If you like this article, read more about Milwaukee-area history and architecture in the hundreds of other similar articles in the Urban Spelunking series here.
There’s an old adage – urging persistence – that says the third time’s the charm. When it comes to the effort to landmark the 1965 Clark Building, 633 W. Wisconsin Ave. in Downtown Milwaukee, however, things have required even more perseverance.
According to developer Josh Jeffers, the 22-story office building has cleared a major hurdle toward getting added to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service.
The State Historic Preservation Office confirmed that the building received an approved Part 1 Historic Tax Credit application by SHPO and NPS, meaning the building was determined to be potentially eligible for listing on the National Register.
“Fourth time’s the charm,” Jeffers says optimistically, and adds that he intends to submit the National Register nomination for final approval in autumn.
“We tried three times before. You had done an article about this building and between the photos and some of the research you did – we used your article in our nomination. Our own consultant that we hired to do this said, ‘I haven't seen this. This is great. This is fantastic'."
While, as Jeffers points out, most people think that architectural integrity is the sole reason buildings are determined to be eligible to be added to the register, there are other reasons, too.
In the case of the Clark Building (so-called because it was long owned by Emory Clark of Clark Oil) and the Greyhound Station that was part of the complex, its consideration is due in large part to the historical significance of the station.
“We found that the Greyhound station played a pretty big role in Wisconsin's tourism industry because there were more than just Greyhound buses that used it,” Jeffers says. “The space almost acted like a port of entry for travel and tourism throughout the state of Wisconsin.”
Fortunately, inside the terminal much remains from the bus days, too.
“The Greyhound bus station does, in fact, have a tremendous amount of architectural integrity. It's virtually untouched by time,” Jeffers notes. “A lot of the original fit and finish is still there.”
Experience has taught Jeffers – who has done adaptive reuse projects in many historic buildings in Milwaukee and beyond – to be persistent about seeking landmark designation.
“If you take the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Building,” he says, “that's another good example. Sadly, the Journal Sentinel and/or (its New York-based owner) Gannett made a lot of modifications to that building. We tried nominating it a couple of times, and it wasn't getting approved.
"The reason was because we were submitting it under (the) architectural integrity (criteria) and the State of Wisconsin Historic Preservation Office – they're kind of the first group to review it – kept saying that there wasn't enough architectural integrity. If you then reapply from the perspective of preserving something else about the building, it can then get approved.”
What is historic?
Although many people don’t think of a modernist skyscraper as a building of historical significance, the National Park Service says anything around 50 years or older can be designated if it meets the right criteria.
If we persist in thinking that only buildings that are more than a century or so old are truly worthy of designation we risk losing important examples of more recent styles of architecture that may be just as important, but that we just haven’t come to appreciate in the same way quite yet.
“Unfortunately, when people think of a historic building, they tend to think of a Victorian era, 1800s building with gargoyles on it,” says Jeffers, who owns numerous landmarks from a variety of eras, notably Milwaukee’s Mitchell and Mackie Buildings.
“Those are gorgeous historic buildings, which should be preserved. But there are many eras of other architecture that should be preserved. I think even a lot of the development community is still stuck on thinking of even buildings from the 1940s or ‘50s as not being historic and should we just tear them down and rebuild.
“I think that now is a really good time to start thinking about more of the mid-century buildings as historic because, because there has been such a gigantic paradigm shift in the office sector where a lot, a lot of office buildings have become vacant or vacancies have increased a lot. So you've got a lot of landlords thinking about what they should do with their office building.”
The power of historic tax credits
If a building fits the criteria for designation, it could not only be saved, but restored or adapted to a new use. Listing on the National Register of Historic Places can often be the deciding factor in making such a project work in a historic building.
That’s because the project becomes eligible to use historic tax credits, as Jeffers hopes to do as part of his plan to convert the Clark Building from a 100 percent commercial office building to a largely residential property, with 248 studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments atop five floors of office space.
Historic tax credits are, Jeffers says, “absolutely make or break” for a project like his.
