On December 6th, 2022, developer J. Jeffers & Co. presented to the South Milwaukee Common Council a new proposal for the Bucyrus campus at 1100 Milwaukee Ave. The proposal would change two of the buildings to contain 92 residential apartments, and the building (heritage building) on the east side of the property to remain commercial.

The developer is funded this project using low-income housing tax credits, ARAP credits (covid relief), affordable housing grants, WEDC, CDGB, TIF funding and a commercial loan.

This is a bad project:

1) Downtown South Milwaukee deserves better. 65% of households in Low Income housing make less then 30% of median area income, in South Milwaukee that is less than $18,300. Another 30% make less then 60% of the area’s median income. This project will not help revitalize the downtown area. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/Datasets/lihtc/2019-LIHTC-Tenant-Tables.pdf

2) Many of the units will be of low quality. They are facing a dark alley, and right against a commercial building. Who wants to live not seeing sunlight?

3) A majority of the funding is coming from taxpayers; the developers are taking on almost no risk. The previous Crawford project was going to take in 13 million dollars of money from the TIF area.

4) Low-income projects in moderate income areas can actually decease property values.

5) South Milwaukee has too many renters. A May 24th 2022 South Milwaukee planning commission report stated that South Milwaukee is below average in home ownership only 59% vs 67% for Wisconsin. Downtown already has 3 apartment projects: The flop house by the library, the new apartments by the post office, and 1016 Milwaukee Ave are all new apartments that will be for rent shortly.

Housing Plan Details

92 units will be split as follows:
33 – One Bedroom
40 – Two Bedroom
6 – Three Bedroom
13 – ‘Town House’ Three-bedroom ground floor Units (All income, and rent capped)
246 parking spots for renters.

Funding: Almost 100% taxpayer?

The current proposal is 52% taxpayer funded from the start. The total amount of the TIF was not known at this meeting. But the previous proposal asked for almost 13 million in TIF funding. That would mean that nearly 100% of this project would be funded by taxpayers.