Politics & Government
Rejected Apartment Plan Will Be Back, Revised, Alderman Predicts
Developer misread Tosa but will come again with a more appropriate site design, says Ald. Dennis McBride.
Wauwatosa is increasingly in the enviable postion to hold developers to the highest standards, says a Common Council representative on the city's Plan Commission.
And so, said Ald. Dennis McBride, a long-desired site development that the commission rejected this week will no doubt return to the table in an improved form.
The Plan Commission on Monday turned thumbs down on a proposal by Wangard Partners Inc. to build 126 apartment units on 9.4 acres between 66th and 62nd streets just north of State Street.
"They want to do something there, and we want it to go forward," McBride said Thursday. "But it needs to be appropriate to Wauwatosa, and what they were proposing was not. I believe in good urban design, and this was not what we were looking for."
After Monday's rejection, though, Wangard's staff "weren't angry" and stuck around to talk to him and Mayor Kathy Ehley who chairs the committee, about how to make the city happy.
McBride said he had met with a principal of Wangard the previous Friday and told him of numerous objections he would raise and that he would not support the proposal as designed.
That was met with some surprise, McBride said, but at least the firm was prepared to meet some push-back, and got more of it.
"I was gratified," McBride said, "that almost all the members of the Plan Commission raised the same objections I did."
McBride and the other commissioners' chief concerns were based around what they saw as a somewhat cookie-cutter approach: seven identical buildings arranged on a plain, with a house-like pitched-roof design, and little reflection on modern urbanity.
"That's an exurban design," McBride said, "not an urban design. It's appropriate to Muskego or Pewaukee, not Wauwatosa."
Looking to the future
Although Wangard called its unit design "luxury apartments," the amenities it was promoting – individual entrances and garages, apartments with a single-family home feel – McBride and others weren't feeling it."I don't think that the Gen X or Y or Millennials coming to Tosa are looking for that," McBride said. "They're looking for a modern urban environment; they don't want to feel suburban."
McBride said Wangard could have gone higher and denser – the city's comprehensive plan would allow for 100 more units than Wangard proposed – but the developer felt that people in third- and fourth-story units, if so built, would be put off by a view of the Grede Foundry immediately to the south.
"I said, 'But that foundry isn't going to be there forever,'" McBride said. "We're building for the future, for 50 years from now, not five years. They could go four stories over by 62nd Street and two stories by 66th if that's a concern."
City in a position to ask for excellence
Anyone who has followed the history of the site might be excused for a little surprise that the city would now reject any offer to develop it after about a decade of trying.Under an agreement with another developer, David Israel, the city paid for demolition of the former Western Steel factory that stood on about 6 acres and also paid for partial remediation of the contaminated plot left behind – almost begging for Israel to proceed.
But Israel took a lot of time developing his own plans and financing, and eventually the market meltdown of 2008 stalled his efforts all together. He was expected to come back to the city early this year with a proposal, but instead Wangard approached him.
In the long interim, Wauwatosa's fortunes and future have changed.
"Wangard started their presentation Monday talking about how desirable Wauwatosa has become, how everybody wants to be here," McBride said.
"When a developer says that to me, I know that, unlike some communities, we don't have to take whatever their offer is just to have something happen. We can ask for the best.
"I know they won't walk away because somebody else will walk in right behind them."
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