It’s been more than three years since a group of excited local soccer fanatics and city leaders gathered on a vacant Downtown parcel for the unveiling of plans for a major development, the centerpiece of which would be an 8,000-seat soccer stadium – the home of a new professional soccer team.
It’s now clear that the timeline for that stadium and team, already pushed back once, will be delayed again, with a 2027 opening the best-case scenario.
Ground was supposed to be broken later in 2022, with the stadium set to open in spring 2024. Under the plans, Kacmarcik Enterprises and Bear Development would transform the long-neglected Downtown property into a new sports and entertainment area dubbed the Iron District. The anchor would be the soccer stadium, which would also serve as home to Marquette University’s men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse teams. Plans also called for a 3,500-seat concert venue.
The as yet unnamed team initially was scheduled to begin play in the United Soccer League in spring 2025. However, an organization called Milwaukee Pro Soccer announced in November 2023 that the team would instead begin play in 2026, a year later than initially planned.
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“As the highest level of pro soccer in the state of Wisconsin, we know we only have one opening day, and we want to make sure we get that product, that fan experience, and our facilities right,” Milwaukee Pro Soccer Chief Operating Officer Conor Caloia said at the time. “The stadium and experience we will bring will be worth the wait. We’re excited for a successful kickoff season in 2026.”
Now, with no signs that stadium construction will begin any time soon, and a stated time frame of at least 14 months to complete the project, that goal is almost certainly unattainable.
Today, the land on which the soccer stadium is to be built remains in the same state as it stood in early 2022, without a single shovel of dirt moved. There’s no activity on the site and no signage announcing the coming of the new development on the property, which sits along a well-traveled entrance to Downtown’s Westown section.
The only work completed on the Iron District development to this point has been the construction of a 99-unit apartment development known as Michigan Street Commons on the west end of the site adjacent to Marquette’s campus. The $27.5 million affordable apartment development at 915 W. Michigan St. opened last August.
Although the soccer stadium is positioned as the centerpiece of the Iron District Development, other aspects include the concert venue and a 140-room hotel, along with the now-completed apartment project, all of which were proposed as part of the overall development that had an initial cost estimate of $160 million.
So, what happened to the plans for the rest of this proposed game-changing development?
Few people are talking, but the lack of any activity at all on the proposed Iron District site tells the story of a long-stalled development.
“At this time, the Department of City Development does not have any updates to share,” DCD spokeswoman Madison Goldbeck said. “We recommend contacting the developer for additional inquiries.”
Those developers refused to return calls. Westown Association Executive Director Stacie Callies also said that she had no update to offer on the proposed project.
Soccer as the Centerpiece
Kacmarcik, based in Grafton, and Bear, based in Kenosha, purchased the 11-acre parcel from Marquette for the development, which has been promoted as a major boost to Westown. The site is essentially in the northeast corner of the Marquette Interchange, bordered by North Sixth Street to the east, North 10th Street to the west, and West Michigan Street to the north.
A portion of the site where Butch’s Old Casino Steak House, which closed in 2015, once stood is partially covered with waist-high weeds and other wild vegetation, as well as a small pile of rubble near where, in May 2022, a stage had been erected to celebrate the announcement of the coming stadium. A fenced section on another part of the site, where a Ramada Hotel once sat and near an extensively renovated building that is now home to Milwaukee Tool’s Downtown offices, is vacant except for a large mound of gravel.
Marquette Today, a university news site, reported that the school recently vacated the 525 Building, 525 N. Sixth St., ending Marquette’s longtime occupancy of the space. The building, adjacent to the former Ramada property, housed Department of Psychology faculty members. Marquette sold the building to Bear in 2022.
Kacmarcik Enterprises, led by Jim Kacmarcik, is comprised of a portfolio of businesses, including Kapco Metal Stamping, a Grafton manufacturing firm. Kacmarcik is also a minority owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and majority partner and governor of Forward Madison FC, which competes in USL League One, the third division of the United Soccer League system. The team plays its matches at Breese Stevens Field, a few blocks from the State Capitol in Madison.
S.R. Mills, CEO of Bear Development, told the Milwaukee Business Journal in December that the project’s timeline had been delayed primarily due to construction costs and financing but that an early spring 2025 groundbreaking was still in the works to complete the soccer stadium in time for the 2026 season.
That spring groundbreaking didn’t happen, and with the expected construction period of 14 to 16 months cited by Mills, it’s impossible that the stadium will be completed in time for the United Soccer League’s 2026 season, which kicks off in March and runs through October.
Inquiries seeking a comment from Mills and from Kacmarcik Enterprises went unanswered.
Tax Exemption Sought a Year Ago
An open records request with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s office resulted in few details on the status of the project but did reveal that the developers have sought a rarely used tax exemption for the Iron District.
In an Aug. 12, 2024, email to Milwaukee Department of City Development Director Lafayette Crump, Bruce Keyes, a Foley & Lardner attorney who is assisting Bear in the Iron District project, stated that the development was “at a stage where it makes sense to get DCD caught up.” Keyes also wrote that he planned to request a meeting with Nicole Larsen, the city’s commissioner of assessments.
