How much would you pay for a 31,100-square-foot piece of Milwaukee County parkland?
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. is buying it for $2.5 million. That comes to around $80 per square foot–a steep price for land that will continue to be occupied by grass, shrubs and trees.
“The reason we want the parcel is basically to preclude someone else from acquiring it and developing it,” said Thomas Towers, Northwestern Mutual Life spokesman. “We want to protect the integrity of our campus.”
The land is just east of the company’s corporate headquarters, with an official address of 910 E. Wisconsin Ave. The 0.7-acre tract runs along Wisconsin Avenue and North Prospect Avenue, and is indistinguishable from Northwestern Mutual Life’s corporate grounds.
Actually, the company years ago agreed to maintain the land, even though it’s owned by Milwaukee County, Towers said. He said the land was once the site of the Abraham Lincoln statue that’s now part of the nearby War Memorial Center.
Northwestern Mutual Life has no plans to develop the land, Towers said. By adding the land, zoning codes will allow the company additional expansion space elsewhere on its corporate grounds, he said. But there are no immediate expansion plans.
The sale of the property has proved to be a complicated process.
Although Milwaukee County is the current owner, the land was originally owned by the City of Milwaukee. In 1936, however, all city park lands were transferred to Milwaukee County when a county-wide consolidated park system was created.
That transfer agreement included a clause that required the properties be transferred back to city ownership if the county tried to sell them, or stopped using them as parkland.
After negotiating the recent deal with Northwestern Mutual Life, county officials asked the city to waive the transfer clause. City officials, however, wanted something in return.
So, Milwaukee County agreed to give the city a 28-acre parcel that was originally set aside for the Stadium Freeway South, a project that was later canceled. The county also agreed to give the city $250,000 to pay for environmental cleanup work on the land, which city and county officials hope to see developed for housing.
