Downtown Apartment Plan Stalls On Whether Anyone Can Actually Find The Building

WAUKESHA — A Milwaukee developer's plan to turn the former Waukesha School District administrative offices on East Avenue into 53 apartments stalled at Monday's Plan Commission meeting, where officials spent 40 minutes on a question unrelated to parking ratios, unit mix or setback requirements: whether anyone arriving by car would be able to find the building at all.

The site, a three-story brick building the district vacated in 2024, sits roughly 200 feet from the East Avenue roundabout, a traffic feature the city completed last year and which no documented driver has yet navigated correctly on the first attempt. The 11-page site plan, filed under the name of architect Daniel Krebs, devotes a full page to what staff are now calling 'the wayfinding section.'

A Page Nobody Expected

'I've read a lot of site plans,' said Patricia Voss, a senior planner with the city who has reviewed development filings for nine years. 'I've never seen one where the architect flagged the roundabout itself as a project risk. Usually that's a parking problem. This is the first time it's been a navigation problem.'

Voss said the filing identifies four separate entry points into the roundabout and notes that only one of them leads, after a single revolution, to the correct turnoff for the building's leasing office. The other three, she said, lead drivers back toward Main Street, toward the Piggly Wiggly on Sunset Drive, or, in one documented test drive conducted by city staff on Oct. 14, back onto the roundabout a second time.

'We did it twice. Both times,' Voss said. 'We budgeted 15 minutes for the test drive. It took 47.'

A Familiar Prize Still Unclaimed

The roundabout has carried its own civic subplot since opening: the city floated awarding a key to the city to the first driver who could prove they'd navigated it correctly on the first try. Two claims are currently pending verification, submitted by residents identified in city records only as Paulson and Steele, neither of which has been resolved. Councilman Gary Puchalski, who sits on the subcommittee reviewing both claims, said the apartment filing complicates things further.

'Now we've got a developer saying, in writing, that his own building might fail commercially because of this roundabout,' Puchalski said. 'That's not nothing. That's a sworn document saying what half this city has been saying over fences for a year.'

"We budgeted 15 minutes for the test drive. It took 47."

— Patricia Voss, city senior planner

The Developer's Fix

Per the filing, the Milwaukee firm has proposed installing two supplemental wayfinding signs, each roughly 3 feet by 2 feet, at the second and third roundabout exits, directing drivers toward 'Building Access' with an arrow. The city's public works department has not yet approved sign placement, citing a backlog of 11 other sign requests tied to the same roundabout filed since January.

Mark Behling, a 34-year-old insurance adjuster who has submitted a deposit on one of the building's planned one-bedroom units, said the access debate hasn't changed his plans, but has changed his commute strategy.

'I already mapped out the one entrance that works,' Behling said. 'Northbound, second exit, and you have to commit before you see the sign, because the sign's for people leaving, not people arriving. I figured that out on my third try. I'm telling my mother to just park at the Culver's and walk.'

Next Steps

The Plan Commission tabled a vote on the project until its Nov. 10 meeting, pending a formal response from public works on the proposed signage and a written clarification from the developer on what happens to leasing office foot traffic if the signs aren't approved in time for a planned spring opening. Voss said staff will conduct at least one more test drive before then.

'We're trying to be fair to it,' Voss said. 'It's a nice building. It's just also next to the roundabout, and that's not a small also.'