The City of West Allis is working with Chicago-based real estate developer Baum Revision to give the unique former Kearney & Trecker factory building at 6771 W. National Ave. a renewed push.
After an RFP was issued in 2019, a couple of plans to convert the 1918 building into an events venue and food hall never materialized. West Allis also commissioned a set of theoretical plans for the site, that included uses such as apartments or condos, or a public market with office space above.
Baum is the developer that had pursued creation of a food hall and events space in the property in the past.
In the intervening years, the area around the building – called the Foundry District – has continued to grow with new retail, hospitality and residential developments cropping up, including Ope! Brewing next door.
While things may have seemed quiet from the outside, Shaun Mueller, of the West Allis Economic Development office, says it’s been anything but silent from his standpoint.
“There has actually been a lot going on,” he says. “The West Allis Community Development Authority still owns the property and the adjacent one and a half acres that would help support it with parking.
“We have a letter of intent with Baum to be the developer and that has allowed them to spend money.”
The idea is that the building will ultimately be added to the National Register of Historic Places, unlocking historic tax credits that will be key to the restoration.
“In order to do that,” Mueller explains, “upfront funds need to be spent to ensure the historic integrity of whatever you do, and you have to coordinate that with the National Park Service and the Wisconsin Historical Society.”
Part of that effort has been discussion of the building’s unique windows, which are a key feature. At the same time, the existing windows are old and extremely inefficient.
“They've taken the windows through for a single issue review to the National Park Service,” Mueller says, “because it's the biggest cost, the most important part, and they didn't want to recruit tenants without knowing that they could get the windows in line with what the National Park Service needed.”
That review alone took six months to a year.
The windows will be replaced but with energy efficient replacements that maintain the current look of the building.
Mueller estimates that Baum has, to date, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the project.
Mueller says the 45,620-square-foot building can be leased to a tenant seeking the entire space or just part of it, with a minimum size of 10,000 square feet.
A number of potential tenants have been through the building recently, says Mueller, who adds that there are some tenant incentives on the table.
“We've seen a combination of entertainment-type stuff, recreation, food-oriented (businesses) ... those are the users that we've seen (come through) lately,” he says.
Mueller added that in recent years Baum had letters of intent from two main event-venue users, but those deals did not progress.
“Things happen,” Mueller says, “and it just didn't come together in the end, but there's been a lot going on. We're excited to put it back out into the market and see what comes.”
The city is also willing to sell the building, which has 150 on-site parking stalls and the potential for expansion, and Mueller believes that if a buyer came forward that was willing to reimburse Baum for its investment in the property so far, the developer might consider such a deal.
Whoever ends up using the structure will be in a striking space that is a monument to the kind of industry upon which West Allis was built.
As I wrote in this 2021 story, Kearney & Trecker, which produced milling machinery, was founded in Milwaukee in 1898 by Theodore Trecker and E.J. Kearney and moved to West Allis three years later.
The factory building at 6771 W. National Ave. was built by the Gerlinger Electrical Steel Casting Company, but by 1932 it was Kearney & Trecker’s Plant #2.
Trecker died in 1955, and by then, his company – one of the largest machine tool companies in the world – employed 2,250 workers in a facility that covered 95 acres.
Kearney & Trecker merged with the Cross Company in 1979 to create Cross & Trecker, which was bought by Giddings & Lewis, Inc., in 1991.
The building was sold to Milwaukee Ductile Iron, who later sold it to a scrap company. The City of West Allis bought it from the scrapper.
Now, the city and developer have published a new sales brochure and are hoping to get something going again soon.
“We think it's a landmark for the area,” Mueller says, “and we're excited to see what comes next.”
You can see the sales brochure online 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.
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 be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