“The historic tax credits bring about $15 million of value to an about $80 million project. So that's almost 20% of our total financing is coming from tax credits, (which) are a subsidy.”
“That's very, very material to making the financial feasibility work,” Jeffers adds.
And a project like this is important to Downtown, where since the pandemic office vacancies have risen dramatically, putting the futures of more than one building in question. (Another Downtown structure has been added to the NRHP, despite not being even 50 years old yet, and is being converted to residential units.)
Why the residential conversion?
“When we bought the (Clark Building) in 2017, it was 89 percent leased and, and had a long history of solid occupancy,” Jeffers explains. “Historically, that building actually enjoyed a very high renewal probability. Tenant leases roll over and they just renew and that was kind of the norm for that property for decades. There were many, many law firms that had been in there for 40 or 50 years."
During the pandemic, Jeffers says, tenants kept paying their rent despite the fact that they weren’t using their offices.
“But what people sometimes don't realize is that a very significant portion of that property is the 450-car parking garage,” he says. “It's a 48,000-square-foot floor plate for that garage. An acre is 43,000 feet. So we've got five stories of an acre each of concrete for parking.
“When COVID first began and people weren't working in the building anymore, well, they're not parking in the garage and a lot of the investment value was in the garage. So that became problematic.”
As tenant leases began coming up for renewal in recent years, the automatic renewal tradition faltered.
“As leases started rolling in ‘21 and 2022, they just moved out,” Jeffers says, “and it was either they wanted to just permanently move to remote working, or we had some law firms where the partners decided this was a good time to retire, and we weren’t able to backfill the space.
“Then the real straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, is that Milwaukee County is our anchor tenant and their lease expires July 31, 2025. We were negotiating a renewal with them and I expected them to stay, until unexpectedly last fall, they told us they also wanted to move out of the building.”
That 89 percent occupancy rate of 2017 will plummet to 32 percent once the County offices are gone.
While Jeffers has found that there is still demand for newly constructed Class A office space in a building full of amenities, the 1965 concrete Clark Building does not fit that bill.
“We could have the best adaptive reuse in the world, but we're never really going to compete with new construction,” he says. “It's just two different things. So the decision was made to convert the building to apartments.”
The plan for the future
Above the lobby the plan calls for five floors of office space – “there are some tenants who do want to continue to stay there,” Jeffers says, “and I don’t want to kick anybody out; they've all been here a long time, and if we can accommodate them, and that's what we want to do” – and the remainder of the 22 floors would be apartments, with 17 units on each of the 12,000-square-foot floors.
“The building lays out so well for a multifamily conversion,” Jeffers says. “And that building does not have many other tall buildings around it, so really, once you get beyond the sixth or seventh floor, there are unimpeded 360-degree views of the Milwaukee skyline, Lake Michigan ... all the way around.”
The office floors have smaller footprints because the parking garage actually juts into the building on those levels, Jeffers says.
“It's actually very nice because you can park on, say, the fourth floor and then go straight into your office on the fourth floor, which is a nice amenity.”
Jeffers says he’s not yet finalized an architectural partner for the project, but is getting ready to moving forward.
“We are now gearing up to start the design process,” he says. “We have some high-level designs, but we have to put together the schematic and design and ultimately the construction documents, which will probably take the next six or seven months to pull together.
“We want to break ground in about 12 months, and then it should be about a 12-month construction process. We want to hit the 2027 summer leasing season.”
Jeffers believes that’s not too ambitious a goal.
“It's not as complicated an adaptive reuse as some of the others that we've done in the past,” he explains, “in part because the building is in great condition. The exterior is in good condition. There's not a lot of site work to speak of. The parking garage needs a little bit of TLC, but it's more cosmetic in nature.
“There are no significant structural issues or anything like that with the parking garage. Sixty years later, it's still operating on its original mechanical system. That's amazing. Unheard of.
“Every floor is poured concrete. You would not build a building like this today.”
Read more Urban Spelunking stories about Milwaukee’s history, architecture and urban landscape here.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
