Joseph Mrazek, president of Racine-based Midwest Interstate Realty Corp., and Frank Rosselli, president of facilities for Midwest Interstate, are planning a major redevelopment project that will breathe new life into three buildings they co-own in the former Horlick Malted Milk Co. campus in Racine.
"This is going to be a home run, no doubt about it," said Rosselli. "I am so enthusiastic about these buildings."
"We’re enthusiastic too," said Brian O’Connell, Racine’s director of city development. "We think the complex has tremendous potential. The buildings have a lot of character."
Mrazek and Rosselli are planning to spend millions of dollars to gut their three buildings in the Horlick Malted Milk complex and redevelop the space for offices, apartments, light industrial and possibly a small amount of retail space. They also may build a new apartment building on the complex. Some of the apartments they develop in the complex could be targeted to residents 55 and older and others may be targeted toward the general public, Rosselli said.
In 2003, Mrazek and Rosselli bought the three buildings at 2200 Northwestern Ave. with a combined 250,000 square feet of space. The buildings were constructed in the early 1900s and were used by Horlick Malted Milk until the company’s operations were moved to the United Kingdom in 1975.
Despite their age, the brick buildings are in great shape, Rosselli said. The structures are so solid that they were designated as a bomb shelter during World War II.
"These buildings were built to last 1,000 years," Rosselli said. "The place is as solid as a rock, no leaks, nothing."
One of the buildings is a four-story structure with 93,000 square feet of space and a clock tower. About 30 percent of the building is occupied by tenants. The second building is four stories tall with about 124,000 square feet of space. Its tenants currently occupy about 10 percent of the space. The third building is a two-story structure with about 33,000 square feet of space, which is 100 percent occupied by TDH Manufacturing.
The other tenants in the buildings include ARC Architectural Group, Inter-Med, Sybaritic Studios and Joe Haban, who sold them the buldings.
Some of the other buildings in the former Horlick campus belong to other property owners, including Raymond Biddle and the Racine Unified School District, which has its central offices at 2200 Northwestern Ave.
The redevelopment of the Horlick campus could take about 10 years, Rossetti said, but he and Mrazek are hoping to get started soon.
"We’d like to see something moving within a year," Rossetti said.
The current tenants in the buildings will be moved around during the renovation project, so they will not have to be evicted, Rosselli said.
Once completed, the former Horlick buildings will be converted similar to the redevelopment of the former Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee and the former Allis Chalmers complex in West Allis into an office complexes, Mrazek said.
The Horlick buildings owned by Mrazek and Rosselli were built with cream city brick. The buildings have some architectural features, including turrets, that make the complex look like a castle. One of the turrets has a working clock.
"It looks like a European castle," Rosselli said. "I envision this to be the jewel of Wisconsin when (the redevelopment) is done."
Rosselli and Mrazek will seek financial assistance from government funding sources available for historic preservation, redevelopment and economic development programs.
The City of Racine hired Milwaukee-based Planning and Design Institute Inc. to conduct a redevelopment planning study for the Horlick complex. In about four to six weeks, the city will likely approve the final redevelopment plans for the site, O’Connell said.
City officials will then work with the property owners and may discuss how much assistance the city can provide for the projects from tax incremental financing (TIF) and other sources, O’Connell said.
The city wants to extend St. Patrick’s Street and Kewaunee Street through the property to connect with Northwestern Avenue to reconnect the complex with the surrounding neighborhood, O’Connell said.
The city also wants to see a mixture of uses on the site, including office, single and multi-family residential, light industrial and a small amount of retail, O’Connell said. The complex includes enough space for new buildings, which could include single-family homes and multi-family residential buildings.
For the restoration of their buildings, Mrazek and Rosselli plan to replace the windows and remove nearly all of the non-original elements, including drop ceilings, wood paneling and old tile floors. They also plan to remove a skywalk that connects the two largest buildings.
"The idea is to bring it back as close to the original as possible," said Richard Christensen of ARC Architectural Group, a tenant in the Horlick complex and the architect for the redevelopment plan.
The original wood floors and wooden stairways in the buildings will be preserved.
One of their building’s tenants, Sybaritic Studios, is an artist’s studio that occupies a space that has been partially renovated. After some of the non-original elements in the space were removed, a wooden column was discovered that Horlick workers used to scrawl, in pencil, a running tally of weather and current events. The column has a long list of dates from the 1920s and ’30s, listing days of "snow," "blizzard" and extreme heat, including one 105 degree day. The list includes the day the company’s founder and president, William Horlick, died in 1936 and the date 5/21/27, when Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, becoming the first pilot to make a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Rosselli said he and Mrazek would like to preserve the column, but are not sure how to do it.
They also have not decided what to do with the exterior brick walls of the buildings. They might decide to clean the bricks, removing years of dirt and grime.
"The brick is beautiful," he said.
If they need more bricks for their restoration project, Rosselli and Mrazek acquired 100 pallets of bricks from the nearby former Racine Steel Castings building that is being demolished to clear way for new industrial development.
April 1, 2005, Small Business Times, Milwaukee, WI
