Milwaukee plan to acquire, redevelop Boston Store at former Northridge Mall endorsed

The city's redevelopment plan for the former Northridge Mall Boston Store is proceeding after a Milwaukee Common Council committee granted a preliminary endorsement Tuesday.

The first step, unanimously approved by the Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee, is for the city to accept ownership of the 153,000-square-foot building, its parking lot and the mall's ring road.

The building is to be converted to light industrial space, with two similar buildings developed in the parking lot. All three buildings could total around 300,000 square feet, according to the Department of City Development.

Owner William Penzey is giving the properties to the city after dropping his plan to convert the entire former mall into a headquarters for his business, Penzeys Spices.  

His plan to move Penzeys Spices' operations from Wauwatosa and the Town of Brookfield to Northridge, on Milwaukee's far northwest side, was seen as a key to redeveloping the mall.

However, the plan was stalled when the dead mall's owner paid off its delinquent utility bill just days before Penzey was to acquire Northridge through a 2014 foreclosure auction. Penzey bought the separately owned Boston Store building in 2013 for $250,000.

Since then, other former retail buildings near the mall have been converted to light industrial use.

Meanwhile, the owner of the 900,000-square-foot mall, China-based Black Spruce Enterprise Group Inc., continues to pursue plans to create a trade mart.

That will likely never happen, said Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux, and it's time for the city to redevelop the former Boston Store and its parking lot.

"We're going to look at what we can do, given the assets that we have," Marcoux told zoning committee members.

City officials plan to begin marketing those properties to developers in early 2018.

Penzey has already removed retail furnishings from the former Boston Store. But the building will need upgraded heating, plumbing and electrical systems. The ring road will need upgrades to handle increased traffic.

Northridge's last remaining store shut its doors in 2003, with several nearby W. Brown Deer Road stores closing since then.

In other action, the committee approved:

• The future Milwaukee Bucks entertainment center's revised design, which includes reducing the size of its main building from four floors to two floors. Tenants for the delayed entertainment center, which is to be completed in spring of 2019, haven't yet been announced. 
• A plan to provide $575,000 in city funds for 704 Place, a 60-unit affordable apartment development that is to open in December 2018 at 704 W. National Ave., in the Walker's Point neighborhood. The funds would be provided to developers Impact Seven Inc. and Rule Enterprises LLC through the $12.6 million project's property taxes.

Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com, and followed on Twitter and Facebook.