Blog Page

Milwaukee, WI – Wangard Partners, Inc. (WPI) has announced that Avenir Apartments in Downtown Milwaukee has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR® certification for superior energy performance. This is the second year that Avenir Apartments has earned the ENERGY STAR, reflecting a legacy of continued energy savings.

“Improving the energy efficiency of our nation’s buildings is critical to protecting our environment, “said Jean Lupinacci, Chief of the ENERGY STAR Commercial & Industrial Branch. “From the boiler room to the board room, organizations are leading the way by making their buildings more efficient and earning EPA’s ENERGY STAR certification.”

ENERGY STAR certified buildings and plants are verified to perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide, based on weather-normalized source energy use that takes into account occupancy, hours of operation, and other key metrics. ENERGY STAR is the only energy efficiency certification in the United States that is based on actual, verified energy performance.

“We’re honored to earn the ENERGY STAR for superior energy performance at Avenir Apartments and appreciate the efforts of everyone who has been involved in its efficient operation,” said Stu Wangard, CEO and Chairman of Wangard Partners. “Saving energy is just one of the ways we show our community we care, and that we’re committed to doing our part to protect the environment and public health, both today and for future generations.”

On average, ENERGY STAR certified buildings and plants use 35 percent less energy, cause 35 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and are less expensive to operate than their peers—all without sacrifices in performance or comfort.
To date, tens of thousands of buildings and plants across all fifty states have earned the ENERGY STAR. For more information about ENERGY STAR for Buildings and Plants, visit www.energystar.gov/buildings.

 

Wangard Partners, Inc., (Wangard) and Hunzinger Construction Company (Hunzinger) are breaking ground on a 200,000 SF, one-story industrial/distribution center building in the Village of Pleasant Prairie.

Wangard and Hunzinger have worked on many construction projects together. Wangard acquired land next to a parcel that Hunzinger already owned, to construct the new development. Lee & Associates brokered the land deal.

“We like the strength of the market from the Illinois border up to Milwaukee,” stated Stu Wangard, CEO and Chairman at Wangard Partners, Inc. “We identified Kenosha and Racine County as a growth market before Foxconn went public and we’re seeing users coming from outside of the market. Now that the Foxconn deal is finalized we expect to be able to meet the needs of many suppliers quickly. There’s tremendous need for housing and distribution in this area and we’ve had strong interest in both thus far.”

This new 200,000 SF, one-story facility will feature a precast and steel superstructure with 32-foot-high panels to allow maximum flexibility for manufacturing or long-term storage and distribution needs. It will be one the few buildings in the area to be LEED certified. The building is expected to be completed before the end of the year. “We recently completed construction of a major distribution center in the area and having built in the Lakeview Corporate Park before, I know that this new building will be filling a need in the quickly developing Wisconnvalley”, stated John Hunzinger, President and CEO of Hunzinger Construction Company. “Our joint venture teams one of the area’s most innovative developers with Hunzinger’s 111 years of building experience. Together, we are offering a much-needed premium building.”

Hunzinger served as the Construction Manager for the new 900,000 square foot Uline I6 Branch Distribution Facility located at 12355 Uline Way in Kenosha and constructed the Liberty Property Trust 240,000 square foot distribution warehouse facility in the Lakeview Industrial Park.

Hunzinger is serving as the Construction Manager for the 800,000-square foot Uline W5 Distribution Center in Kenosha which is currently in preconstruction.

THE AREA IS SEEING EXPLOSIVE GROWTH

In the last several years, the southeastern area along Interstate 94 has attracted over $1 billion of new development, another $10 billion of new development starts this week.

Such household names as Amazon have developed major facilities along the route.

U-Line, a major distributor of shipping materials, has constructed two major office buildings and numerous distribution facilities all in close proximity to the new development by Wangard and Hunzinger.

Haribo, the German company known for Gummy Bears, is building a $250 million food plant to expand its beachhead in the United States. Over 1,300 people will be employed in the new facility.

This week, FoxConn is breaking ground on a 22 million-square-foot flat-panel plant. The plant represents a major investment for the Taiwanese based company. Over 13,000 direct jobs are expected at the new $10 billion plant. The State of Wisconsin is investing $3 billion towards the plant and area infrastructure. Once completed, I-94 will be an eight-lane road between the Illinois-Wisconsin border and General Mitchell International Airport (MKE). Many of the improvements will be leading-edge and are designed to embrace technology only recently introduced to transportation.

