City Wins $200,000 EPA Cleanup Grant: Developer Wants to Build Hotel, Condos on Downtown Site
Posted on: Saturday, 13 May 2006, 03:05 CDT
By Tom Daykin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
May 13--Milwaukee will receive a $200,000 federal grant to help fund the environmental cleanup of a downtown parcel, where a developer hopes to build a hotel and condominiums.
The grant, provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will be used by the city Redevelopment Authority to perform cleanup work on 2 acres at the southwest corner of W. Wisconsin Ave. and N. 4th St., the agency announced Friday.
The authority recently granted an option on the property, now a parking lot, to Ghazi Co. of Charlotte, N.C.
Ghazi wants to build a 32-story building on the site, with a hotel, condos and other uses. The option allows Ghazi to control the site for 60 days while it conducts a feasibility analysis and prepares its cost estimates for the project.
Ghazi would be the latest in a series of developers to attempt a project at the Wisconsin Ave. site.
The last attempt came in 2004, when an investors group led by John Hunzinger, a Brookfield construction company executive, was granted an option for the site.
Hunzinger, president of Hunzinger Construction Co., and his partners proposed a 255-room Sheraton hotel. But they dropped those plans last year after running into delays because of environmental contamination at the site.
The EPA is providing three other grants, totaling $1.4 million, to the Redevelopment Authority.
The authority will use a $1 million grant to continue its revolving loan fund that supports cleanup activities.
Most of that activity will be focused along the N. 30th St. industrial corridor, an area bordered roughly by N. 27th St., N. 35th St., W. Ruby Ave. and W. Brown St., and in the Menomonee Valley, which runs along the Menomonee River from Miller Park to the Milwaukee River.
The city has secured $1 million in grants annually for the past five years to use in its revolving loan fund, said Andrea Rowe Richards, Department of City Development spokeswoman.
The fund offers low-interest loans to developers for environmental cleanup work. Among those projects that have recently received such loans is the Stadium Business Park.
Low-interest loans for cleanup
The business park, a series of buildings housing distribution companies, was developed on the site of the former Ampco Metal Inc. foundry site, west of S. 38th St. between W. Mitchell and W. Burnham streets.
The authority also received a pair of $200,000 assessment grants, which are used to determine the extent of pollution, and to create cleanup plans, for various sites throughout Milwaukee.
"We have a tremendous track record in securing federal and state resources to help us remediate brownfields," said Mayor Tom Barrett, in a statement.
"This is what helps us put properties back in play and businesses back in neighborhoods that need them."
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Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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