It’s back to the drawing board for the city-led redevelopment of a prime piece of Downtown real estate. The city had selected Madison-based Neutral to redevelop the riverfront site of the Marcus Performing Arts Center parking structure, but it abandoned the plan for the massive project after construction on Neutral’s neighboring 31-story tower came to a screeching halt. Let’s sort this all out.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
What’s the Project?
The city has been looking to redevelop the 2.5-acre site of the Marcus Center’s 56-year-old parking structure, 1001 N. Water St., for some 20 years. Neutral’s proposal, selected by the Department of City Development in mid-2024, called for three buildings, including a 55-story tower that would have been the city’s (and the world’s) tallest hybrid mass timber building. The $700 million plan would have added as many as 750 residential units, 300 hotel rooms and 190,000 square feet of office space.
What’s This Other Project?
That would be another Neutral development called Edison, a 31-story building at 1005 N. Edison St. that’s to hold 378 high-end apartments upon completion. The $230 million project broke ground in June, but construction stopped in September with the foundation poured and some steel rebar in place. The general contractor, C.D. Smith Construction, halted work and in November took down its tower crane and filed a lien claiming it’s owed $10.1 million on the project. Neutral has called the stoppage a temporary pause to address a $25 million financing gap in the project as costs escalated due to tariffs and broader inflation.
What’s the Concern?
The city doesn’t have any stake in Edison, but Neutral’s struggles with that smaller, private project led some city officials to question whether the developer would be able to deliver on its lofty plan across the street. While Neutral insists Edison is simply paused, Ald. Robert Bauman declared the project “dead in the water” and has questioned Neutral’s track record – it has never developed anything on the scale of even Edison, let alone the project it pitched for the Marcus Center parking site. “Somebody selected a project with pretty pictures that was totally infeasible in the first place,” Bauman said in November.
What’s the City Doing About It?
As a result, the Department of City Development announced in November that it would seek a new developer to realize its goals of adding density and vibrancy to the Marcus Center site. DCD says it hopes to have a new developer under contract by late spring. Meanwhile, with redevelopment pushed back at least two years, the Marcus Center has asked the city for funds to maintain the parking structure. The arts center owns the ramp but the city owns the land under it.
