Construction could start by late summer on an affordable apartment community near a long-closed Walmart store in Milwaukee‘s central city.

The 100-unit first phase of Midtown Commons is planned for a parking lot east of North 60th Street and north of West Hope Avenue.

That’s just north of the Walmart, 5825 W. Hope Ave., which closed in 2016, and south of a former Lowe’s store converted in 2018 into a distribution center for Sellars Absorbent Materials, 5800 W. Hope Ave.

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Ken Notes: We should require that development sites have an exit strategy so that the locations do not remain vacant for years. This could be a key in providing more workforce housing in a region. And for our community development leaders this can be built into you development agreements. We almost always fail to think about what happens when, especially when a shiny new project is promising great retail, office or other use and the new tax revenue that comes with it.

Did you know that Walmart typically plans for an initial occupancy period of 15 to 20 years when developing new projects. While their buildings are often designed with a specific structural lifespan of roughly 15 to 30 years...