When Michael Adetoro participated in LISC Milwaukee’s Associates in Commercial Real Estate program, his cohort was tasked with reimagining a vacant building and lot located on West North Avenue between North Sixth and Seventh streets into something for the community.
Several years later, Adetoro, president of FIT Investment Group, now has the privilege of developing that exact site into the Bronzeville Creative Arts & Tech Hub after winning the 2021 request-for-proposal. The mixed-use development will include 60 apartments, a café, a performance space and key tenants such as Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, Black Arts MKE, Beyond STEM and a collaboration with 2112, a Chicago-based incubator focused on music, film and tech.
“We’re building not just a building but community,” Adetoro said. “We’re impacting the community. There’s a powerful thing that happens when you go to a block and you take a blighted building or a vacant site, and you invest in it and you commit to it and you improve it. That has a catalytic impact beyond just that property. It has impact on the entire neighborhood.”
Investing in the neighborhood
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation plans to invest $1.4 million in the project through its impact investing loan program and award up to $300,000 in grant support to participating nonprofits to help with operating costs.
This development aligned with the priorities of the Foundation and its impact investing committee, Kermiath McClendon, impact investing manager said, including economic mobility, housing and entrepreneurial businesses. It reflects the Foundation’s vision to catalyze the Dr. Martin Luther King Drive corridor and surrounding neighborhood development.
“We thought this would be a nice development,” McClendon said. “It’s right in our backyard and it fits into the whole nuance of Bronzeville. Bronzeville is a creative arts, entrepreneurial and entertainment district or neighborhood. And it has a lot of resident support, city support and economic development support, so we thought it was a good opportunity.”
Since the impact investing program’s introduction in 2017, Foundation donors have taken a keen interest in impact investing, with donors contributing $4 million to the Impact Investing Fund.
“Impact investing is a powerful tool that allows our donors to invest in economic mobility and neighborhood vitality,” Fiesha Lynn Bell, senior director of development and major gifts, said. “Their generosity helps enable exciting new developments like the Bronzeville Creative Arts & Tech Hub, which will provide not only housing but entrepreneurial support, space for the arts and more.”
‘A home in Bronzeville’
Black Arts MKE, which focuses on increasing access to Black arts and culture, is among the nonprofits moving into the hub.
Currently celebrating its tenth season, Black Arts MKE offers programming for at-risk youth and employment and performance opportunities for artists of color through its many productions such as “Black Nativity” by Langston Hughes.
“My team and I have always wanted to find a home in Bronzeville; we were thrilled to hear this was happening,” Barbara Wanzo, executive director, said. “It holds so much history for our city and our community. We're a Black-run organization serving the community in Milwaukee and primarily the Black community.”
She continued, “there’s been a lot of development in Bronzeville but even though they call it the cultural arts district, there’s no performing arts there, and we’d like to be the first.”
The agency is currently housed at the Marcus Performing Arts Center. Its move to the hub will provide it with opportunities to expand its programming and audience. The development will include a black box theatre, with capacity for 175 people, as well as a rehearsal space and a green room. Black Arts MKE is also looking forward to collaborating with the other tenants and engaging with the neighborhood.
“It’s creating a safe space for artists and emerging talent to help that pipeline in Milwaukee to expand and prosper,” Rebecca Owen, chief development officer, said.
Having control over the new space adds a layer of feasibility and sustainability and will help Black Arts MKE serve its demographic better, Owen added.
The visionaries that came before
While the Bronzeville Creative Arts & Tech Hub is the latest development to come to Bronzeville, it is hardly the first. The Foundation’s relocation to Bronzeville through the collaborative creation of the ThriveOn King building is a recent addition. Adetoro further acknowledged the groups and individuals that helped pave the way to make all of this possible, including MLK Economic Development Corporation and Welford Sanders.
“They were visionaries,” he said. “The work they did on King Drive, back when no one was really doing much, they were the ones who planted the seeds that paved the way for everything that we’re seeing now.”
As FIT Investment Group continues to raise funds for the project, Adetoro hopes people will embrace Bronzeville the way they’ve embraced other revitalized neighborhoods.
“The vision is here,” Adetoro said. “We want this city to embrace and need the city to embrace not just the Bronzeville Hub but the entire Bronzeville neighborhood.”