Aurora Health Care and Advocate Healthcare recently completed a merger of two of the leading health systems in Illinois and Wisconsin. Immediately after the merger, they announced the planned construction of two additional facilities in the immediate area, a combined investment of over $500 million.

Both Wangard and Hunzinger have numerous initiatives ongoing in the area. Wangard, along with other partners, will be investing over $200 million into the corridor.

The Harbor District (Freshwater Plaza) will be getting a pan-Asian restaurant called Momo Mee, specializing in house-made dumplings and noodles, from the former chef of RuYi at the casino.

Tony Ho said he will make noodles fresh daily at his restaurant, at 110 E. Greenfield Ave. in Freshwater Plaza. Freshwater Plaza, an apartment-and-retail building, is at the northeast corner of Greenfield and National avenues, the gateway to the city’s new Harbor District.

He’ll also make dumplings such as Shanghai soup dumplings (xiao long bao); they’ll be served traditionally, with fresh ginger and black vinegar. (Momo are dumplings, mee are noodles.)

The full-service restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner daily, and it will have a bar serving house cocktails and sake, among other drinks.

Ho said he will make four or five kinds of noodles, including noodles for ramen and for Sichuan-style dandan.

Momo Mee won’t have a big menu, Ho said, but will include dishes not easily found in Milwaukee and will represent a variety of cuisines, Chinese, Korean and Japanese (including sushi) among them.

The restaurant will have dim sum dishes on the menu, including steamed buns with a variety of fillings such as pork belly, Korean spicy beef and spicy chicken, and Cantonese siu mai, the pork and shrimp dumplings.

Ho, a native of Hong Kong, was with Potawatomi Hotel & Casino for 10 years, most recently working as the chef of RuYi. He left the restaurant in January, he said.

“I just want to start my own business,” he said.

My Ong Vang, with whom he worked at RuYi, will be the general manager at Momo Mee, Ho said.

With the addition of Momo Mee, ONLY three retail spaces remain and are available for lease. Call Fred or Matt at Mid-America today to set-up a tour (414-390-1415 | fstalle@midamericagrp.com).

The restaurant will be at a corner of Freshwater Plaza; the space has floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the plaza’s fountain. Momo Mee is expected to have about 80 seats indoors; it also will have patio seating.

Ho expects the earliest the restaurant could open would be August. It’s awaiting approval for a liquor license, and the vacant space still must be outfitted for the restaurant.

Read the full article as recently published by Carol Deptolla of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Milwaukee Business Journal also featured an article under their Food & Lifestyle section.

The city is poised to update the design standards for Wangard Partners large Freshwater Plaza development in advance of the developer constructing a second mixed-use building containing up-to 76 housing units and 45,000-square-feet of commercial space.

The mixed-use complex is being developed at the northeast corner of S. 1st St. and E. Greenfield Ave. A Cermak Fresh Market grocery store and a mixed-use apartment building opened on the site last summer. An outlot building is under construction for Sherwin Williams along S. 1st St., which a second such building planned.

The revised building is intended to help the former forlorn E. Greenfield Ave. serve as a gateway to the emerging Harbor District, including the 46-acre Solvay Coke property that We Energies has begun site preparation on for a future redevelopment.

The revised design standards would allow the mixed-use building to move forward at a minimum height of 66-feet along E. Greenfield Ave. and 35-feet at the rear of the rear of the site.

The new building will have an unusual layout for Milwaukee. The site has soft soils necessitating the parking be placed above the first-floor commercial spaces. The building would have commercial tenants on the first floor, parking on the second and an estimated 76 apartments on the top three to four floors. The parking is intended to be shared by commercial tenants and residents. A green roof would be installed on the building’s roof.

A second significant water feature is envisioned along E. Greenfield Ave. in front of the building. It would parallel the first water feature that takes rainwater and cycles it through a series of manmade ponds. The feature, included at the city’s request, was designed by representatives from the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences.

The design standards are scheduled to go before the City Plan Commission on June 25th. The site, made up of a number of lots assembled from the former Grede Foundry is subject to a General Planned Development zoning package that dictates what can and cannot be built.

The base of the building is intended to include approximately 45,000 square feet of commercial space spread across four stalls. In February Wangard CEO Stewart Wangard told Urban Milwaukee that the firm was selecting a project architect from four different bids. The first apartment building was designed by Eppstein Uhen Architects.

First Apartment Building A Success
The first apartments built here, known as the Freshwater Plaza Apartments, are full and a wait list has formed for future tenants. Because the project was financed in part by federal New Market Tax Credits, Wangard must set aside 20 percent of the units at below market rates for moderate-income residents.

