MILWAUKEE — In the past year, Milwaukee's skyline has changed a lot. Two new luxury high rises have left their mark on the city - The Couture and 333 Water.
Both opened their doors to tenants in the Spring of 2024. You can see our past coverage on The Couture here. 333 Water is in the heart of the Third Ward. The 31-story building is the tallest in the neighborhood. In this article, we will tell you about the features of the building and explain a little bit about the status of the Milwaukee real estate market.
333 Water offers units ranging from studios to three bedrooms. The $160 million building boasts spectacular views of the skyline, the South Side, Lake Michigan, and the Hoan Bridge. Amenities include an indoor golf simulator, an outdoor putting green, a pool and patio, co-working spaces, entertainment areas, a gym, grills, a pizza oven, ping pong tables, and weekly community events. Living in this luxury apartment building comes with higher costs than most Milwaukeeans are used to, with rent ranging from about $1,800 to $8,700.
In the past few years, multiple luxury apartment buildings have been constructed: The Couture, 7Seventy7, The Ascent, and 333 Water.
Online chatter and watercooler talk has focused on the feasibility of buildings like this in the Milwaukee market, who is living there, and whether it’s too expensive. If you ask the developers, they say Milwaukee is a prime location for these sorts of developments and that the demand exists.
“And that demand is [from] people that are currently living here; that is demand from people that are living in Chicago,” Tom D’Arcy, the senior managing director at Hines, said.
Hines, the company that built 333 Water, doesn’t see Milwaukee sustaining dozens of these types of buildings but believes the market can support at least a few more.
“Could it support, you know, a building of this scale or a 15-story building? It doesn’t have to be 30. You know, every three or four years? I think absolutely,” D’Arcy said.
The ideal tenants, according to Hines, are young people, snowbirds, athletes, and business professionals either working downtown or commuting to Chicago on a hybrid schedule.
“In a city the size of Milwaukee, you have to have the graduate student from Marquette all the way up to someone selling their 5,000-square-foot home in Brookfield,” D’Arcy said.
The selling points are the amenities, the flexibility of renting, and the location.
“So, for somebody that really wants to be in this neighborhood, that’s their priority. They’re going to spend more of their disposable income on rent than someone who doesn’t value being in this community," D’Arcy said.
Driving down I-794 at night, you may not see many lights on in the Third Ward high-rise. 333 Water has about 31% of its units occupied. The Couture is at about 33%. Some might say no one is moving in. The developers argue they are a third of the way full in just six months since opening, and that's a good thing.
“We believe we know the demand was here long before the product was here. The product is just catching up," D’Arcy said.
Watch the tour of 333 Water to see what it's like inside...
Both developers of The Couture and 333 Water said they expect a majority of their buildings to be occupied by the end of 2025.
To achieve that, they will have to compete not just with other luxury apartments but with existing buildings as well. Some argue there is an oversaturation of these types of developments, but developers don’t see it that way. Hines believes these projects will attract more people to the city to fill the buildings and have a positive economic impact—from increased property taxes to more people patronizing local businesses.
“If you just had one tower, that's not going to really have much of an impact. If you have four towers, now you’re starting to have a critical mass, and that feeds upon itself. And so, while it creates competition, it also feeds into this ecosystem that overall makes downtown more desirable," D’Arcy said.
Whether everything pans out as developers hope remains to be seen. The real estate market will ultimately determine the success of these new buildings.
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