A unique development in Oak Creek is progressing as F Street Group redevelops a lakefront property into a dense 35-acre residential neighborhood.
Construction started in 2021 and the Milwaukee-based development and investment firm is wrapping up work on the $80 million first phase of the project, which includes two apartment buildings with a combined 199 units, 28 townhomes for sale, 28 townhomes for rent and nearly 60 single-family lots.
Situated between Lake Vista Park and Bender Park just east of 5th Avenue, the development is unique to Oak Creek due to its small lot sizes, neighborhood amenities and its walkability. The density of the development is similar to a traditional city neighborhood, which allows for larger open spaces that are open to all residents.
“It’s a carefree lifestyle, you don’t have to deal with day-to-day maintenance, you don’t have to buy a lawn mower or snow blower,” said E.J. Herr, director of project delivery for F Street.
The project is also the culmination of a years-old effort by the City of Oak Creek to clean up and redevelop the swath of lakefront land formerly used for heavy industrial purposes by companies such as Newport Chemical Co., DuPont and EPEC Polymers.
While the apartment buildings, which opened late last year, are more than 50% occupied, filling up the single-family lots and homes has been a slower process. Of the 49 lots ready to be built on for the development’s first phase, 11 have been purchased and eight additional speculative homes have been built as of late March, which is slightly less than the developers anticipated when the project was proposed in 2020.
Herr attributes this to economic headwinds such as higher interest rates and development costs which pushed up the asking prices of the homes and shrinking demand. High mortgage rates also reduced demand.
The for-sale townhomes start at $395,000 and single-family homes and lots start at about $476,000 and, though the for-sale housing market remains tight in metro Milwaukee and nationally, homes above a certain price see less demand, according to Herr.
The less-than-expected demand also pushed F Street to shift its construction methods.
Initially, the firm planned to build most of the buildings using a construction process known as modularized construction, in which entire sections of the homes or townhomes – including systems, fixtures and finishes – would be built in a factory off-site. The sections of the structure, which can include several rooms or even an entire floor of the home, are then transported to the project site on flatbed trucks and put in position using cranes.
“It looks a little more like building with Legos,” said Chad Griswold, partner at Rinka, the architecture firm for the project.
When done right, modularized construction can be a faster, less wasteful and more cost-effective, as well as making quality control easier, according to Herr and Griswold, since most of the building happens in a climate-controlled facility using assembly line-like systems.
For F Street, the idea was that if the homes sold quickly, it would be more efficient to build them modularly.
“One benefits most from off-site modular construction when you’re faced with having to deliver a high volume of homes at one time and there are similarities or repeatable or common elements,” Herr said. “The process is very efficient, environmentally friendly, safer, and more comfortable for workers.”
While the practice is becoming more popular globally with 6% of new construction being modular in North America in 2022, according to the Modular Building Institute, it’s still a relatively new practice in southeast Wisconsin. Only a few companies offer the service in the state, according to Herr; thus, Lakeshore Commons’ buildings were being built in a facility in Wausau, requiring a four-hour transit period and creating logistics challenges.
Those challenges, combined with comparatively lower demand for the end product, pushed F Street to only use modularized construction for 12 of the nearly 20 single-family homes.
As a result, F Street built more of the buildings, including the townhomes and apartment buildings, using panelized construction, which is another form of prefabricated building, but instead of having all the fixtures and finishes built off-site, they show up in wall panel kits.
“We initially decided to utilize off-site modular construction means and methods to deliver the single-family and villa homes, but determined that panelized kits and a hybrid site-built approach was the best solution for Lakeshore Commons,” Herr said.
As future phases of Lakeshore Commons are built, which will include more single-family homes, Herr said F Street would consider modularized construction again.
“I think looking at the bigger picture with the construction industry in general, I think modular building is where things are going, but you have to have more people embracing it as a form of means and methods,” Herr said.