Wangard has had tremendous success in attracting retail tenants to the building’s first floor. The building’s tenants include Tribeca Gallery Cafe & Books, Great Clips, LyLy Nails & Spa, Jimmy John’s, Sprint and UPS.

Construction began on the complex in 2015.

Read the full article as recently published by Jeramey Jannene of Urban Milwaukee.

The third day of class on the Harvard University campus in 2005 stands out as a turning point for Stewart Wangard.

In that respect, Wangard is like countless other college students who learn something that permanently alters their career paths. The difference, though, is at that point, Wangard was 13 years into being the CEO and chairman of the Milwaukee-based company that bears his name and had established his place in Wisconsin’s real estate and development industry.

Wangard was attending a one-week, graduate-level course called “How to run a real estate company,” which was designed for company principals. On that third day, he said, he decided to tone down the brokerage side of his business and focus more on development.

“The opportunity was not only what we learned in class,” Wangard said, “but talking it over with other bright people who were in the real estate game.”

The decision marked a departure, in some ways, from a path he had followed since he was a teenager. His mother and father were real estate brokers with a small portfolio of investment properties. His father died when Wangard was 17.

As the oldest brother still at home, Wangard worked with the attorneys to deal with the estate.

“We negotiated to take back the properties one at a time, clean them up,” he said. “And then we liquidated them.”

By the time that was done, Wangard was 18 and got his real estate license. When he was 24, he joined The Boerke Co. and rose through the ranks to shareholder, officer and, at the age of 32 in 1992, CEO.

He credited that rise to strong mentors, good clients and an awareness of the market.

“As a young broker and leasing agent,” Wangard said, “I paid attention to what was happening around me.”

At the same time, though, his ascension to CEO put him in an administrative role, away from what had been his active involvement in business development.

“I wanted to get front and center,” Wangard said, “and work with clients again.”

With that goal in mind, he started Wangard Partners in 1992. But he also had a do-not-compete agreement for a year with Boerke, so Wangard worked with NorthMarq Capital and did asset management and other work outside of southeast Wisconsin, he said.

Over the years Wangard grew his firm, which is an accredited management organization, into one that manages property, invests alone and with others in developments, buys existing real estate and develops its own.

He said one of the best parts is watching a building go up.

“There are parts of this business that I don’t like doing but have to do,” Wangard said, “but there are other parts that are just a blast.”

His decision to focus on development, spurred by that Harvard class, has led him to spend more time with NAIOP, the commercial real estate development association, and with the mixed-use council, he said. Ultimately, Wangard said, his week on campus influenced him to adjust his perspective on the industry.

“We’ve gone from trying to do business in the today,” he said, “to trying to focus on where the industry is going.”

View the entire article as recently published by Chris Thompson of the Daily Reporter.

When a tiny Methodist church that once espoused temperance gets a $5 million resurrection as a brewery and taproom, it is enough to make some in Milwaukee take to the choir loft and belt out a hallelujah.

That is ostensibly what Mayor Tom Barrett will do Thursday as he offers up his annual exhortation on the power of design to lift the City of Milwaukee, otherwise known as the Mayor’s Design Awards.

The Pabst Milwaukee Brewery and Taproom, which marked a return of the brewery to Milwaukee last year, revived what in the 19th century was the First German Methodist Church, a modest-sized Cream City structure. Now, the storied structure has been given a new life with a bright white interior, intimate seating in the choir loft and a giant, neon “Pabst” sign that hangs overhead, casting a heavenly glow over those gathered to raise a glass.

The brewery, which is part of a larger, long-term redevelopment of the former Pabst brewery complex, now just called The Brewery, is one of 20 projects that Barrett will honor for enhancing public spaces, contributing to the fabric of neighborhoods or restoring or preserving existing treasures in the urban landscape.

Bader Rutter’s new home at 1433 North Water Street in Downtown Milwaukee was also one of the developments given the Design that Grabs You – Major Projects award.

Barrett will present the awards Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, 2131 E. Hartford Ave. A pre-reception is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.; the awards will be presented at 5:15 p.m. and a reception will follow at 6:15 p.m.

Read the full article as recently published by Mary Louise Schumacher of the Journal Sentinel.

Read the “Eyes on Milwaukee: 2018 Mayor’s Design Award Recipients” article as published by Jeramey Jannene of Urban Milwaukee. Another article recently published, “Inside the New Bader Rutter” is also found here.