A new residential development: Harlow & Hem
Or should it be called Bait & Switch?
This isn’t the name of a trendy restaurant, clothing store, or lifestyle brand but a new multi-family residential development being proposed for the corner of Wauwatosa Ave. and Blanchard St.
Harlow is Old English for “pile of rocks” or “hill,” and hem is the thing at the end of your pants. Put them together, and the Mandel Group, the developers responsible for the proposal, says it has something to do with “Building ourselves into the fabric of Tosa Village.”
Maybe. Some are doubtful.
The Common Council approved the preliminary plans for the Planned Unit Development (PUD) at their meeting on March 1st, and these plans include new multi-story apartment buildings and a single-story clubhouse across four lots at 7487 Harwood Avenue, 7463 Harwood Avenue, 1330 Wauwatosa Avenue, and 7470 Blanchard Street. Twenty percent of the studios, 1, 2, and 3-bedroom units will be below market-rate.
The term Planned Unit Development has to do with zoning. The lots in question are zoned as a C1 District with a maximum density that would limit the development to 67 units and a building height of 40 feet. However, the proposed development will actually have 130 units and building heights that go up to 70 feet.
What exactly got approved?
On February 22, 2022, the Community Affairs Committee recommended approval of an amendment to rezone the proposed area for greater density and height with a 5-2 vote (Nays: Alders Welch and Byrne).
On March 1, 2022, the Common Council adopted the ordinance amending the official zoning map for the City of Wauwatosa for higher density with an 11-3 vote (Nays: Alders Welch, Byrne, and O’Reilly).
Additionally, the Common Council passed a resolution approving the preliminary plans for Harlow & Hem with a number of contingencies, including final approval by the Design Review Board (DRB); submission of detailed cost estimates; “obtaining all necessary approvals, licenses, and permits;” and “filing application for Planned Unit Development final plans within 12 months of the date of preliminary plans approval.”
Some arguments for and against.
Alder Welch, from District 3, said, "I think we're dealing with a developer who has a history of going to communities and taking TIF funds and promising the world and doing a bait-and-switch and not living up to its promises." She also felt that it exceeded density limits and was not in accordance with the City Plan.
The week prior, during the Community Affairs meeting, she echoed similar concerns:
This is a developer who has a bit of a history of doing bait-and-switch in various communities including this one. So, we’re already seeing a project that’s evolving and changing beyond—and I have no confidence that this is even what will get built, but we can hope that it will come back smaller. And I think statements that it's in compliance with the Village Plan are wrong. In the Village Plan they talk about apartments, but they don’t talk about high density apartments. They talk about historic character of the village, preserving the unique character of the village. This is something that belongs in the Third Ward. It doesn’t belong in the Village of Wauwatosa. It doesn't conform with the Village Plan unless you choose to cherry pick words like ‘apartments’ and ‘commercial buildings.’ But this density is far beyond anything that was considered to be appropriate for the village or envisioned for the village.
And I’d like to just say it's a real shame, because we had a village area that truly was a historic village with a pedestrian friendly environment, and we seem to be intent on doing our best to destroy what we had naturally. To destroy what other cities wish they had, because somehow we're chasing some vision of the third ward or trying to be like downtown.
To which Alder Moldenhour responded:
As the developer stated […] yes this has evolved over a period of time. However, there are some dynamics here, both with the nature of this lot, the piecing together of—let me just couch it this way—to make this an economically viable project. Moreover, to meet some of the criteria that Emily and Mr. Martin shared with regard to the feedback that they were receiving. And that included both from the CDA as well as other stakeholders—this was what was deemed financially capable of meeting a number of those criteria.
[…]
I do take exception with the fact that we have historic buildings in this area. There’s nothing deemed historic on this property. There’s no historic relevance on this. None of the buildings here are historically relevant. It's a parking lot with some older buildings none of which are historically relevant. With regard to the city and keeping it Wauwatosa-like, with all due respect we’ve been on a continual—let’s just call it—re-development initiative in The Village that includes spending over 20 million dollars, I want to use the word, to bring it up to date. This is a step in the direction of continuing evolution.
Alder Byrne from District 6 said that while she has respect for the Mandel Group, she nevertheless felt that "we want density within the C1 parameters that we have accepted and set, and I think that if we’re looking for PUDs or changes in the zonings, the scale of the change is I think something that needs to be considered.”
Are the developer’s pulling a bait-and-switch?
One interesting aspect of any discussion about new development is that there is often skepticism, both by council members as well as members of the public, about the motivations and trustworthiness of developers. Developers—the people who build the big thing because they expect to earn a profit on the rent and income that is produced when the project is completed—will tell the public what it wants to hear and then find a way to shirk those commitments or in some way use public funds with the aim of making more money for themselves.
I do not know enough about the Mandel Group in particular to adjudicate whether Alderperson Welch’s or Alderperson Moldenhour’s opinions are closer to the truth. But I would point out that another concern, both nationwide and locally, is the price of housing, and that the more difficult it is to build, the more likely that such building will be undertaken by the same large organizations, because they are the ones with the expertise, experience, and the money to navigate a complex and long-lasting approval process. Similarly, the greater the costs involved in getting a project approved, the more incentive there is to build large developments in order to spread the relatively fixed cost of approval over a larger overall project. While it seems plausible that smaller projects will be easier to get approved, it is not clear that approval for a 93-unit residential project is 30% easier and less costly to get approved than a 130-unit residential project.
In the Community Affairs meeting on February 22, the developer briefly went over the timeline for this project. The City of Wauwatosa posted the RFP in March, 2020. The Community Development Authority (CDA) selected Mandel for some of the redevelopment in February, 2021. Following this, there was
a review meeting with City and Staff, meetings with disability groups, and meetings with neighboring businesses in April and June.
There was a neighborhood meeting and a meeting with the development review board in July, staff review and comments in August,
meetings with the owners of the properties in September,
response to feedback in October, another neighborhood meeting in November,
presentations to disability groups and TIF negotiations with the city in December,
a meeting with the Plan commission and another neighborhood meeting in January, and
another DRB meeting in January, and another DRB meeting in February.
And this is just to get approval for the preliminary plans. They have a year to get approval for their final plans, and then it will likely be a year or more to actually build the apartments, just based on national data.
This is not to say that meetings with disability groups or design review boards produce no benefit, but they clearly incur costs which should be accounted for. I do not know whether the developers are pulling a bait-and-switch. But one way to encourage a greater number of businesses to compete and a greater variation in size of development projects would be to reduce the cost of competing at all.
Interesting idea that a more streamlined project approval process could lead to greater number and variety of development proposals. Is there evidence for that? Also, is Wauwatosa unusual in the length of its process? (Of course this case was during the pandemic as well...)
Thanks for your blog, it's making me think.