While 93 new apartments and a much larger library replacement are rising quickly on King Drive between Locust and Chambers Streets, one might not even immediately notice that the old Garfield Theater, which occupied much of the middle of the block, is gone.
That’s because while new buildings occupy the corners of the block in the heart of the Harambee neighborhood, the ornate terra cotta-decorated entrance to the ticket lobby of the 1927 Dick and Bauer-designed theater and a similar but smaller entrance to what were once offices survive.
Read a history of the Garfield Theater and get a last look inside in this Urban Spelunking story.
In fact, the entire retail and office strip that formed the majority of the facade of the theater – which was torn down last year to make way for this new development – has been kept.
Media was invited over for a peek at the progress of the development on Monday when the site was visited by White House Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs Tom Perez and a number of local dignitaries.
Perez was invited because $6 million of the $37 million MLK Library Apartments development comes from American Recovery Plan Act money spearheaded by the Biden/Harris administration.
Developers Emem Group and General Capital Group broke ground on the project in May 2023.
Bedrock Construction Company is the general contractor on the project and Joseph Lee and Associates is the lead architectural firm.
Though the two newly constructed buildings still have a way to go, the eight duplex three-bedroom, two-bathroom units in the former retail and office portion of the Garfield Theater building are getting close.
In fact, Jackson Lindsay of General Capital says they should be ready for occupancy before the end of the month.
These units will keep their original terrazzo flooring inside and their tiled entry pavements, too.
The four-story “B building” up near Chambers Street should be ready for November move-ins and the building on the corner of Locust, which will house the library, should be ready for tenants to move in to its three stories of apartments in December.
The affordable housing development has 40 two-bedroom apartments, 38 one-bedroom units, plus seven three-bedroom apartments in the B building that each have direct entry from the sidewalk. Plus, there are the eight duplex units in the 1927 building.
The library, which has soaring ceiling heights, covers the entire 18,000-square-foot ground floor of the south building, which replaces the squat little King Library that opened there in 1971.
The new library will have a marketplace and many of the features that have become standard in Milwaukee Public Library’s replacement projects, including big windows that are a 180-degree U-turn from the 1960s and ‘70s branch library buildings that felt like they barely admitted any natural light.
MPL hopes to have the branch ready in time to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday in January.
“Libraries are such remarkable hubs of opportunity for people, their workforce hubs, as well,” said Perez.
“I guarantee you, when you go and open this library, you're going to have a lot of young people spending time there. You're going to have a lot of folks looking for jobs there. You're going to have a lot of folks interviewing for jobs there. You're going to have a lot of folks getting jobs right out of this library.”
The King branch library has been operating out of temporary quarters at 2767 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. since May 2023.
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I’m excited to see that the old ticket lobby has been kept and will get a refresh. It is also getting a set of restrooms and a wheelchair ramp.
That space will serve as a reminder of the beautiful movie palace that once occupied the site, though it turns out, according to Lindsay, that it was not the first structure on the site.
“We found lots of surprises,” he told me when I asked if the demolition and excavation turned up anything interesting. “Building foundations, pipes we didn’t know about, water mains we didn’t know about.”
The 1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows at least one store and four dwellings, plus outbuildings, including an ice house, on the site of the theater.
In between the south building and the former ticket lobby there will be some surface parking that will wrap around the back of the 1927 building, where the theater’s auditorium once stood.
The building will have numerous green features, too, including EV charging stations, solar arrays atop all three structures, a green roof, porous pavements and, in the library, geothermal heating and cooling.
“The green building designs are going to enable (the project) to get tax credits out of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Perez said.
Rents are expected to range from about $500 to about $1,200 per month and are based on tenants’ incomes.
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.
