Groundbreaking is set for Wednesday for The Couture, a downtown Milwaukee development project that has been in the works since 2012.
“I’m very excited to push this project forward,” developer Rick Barrett told WTMJ’s Steve Scaffidi on Tuesday. “We’re excited to go vertical in downtown Milwaukee.”
The $188 million development on Milwaukee’s lakefront closed on a $104.7 million construction loan on April 30th, reports the Milwaukee Business Journal.
The Couture, at 909 E. Michigan St., will have about 320 apartments in a tower standing atop a broader base, right along Milwaukee’s lakefront. .
“Obviously the location is second to none in the state of Wisconsin,” Barrett said. “It will connect to the buildings that surround it.”
It’s been a longtime coming, but Barrett said things moved quickly once they took over site control of the property in August 2016.
“On average, it takes four years to put up a $50-million project,” he explained. “This was a $200-million project with a pandemic in between. I’m proud of everybody involved. The city, the county, the FDA, HUD, etc. We were able to get it done.”