WAUKESHA – Fast forward to this likely future: Homes in a variety of styles spring up within a 76-acre area that for 60 years has been a place for college students on a campus associated with the University of Wisconsin.
Now, step back to today when the campus currently known as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha remains an institutional property, featuring buildings and facilities typically found at such places. Not at all residential in nature.
How the property at 1500 N. University Drive, currently owned by Waukesha County, will transition to the future is all part of a process that’s already underway, involving a planning strategy in which the city of Waukesha plays a large role. Here’s what it’s all about.
Why is UWM-Waukesha (formerly UW-Waukesha) facing redevelopment?
As previously reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it’s all part of the declining enrollment on what were once University of Wisconsin two-year colleges. Since 2018, these 14 campuses statewide became branch campuses under four-year programs, but that wasn’t enough to resolve financial concerns in the end for six of them.
UWM-Waukesha will close when the current semester ends in June, joining others that have already closed. City and county officials say neither government can afford to maintain a vacant campus.
What buildings does the property have now, and will they remain?
The UWM-Waukesha land was developed as a college campus in 1965 under a lease agreement with the Regents of the University of Wisconsin. As such, it has an administrative building, classroom and lab buildings and a field house — none of which fits into the now-documented long-term plans for the acreage at University Drive and Northview Road.
County officials have made it clear that all those buildings will be demolished once other thresholds toward redevelopment are met. Funding from a state law will help pay for the demolition costs.
How will the property be redeveloped, and what’s does “flexible” housing mean?
Some key steps have already been completed — most notably the decision by the Waukesha Common Council on Jan. 7 to redesignate the property from civic institutional (often involving schools) to mixed-use residential. The city’s Plan Commission, with input from planning officials, had earlier recommended the change.
The land designation means that a variety of housing, not all of the same type, could be built there. The city has used the term “flexible” housing, suggesting perhaps as a planned-unit development to orchestrate a unique layout of multi-family homes, side-by-side homes and single-family homes. Commercial development is not envisioned within the 76-acre area, with includes five undevelopable acres.
Within City Hall, including in some public meetings, the talk has involved providing homes for residents with household incomes exceeding $100,000, a category identified in a revised local housing study that has too short of a supply of choices. Other development projects, particularly for large apartment buildings, have also grown from that housing study for other income levels.
Hundreds of homes could be part of the campus redevelopment, officials have estimated.
Could the land be developed for other uses?
Other uses were considered, but park space was deemed unrealistic by city and county officials and commercial space wasn’t desirable given the ample commercial areas already nearby, such as along Grandview Avenue and Silvernail Road as well as Summit Avenue and Meadowbrook Road.
What’s the expected timeline in the redevelopment process?
Going forward, the city and county both have work to do before any development can begin.
According to Hillary Mintz, the public information officer for the County Executive’s Office, the county will work with the UW regents to terminate the lease, which otherwise runs through 2040, ending the property’s role as a higher education site.
Developers in the region were recently given a heads-up about the potentially availability of the land for redevelopment. So in February, the county will solicit a request for proposals — essentially, a chance for buyers to specify how exactly they envision redevelopment the land. Sometime in the spring, after a review of submitted proposals, the county would sign off on one of them and complete the sale.
That’s when the city’s role heightens. The buyer would have to work with local planning staff to get the proper zoning and authorizations, including a site plan, to move any development forward. The developer would set the timeline from there, with construction not expected to begin until 2026.
Contact reporter Jim Riccioli at james.riccioli@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Here’s what’s next in the redevelopment process at UWM-Waukesha campus