County Eyes Converting UW-Milwaukee Waukesha Campus Into "Probably A Culver's Parking Lot"

WAUKESHA — Waukesha County officials expect to finalize a purchase offer by September for the shuttered UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha campus on University Drive, and at least one developer has already pitched a use for the 78,000-square-foot building before the county has even closed on it: a Culver's.

The proposal, submitted last week to the county's Department of Administration, describes the vacant lecture-hall building and its surrounding 22 acres of surface parking as "an exceptional fast-casual dining opportunity" and specifically recommends the site "be built out to accommodate a Culver's, a Piggly Wiggly, and a Culver's again in case the first one runs out of ButterBurgers." The developer, whose submission was not signed with a company name, described the second Culver's as "redundant capacity" rather than a joke.

County Administrative Coordinator Janet Meszaros confirmed the county has received "several" preliminary concept pitches for the property since UW-Milwaukee announced its exit from the campus, and said the fast-casual proposal was not the only one, though she declined to characterize the others except to say "none of them involved custard."

Due Diligence, Sort Of

Meszaros said the county's interest in acquiring the campus predates any specific redevelopment plan, and that the purchase offer, expected to be finalized by the County Board's September meeting, is intended primarily to keep the 1500 University Drive property from sitting vacant "for years, the way these things tend to." She said the county has not endorsed the Culver's concept or any other proposal, and that formal requests for redevelopment plans will not go out until after the sale closes.

"We haven't picked a use for the building. We've picked a building. Those are two different meetings, and we are only at the first one."

— Janet Meszaros, Waukesha County Administrative Coordinator

Asked whether the county had any concerns about a developer proposing fast-food conversion before the ink on a purchase agreement had dried, Meszaros said the county "welcomes early interest from the development community" and noted that the same developer's submission also included a fallback concept involving self-storage units, "in case the Culver's math doesn't work out for whatever reason."

What Happens To The Lecture Halls

The campus, which closed at the end of the spring semester as part of UW-Milwaukee's broader consolidation of its branch locations, includes three classroom buildings, a small library annex, and roughly 340 surface parking stalls, a stall count the developer's proposal cited directly, noting it "already exceeds drive-thru queuing requirements by a wide margin." The proposal suggests the main lecture hall, which seats 210, could be subdivided into a dining room, a walk-in freezer, and "possibly a second, smaller dining room, pending demand."

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who does not sit on the County Board but said he has "informally reviewed" the proposal at a constituent's request, called the concept "forward-thinking" and said he'd "rather see something on that lot than nothing," adding that he personally has "no strong feelings" about how many Culver's locations a single property should contain.

Community Input, Eventually

Meszaros said the county is "open to community input" on the property's future and plans to hold public forums before any redevelopment agreement is signed, though she said no dates have been scheduled and did not offer an estimated timeline. She said the county has fielded a handful of unsolicited resident emails since news of the potential sale circulated, "a mix of people who want a Culver's and people who want to know why nobody asked them first."

The existing Mukwonago Culver's expansion, announced last month roughly nine miles south, was cited in the developer's proposal as evidence of "sustained regional demand," though Meszaros said the county has not independently verified that figure. She said the purchase offer will move forward regardless of what, if anything, ends up built on the site. "The county needs the building," she said. "What goes inside it is a September problem."