It’s been more than 50 years since the former Gimbels and Schuster’s department store building at Garfield Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Milwaukee has been open to the public, but in just a few months the former neighborhood mainstay will once again become a gathering space.
The ThriveOn King project – a collaboration among Royal Capital Group, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and the Medical College of Wisconsin – has been in the works for the better part of six years. As renovations wrap up on the commercial side of the 470,000-square-foot redevelopment, representatives say they expect the public-facing spaces, including a 20,000-square-foot gathering area and café on the first floor, to open in May.
The GMF and MCW will begin moving their staff into the building this month. GMF is moving its 70 employees and headquarters from Schlitz Park. MCW will maintain offices for 159 employees at ThriveOn King on a permanent basis and another 135 employees on a temporary basis. GMF will also have public meeting rooms that nonprofits will be able to use on the fourth floor, expanding on a practice the foundation has maintained at Schlitz Park.
Organizations on the first floor – Malaika Early Learning Center, Versiti, and JobsWork MKE – will likely start moving in around the end of April and beginning of May.
In addition, 90 mixed-income apartments being constructed inside the 1917 portion of the former department store are slated to open in late December, said Kevin Newell, president and chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based development firm Royal Capital Group.
The renovation project was designed by Engberg Anderson Architects and is being constructed by CG Schmidt and JCP Construction.
Taking shape
On a recent afternoon, some of the first-floor spaces were beginning to take shape. A spacious room where shoppers once stood in line to make their purchases or get their picture taken in a photo studio is now subdivided to accommodate its new purposes.
In the back, where Malaika’s will soon open its second childcare location, new changing tables and other nursery items remain covered in plastic to protect them from construction dust.
Nearby, an interior wall cutout indicates where Versiti will hold its training program. The nonprofit blood center and research institution plans to operate a community resource and permanent blood donation center at ThriveOn. As part of the effort, its phlebotomist training area will be on view for prospective job seekers.
“Another benefit to having this visible is also reducing the fear and stigma about blood, organ and tissue donation in communities of color. So, this is why it’s very intentionally visible,” said Cydney Key, senior director of guest experience and strategic partnerships for ThriveOn. Key will work on the main floor of the campus to assist partners and members of the public. Walking around that space, she pointed to other areas that will serve the neighborhood, including a future wellness lab.
“We’ll be programming the space with community partners. So, sometimes it might be yoga, meditation, or life skills training,” Key said. “There’s definitely an intentional focus on youth because that was something the community said they needed during visioning sessions. There’s nowhere in the community where they can just focus on their wellness and de-stress.”
While looking out the floor-to-ceiling window displays along King Drive and Garfield Avenue, Key discussed the paintings and art installations that are being commissioned for spaces that had up until recently been hidden from the neighborhood’s view. Helping foster a community-focused reuse of the former department store has been rewarding, she said.
“People will say, ‘Oh, I got my first heels from (Schuster’s),’ or ‘I remember shopping there with my mom during the holidays,’” Key said. “I just did a presentation about three weeks ago, and an audience member shared that when they were kids, they would get dropped off on the mezzanine area near where (Malaika will be located). It’s just really cool to hear.”
Community impact
A $120 million investment, the ThriveOn Collaborative began as a shared effort by GMF, MCW and Royal Capital to catalyze economic development in the Brewers Hill, Halyard Park and Harambee neighborhoods, while also working to improve social determinants of health, a term used to describe factors like social cohesion, access to healthy food, quality affordable housing, economic opportunity and early childhood education.
The project has been part of a sea change along King Drive that has included new developments such as Pete’s Fruit Market and the Dohmen Company Foundation’s Food for Health program. Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy’s new high school, which is under construction across the street from ThriveOn, is slated to welcome students this fall. Royal Capital is also the developer of that project.
The GMF’s new Halyard Park headquarters will position the foundation in a neighborhood it seeks to serve, said Ken Robertson, executive vice president and chief financial officer of GMF.
“While we’re not far from this location currently, there’s something to be said for a community foundation that’s actually in the community – for the community to actually inform how we do the work,” Robertson said.
For MCW, which will be dedicating space at the ThriveOn campus to nine of its community-focused health programs, having a home base in the city’s Bronzeville district will put the medical college in closer proximity to the populations it seeks to serve. The programs include MCW’s Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin, Center for AIDS Intervention Research, the Institute for Health & Equity (Epidemiology), Community Engagement, Cancer Center Outreach, the Comprehensive Injury Center, Center for Advancing Population Science, the Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence and the Health Equity Scholars Program (HESP).
“Being closer to the community allows us to not just identify the opportunity but to begin creative intervention work that allows us to have a different conversation about the disparities,” said Greg Wesley, a co-chair of the ThriveOn Collaboration and senior vice president of strategic alliances and business development for MCW.
Wesley added that co-locating the community-focused programs at ThriveOn will also encourage greater collaboration among those programs. Additionally, MCW students enrolled in the Health Equity Scholars Program – a four-year health equity training track – will have an opportunity to live in the ThriveOn apartments.
Long road
Newell, whose company Royal Capital owns the ThriveOn campus, is heartened to see the project near completion, especially when he considers the difficult economic conditions it has weathered.
“The vision has definitely developed and grown, and we couldn’t be prouder of that, but it also came along with some significant challenges, be it that we were walking right into COVID and then all of the volatility in the financial markets,” Newell said. “So, this is what we call a true labor of love.”
Financing for the apartment project – which will include affordable housing units for families and people 55 and older, as well as market-rate apartments and units dedicated for medical students in HESP – was finalized in February, marking another milestone for the project.
“We’re excited,” Newell said. “Hopefully this is going to be a demonstration of what collaboration can do inside of this community of ours.”
