we have because i don't want the public to think that we haven't been working on this urgent issue when really we have been and i've and we've been working very hard assuming we can muster the council during august there's no way to schedule this in august late august no way that that could be done the moratorium or the regulations or the moratorium

The moratorium, I don't believe so. I believe that's been explored fully by the city attorney's office. And this is the timeline at hand.

We have a memo from Dave that lays out the opportunity for everything. So it's just, yeah, it's a challenging timeframe, which is why I wanted to have this be at least the first step in the moratorium direction. Also wanna politely mention, I know we have other co-sponsors here, but there is just, you know, you had committed to two or three members of the public that wanted to speak.

Well, okay, I don't know what they wanna speak about, but that, because we're holding this, go ahead.

Okay. Well there's two online and then there's one from the American Lung Association. All right, just everybody wants to speak.

We're approaching the noon hour, there's still files. This is not gonna move forward so say your piece but say it quickly please.

i do want to be who's who's responsible for if a permit is applied for i'd like to be notified that would be the department of neighborhood services development center if anybody applies uh please let us yeah stay in very close touch because they've been collaborating on the regulations as well okay please

Hi, thank you for allowing my testimony today. My name is Molly Collins. I'm the advocacy director for the American Lung Association here in Wisconsin. And one of our strategic imperatives is to champion clean air for all. And more demand for data centers is a very big concern here because we know that They have a huge demand for electricity, which should be being met with clean, renewable power to protect the health of our local families. And WE Energies has not committed to doing this, and they're not retiring the coal plants that have been slated to come offline in 2024. The Oak Creek methane gas plant is being expanded and similar projects are being developed around the state. Plus, many data centers use diesel generators for backup power onsite, subjecting local residents to cancer-causing particle pollution. All of this adds dangerous pollution into the air of surrounding communities. We have data that shows how this impacts our community specifically. The American Lung Association's State of the Air 2026 report revealed that several Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee, received failing grades for air quality. Obviously, the last few weeks have shown that that doesn't always come from our local pollution, but can come from wildfire smoke. But it's concerning because Wisconsin and Milwaukee specifically is regularly in the top five cities in the country for asthma prevalence, and we've been seeing the cumulative health impacts from Milwaukee's non-attainment status for the 2015 ozone rule, and we can't afford to exacerbate that. Thank you, next. Thank you, Molly.

Thank you. Either Melody or Samantha, go ahead.

You can go, Melody, unless you want to. This is going to be held, so just bear in mind, this is going to be held.

My apologies. Yeah, my name is Samantha Dukas. I'm an organizer with PSL Milwaukee. I was at the June CPC meeting where the small data research facility was purportedly destroyed. was purportedly on the agenda. I support this data center moratorium, as Alderman Dimitrievich also already mentioned. This is something that succeeded in both Dane County and the City of Madison. Sheboygan recently passed one, Door County is considering one. This is not unfamiliar to the state and to the country. And we've been working directly with Alderman Dimitrievich you know, creating the best possible legislation and taking our time to do so to actually protect the community. We've held a number of community meetings precisely around the data center issue where residents were very clear in demanding a moratorium. As such, I believe we have a de facto moratorium in Milwaukee. Should anybody try to propose building a data center, they will be met with so much undeniable and incontestable community pushback that that would immediately be rejected. I have no concerns about that because ultimately, you know, power comes from the people and we'd throw it down. We are only asking that, you know, the Common Council see that de facto moratorium and initiate an official moratorium. Should anything come in the time between now and when we actually get that moratorium on paper, there will be a de facto community moratorium on this because of the generalized opposition. I also want to echo the need for this to be citywide. It's not just affecting downtown high rise buildings, although that is a genuine concern. It is affecting the industrial buildings and old retail spaces that we've seen, which are not appropriate uses which a data center is not an appropriate use within. So this is something the community desperately wants, needs, and will fight for, regardless of what comes before the CPC in August or September, we will fight back against data centers. My apologies for going long.

Just so everybody watching understands, if a application is filed for a permitted use, it doesn't matter what the community says. a permitted use, they have the right to move forward. That's why we wanted to change the zoning code to make sure that opportunity didn't exist. Right now, it's wide open, correct?

It depends on the zoning.

We have to keep reiterating that if the goal is to not tell people. I'm not reiterating that. The people that are in this business are well aware of the process. You're making it, you're helping them.