Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin Inc. plans to open a store and donation center in a Wauwatosa building, and a boutique store featuring high end donated items in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

Goodwill is a non-profit organization that provides education, training, and career services for people with disadvantages, such as welfare dependency, homelessness, and lack of education or work experience, as well as those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities. Goodwill has more than 2,200 retail stores in the country. Revenues from the stores fund job training and other services to help prepare clients for work.

Goodwill Industries purchased a 65,240-square-foot industrial building at 12121 W. Feerick St., Wauwatosa, from Feerick Investments LLC for $2.4 million. RFP Commercial brokers Paul McBride, Bob Flood, and Scott Revolinski represented the seller in the building sale transaction. Goodwill is renovating the building into a store and donation center.

Goodwill has several stores in the Milwaukee area, but none are in Wauwatosa.

"We based (the decision to open a Wauwatosa store) on donor zip code studies," said Goodwill spokeswoman Cheryl Lightholder "We were finding that Wauwatosa was really an underserved market."

Goodwill also plans to open a boutique store, called Retique, at 190 N. Broadway in the Third Ward. The 5,343-square-foot space was formerly occupied by the Private Gardner store.

The store will open in May. It will be the first boutique store for Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin, but Goodwill organizations in other parts of the country have had success operating boutique stores like this that sell high end donated items, Lightholder said.

For more information, OnMilwaukee.com, a media partner of BizTimes Milwaukee, also has a report on Goodwill's Third Ward store.

OnMilwaukee.com also has a report on another new store coming to the Third Ward: Quality Candy/Buddy Squirrel.

Milwaukee-based WillowTree Development LLC plans to purchase the former Delphi property in Oak Creek, according to Milwaukee commercial real estate industry sources.

WillowTree principal Michael DeMichele could not be reached for comment.

WillowTree was part of a partnership that sold a former Delphi parcel to Janesville-based Woodman's Food Markets Inc. for the grocery store on Howell Avenue in Oak Creek. WillowTree has also built other retail development, or sold lots to other developers, on former Delphi property on Howell Avenue.

"They've been pretty active with those sites," said Oak Creek director of community development Doug Seymour.

Delphi Corp. has a tentative agreement to sell its former Oak Creek plant, confirmed Dan Jessup, president of Brookfield-based Grubb & Ellis|Apex Commercial. Grubb & Ellis|Apex Commercial is marketing the site for Delphi. However, Jessup declined to disclose the identity of the buyer.

"It is under contract," Jessup said. "It is scheduled to close, hopefully, by the end of the year."

The former Delphi plant, located on an 85-acre site at the southwest corner of Howell and Drexel avenues, closed last year. At one time 1,450 people worked there.

City officials want to see the vacant structure on the property torn down and the site redeveloped, predominantly with retail uses.

"Our vision is still for a mixed use development with a substantial retail component," Seymour said.

However, the redevelopment of the property is going to take a long time because few retailers in the country are expanding right now and several major retail chains already have a presence in the area, said one commercial real estate source. However, Howell Avenue has been successful in attracting retail development in recent years, the source said.

Manpower Inc.'s corporate headquarters building in downtown Milwaukee recently received a LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The four-story, 280,000-square-foot building is owned by RiverBend Place LLC, a firm led by Milwaukee developers Gary Grunau and Scott Sampson. The building was designed by Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects, and the general contractor for its construction was Gilbane Building Company.

The "green" features in the building include: water efficient plumbing fixtures, low emitting materials, under-floor air distribution system, locally manufactured materials, recycled building materials, natural lighting, construction waste recycled, bus lines near the building.

The Milwaukee metro area was the only large metro area to see an increase, rather than a migration, of jobs within its urban center, according to a Brookings Institute Study released today.

The report, titled, "Job Sprawl Revisited - The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment," reviewed job migration in 98 major metro areas, noting a drop in the share of jobs located within 3 miles and 10 miles of metro downtowns, during an eight-year period between1998-2006.

Detroit, Chicago and Dallas saw the greatest shift of jobs away from the city center (10 miles or more.) More than half of the major metro areas experienced rapid job sprawl. Detroit saw 77 percent of its jobs migrate out of the city, Chicago 68 percent and Dallas 66 percent.

The Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metro area had a .03-percent gain of jobs within its three-mile ring of downtown between 1998-2006; one of only three metro areas to do so and the only metro area in the "large" category of the study.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett credited the accessibility and affordability of doing business in the metro area, along with opportunities to grow existing businesses in such places as the Menomonee Valley.

The study noted that financial, insurance and utility industries locate almost one-third of their jobs in the inner three-mile ring of metro centers, and those three industries are strong in the Milwaukee area. Information Technology and health care industries also are concentrated in the metro area and according to the study, one fourth of the jobs in this sector are usually located in the urban center.

The Brookings Institute study concluded that the distribution of jobs geographically should be taken into consideration in policy and economic recovery issues, especially as metro areas work toward sustainable growth.

To read the study, visit www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2009/0406_job_sprawl_kneebone/20090406_jobsprawl

Nearly 700 pieces of precast concrete, weighing as much as 20 tons each, are being erected at the corner of Juneau Avenue and North 9th Street in the middle of the former Pabst brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee. When fully assembled, the pieces will make up an 880 stall parking structure.

Joseph Zilber, the founder of Milwaukee-based Zilber Ltd., is building the parking structure and redeveloping the former brewery complex into a mixed use neighborhood called The Brewery.

Workers for months have been manufacturing precast components at the JW Peters Inc. facility in Burlington for the parking structure. The assembly is being done by G&C Construction and Area Erectors.

The 20 ton panels will be lifted into place by a 280 ton Liebherr crane, which will rise 2/3 the length of a football field (190 feet) into the sky. The crane will be utilized to assemble 12 to 15 of the precast components each day. A crew of 15 assembly experts will work on the site to fit all of the pieces into place. 

The $16.5 million parking structure is being financed personally by Zilber, who received funding for the project from two new market tax credit organizations, a $10 million allocation from the Wisconsin Community Development Legacy Fund and a $5 million dollar allocation from the First-Ring Industrial Redevelopment Enterprise, which result in $3.321 million in subordinated low interest financing for the project.

A grand opening was held recently for Prairie Apartments, a 24-unit supportive housing development at 1218 W. Highland Ave., Milwaukee, for low-income adults that are homeless, have a mental illness or other conditions. The project's co-developers are Guest House of Milwaukee and Heartland Housing. The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) provided $4 million in low income tax credits for the project. The property was formerly the site of Genesis Detoxification Center. The general contractor for the project was Pewaukee-based VJS Construction Services.

The Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons International Association purchased a 3.78-acre lot in the Towne Corporate Park of Granville, located at North 107th Street and Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee, from Milwaukee-based Towne Investments. A 10,000-square-foot office and training center for the Cement Masons Union Local 599. "We are extremely excited about the prospect of having our own building in a beautiful, convenient, travel-friendly location in Milwaukee," said Terry Ullsperger, business manager for Local 599. The building is expected to b complete near the end of this year. The 64-acre Towne Corporate Park of Granville has two more lots available for sale, a 3.68-acre lot and a 7.6-acre lot. Towne Investments is the trade name under which Zilber Ltd. markets its commercial investment portfolio.

Niets Investment Company purchased the 29,925-square-foot office building at 5600 W. Brown Deer Road, Brown Deer, from Leisure Investments for $850,000. Scott Revolinski and Patti Stevens of RFP Commercial represented the seller in brokering the transaction.

Ed Majkowski announced his resignation from the Hartford Area Development Corp., where he served for the past year in a part-time role as the executive director following the retirement and death of Werner X. Wolpert. Majkowski said he has not had the time to tend to his own business, ACT Erosion Control Company, while also properly tending to the business of the HADC over the past year. The HADC's board of directors will begin a search for a new executive director immediately.

Brookfield-based Shorewest Realtors recently added Holly Bromeland as a sales associate in its Lake Geneva office.

Kenosha-based Riley Construction Company announced that five members of its staff have recently received Leadershp in Energy Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professional distinction. Ben Kossow, division manager; Paul Miller, senior project manager; Kevin Kruckeberg, senior project manager; Mike Duffek, project manager; and Chris Meier, project manager; have each successfully passed the rigorous examination process to earn the LEED AP accreditation.