“The purpose of meeting with DCD is to provide an update on the site layout and design,” Keyes wrote. “Normally, there might be a discussion of TIF (tax increment financing) potential, but we expect the state property tax exemption for professional sports and entertainment districts resolves any thought about TIF.”
Keyes cited a 1991 law creating a tax exemption for sports and entertainment districts. The exemption, Keyes claimed, is to “promote the presence of professional sports teams that participate in league competition on a multi-state basis.”
In essence, the law awards a tax exemption to all property connected to a stadium or arena that is home to a professional sports team, such as entertainment facilities, restaurants and parking lots, among other facilities.
Keyes writes that the exemption has previously come into play in the city of Milwaukee but notes that “it is not widely used.” It’s unclear what development Keyes was referencing.
“We want to meet with Commissioner Larsen’s office to make sure that there are no surprises in the scope of the exemption,” Keyes wrote.
The following day, Crump sent an email to Larsen stating: “I imagine there will be an appetite on the part of Bear to interpret this referenced statute as widely as possible.”
DCD declined to comment on the status of the exemption discussions in the 11 months since the meeting.
The Milwaukee Bucks pursued a similar strategy pertaining to Fiserv Forum, the Downtown arena that opened in 2018, and the surrounding Deer District. The Bucks arena project received significant state support, including property tax exemptions for Fiserv Forum and some of the surrounding sports and entertainment district.
Momentum Peters Out
For the Iron District, there’s no public evidence that the project is set to move forward any time soon.
With no new stadium at its disposal, Marquette’s soccer and lacrosse programs continue to play at the Valley Fields complex near Potawatomi Casino Hotel in the Menomonee Valley that features a 1,750-seat outdoor stadium and practice facility.
“Upon completion, our plan is to still compete in men’s and women’s soccer and lacrosse at the (Iron District) stadium,” said Scott Kuykendall, senior associate athletic director/communications at Marquette.
The project initially created considerable momentum. In October 2023, Milwaukee Pro Soccer announced that it had partnered with Cramer-Krasselt, a Milwaukee-based marketing agency, to create the future franchise’s brand identity.
That came after the community submitted more than 4,000 team name ideas and 200,000 total votes during a tournament-style competition that narrowed the list to 10 candidates: Milwaukee Tall Boys, Milwaukee Barons, Goodland, Milwaukee Brigade, Lake Effect, Fresh Coast, Milwaukee Iron, Cream City, 1846 Milwaukee and Milwaukee Industrial.
Gov. Tony Evers’ administration backed the project with the approval of $9.3 million in state support for the development and construction of the development, part of a $36 million package using federal American Rescue Plan Act funds. An Evers spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment about the status of that grant.
Milwaukee Pro Soccer is slated to join the USL Championship, the second-highest tier of professional soccer in the United States. The USL Championship is sanctioned by the U.S. Soccer Federation as the nation’s Division II professional league. The league consists of 24 clubs in metropolitan markets including Detroit, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Tulsa. The USL Championship website also lists additional “future” clubs, with Milwaukee among them.
USL Championship didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on the proposed Milwaukee franchise.
The Championship league is the pinnacle of the USL’s comprehensive structure, which includes three professional leagues, two pre-professional leagues, a developmental academy system and a nationally competitive youth network. The organization consists of more than 200 teams, from youth to professional, across the country.
Marquette’s original plan for the Iron District site, first mentioned in 2015, was for a $120 million sports complex that would have included a $40 million investment from what was then Aurora Health Care. Plans at the time called for an indoor track, lacrosse field and indoor golf area in what would have been Marquette’s largest-ever development.
But two years later Marquette, with Aurora’s commitment to the project in question, scrapped plans for the project and instead opted to build a sports performance center in the heart of campus. The $24 million Athletic and Human Performance Research Center opened in 2019.
Concert Venue in the Mix
When the Iron District project was first announced, it was expected that the proposed concert venue on the site would host national touring acts 80 to 100 nights per year and host more than 300 events annually.
The Pabst Theatre Group, which plans to run the planned concert venue at the site in conjunction with Anschutz Entertainment Group, also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
At nearly the same time the Iron District announcement was made, plans were also unveiled for a new Deer District concert destination on a portion of the property where the Bradley Center once stood. That project is part of a joint venture with the Milwaukee Bucks and Madison-based promoter and venue operator FPC Live.
The venue initially was to have two concert spaces, one with a capacity of up to 4,000 people and the second up to 800. Plans were later revised to scrap the smaller concert hall due to rising costs and raise the capacity of the larger venue to 4,500. That project, which had an initial cost of $50 million but has since been revised to $70 million, is expected to open late this year.
FPC Live, along with parent company Frank Productions and its partner, Live Nation, produce nearly 550 events annually in Wisconsin.
As part of the open records request, a document from earlier this year also shows that the Iron District has been targeted for another major project – a possible location for the new home of the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum.
