Apartment Building Plans Proposed for Old Firehouse Lot Suspended

Developers suspended plans for a 52-feet high apartment building on Underwood Avenue after failing to reach a negotiation for tax incremental financing with the city.

Apartments that were once planned for the former Wauwatosa Fire Station No. 1 site on Underwood Avenue have been suspended by the developer, reported the Business Journal.  The proposal of a four story and 52-feet high apartment building adjacent to residential properties brought much outcry from residents who accused the developers, Sean Phelan of Phelan Development and Blair Williams of WiRED Properties, of trying to squeeze every dime of profit out of the project without regard to the character of the surroundings. The developer and the city were negotiating a potential tax incremental financing for the $7.5 million project but the city wasn't fond a TIF financing.  The 36-apartment building would have been the tallest building in the …

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Hawthorne Terrace Ends 'Elderly Only' Status

With amended land-use agreement, owners can rent units in former middle school building to anyone without age restriction.

The owners of Hawthorne Terrace apartments, once Hawthorne Middle School, have been given permission by the city to remove the limitation of renting to "elderly persons" only. A modification of the owners' land-use agreement opens the apartments to applicants of all ages. The Wauwatosa Community Development Authority granted the request Monday in a unanimous vote, and no further approvals from the city are required. Since 1985, when the agreement was first put in place to complete the redevelopment from school to senior apartments, with "pass-through" bonding assistance from what was then Wauwatosa Housing Authority, Hawthorne Terrace has been identified as an independent living center for older adults. Up to now, the owners, the Reilly-…

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Bartolotta Restaurant Group's Headquarters Moving to Milwaukee

An apartment development slated on the West Martin Drive site means the high-profile restaurant group will take its headquarters from Wauwatosa.

Bartolotta Restaurant Group will move its headquarters from Wauwatosa to downtown Milwaukee, according to a report from The Business Journal. Bartolotta's new home will be at 520 W. McKinley Ave., the vacant headquarters of the failed Palomar hotel and condominium project, according to the article. HSI Properties of Waukesha plans to develop The Enclave, a high-end apartment complex, at the current Bartolotta home at 6005 W. Martin Drive and an adjacent location, the long-idled former Western Metal foundry site. A second Wauwatosa business at the Bartolotta location, Valentine Coffee Roasters, hopes to stay in Wauwatosa. According to the Business Journal article, Bartolotta has 17 full-time employee and one part-time employee at the …

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Enclave Developer's Planned Expansion would Displace Two Tosa Businesses

Developer eyes two new sites, including a former foundry

With its first large-scale residential project nearly complete, the developer of The Enclave has its sights set on developing two other nearby properties just north of State Street -- the long-idled former Western Metal foundry site and Bartolotta Restaurant Group’s corporate headquarters, at 6005 W. Martin Drive. The Waukesha-based HSI Properties has accepted offers-to-purchase for both sites, although developing the Bartolotta site adjacent to the $25 million Enclave project would be the first to move forward, said HSI principal Brett Haney. HSI expects to submit plans for the 40-unit The Annex at Enclave within two months, Haney said. If the plans win city approval, construction could begin as early as this fall. The existing building …

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John T. Pokrandt

9:49 am on Thursday, June 14, 2012

Good news for Wauwatosa, especially the potential development of The Western site which has been sitting idle for so long. Further proof that Wauwatosa remains an attractive residential community.   more ›

Editor's Notebook

A Scrap of History Blows in on the March Wind

Wauwatosa was big in the news back in 1966, just as today, but some of the news we wouldn't cover, and some – such as outrage over a major economic development – probably wouldn't happen.

  Last Sunday, our family did something we wouldn't normally have done for about another month and a half: We cleaned out the flower beds, and broke a little sweat doing it. It was my son's job to first collect the trash that lodged with us over the season. He soon presented us with a scrap that caught his eye. It was a yellowed fragment of the front page of The Milwaukee Journal, dated Feb. 16, 1966. My first thought was, "How did this get loose from wherever it had been moored for the past 46 years?" That has to be a slightly interesting story – but it would be pure speculation. Then I started to read, and I realized that, wherever it had come from, I had been given some kind of gift from the time machine of the wind. On the front page …

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Demolition of Derse HQ to Begin This Week

Cleared site in State Street corridor will be home to a $25 million high-end apartment complex.

Demolition is set to begin this week to clear the former Derse Inc. headquarters site at 1234 N. 62nd St. and make way for a $25 million 152-unit high-end apartment complex. HSI Properties, developer for the project, paid Derse $2.48 million for the 3.7-acre site earlier this month. The site is just north of West State Street, on the south side of West Martin Drive, between North 60th and North 62nd streets. The project, called The Enclave, will feature two U-shaped, four-story buildings, said Brett Haney, a principal with the Waukesha-based HSI. Construction will begin in April, with the first building, at the corner of 62nd and Martin, to be completed by May 2012, and the second to follow in August 2012, he said. Haney said the Enclave …

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