[5.6.2016] Greenfield greets its future: With Pieces in Place, 84South emerges (Milwaukee Business Journal)

It was another nervous moment for Scott Yauck when he had to ask Shary Charlier for more time to buy the family farm for a $150 million development in Greenfield.

Charlier had agreed to sell Yauck the property at South 92nd Street and Interstate 894, even though it had been in her family for 85 years. It was a key corner to the 48 acres Yauck was assembling in 2015 for his huge 84South town center development.

Yauck had gotten to know Charlier and knew the sale was an emotional event for her. So when he approached to ask for more time, he printed up a mock street sign reading “Sura Lane,” after her family name, and pledged to make it the main road running through the new development.

Yauck remembered Charlier bursting into tears of joy.

“As you work with people through the process, you learn what is important to them and sometimes it is the purchase price, sometimes it is the legacy,” Yauck said. “There’s no magic bullet. It’s a function of emotion and every personality and parcel is different. If you get to understand what is important and spend the time, it is an investment that I think pays off. You can feel good about it after.”

Yauck in late 2014 and 2015 assembled 43 properties, including the Sura family farm, 39 houses, a church and a Steinhafels store, for the development. The homes are gone, and two large retail buildings that will launch 84South will start construction in July.

Fresh Thyme Farmers Market is among the tenants for the buildings.

The project, with apartments, stores and offices, is among the largest underway in Milwaukee County and will become a major retail destination in southern Milwaukee County. It already has sparked more development interest in the city of Greenfield along Layton Avenue.

“I think this is a great thing for the southwest side of Milwaukee County,” said Greenfield Mayor Michael Neitzke.

“It’s great for our neighbors — Franklin, Greendale and Hales Corners — because the stronger the southwestern part of the county is, the better it is for all of us.”

As Sura Lane demonstrates, the development required more than good business decisions.

Those involved in the project used words like “providence” and “integrity” when describing the ingredients that made it all possible.

Yauck, president and CEO of Milwaukee-based Cobalt Partners, was first drawn to the 84South site by Neitzke. The two serve together on the board of Aerotropolis Milwaukee, an economic development group near General Mitchell International Airport. Neitzke has been pushing for a development on the Greenfield land for more than a decade.

“It was one of those hallway conversations where you say, ‘I’ve got this great potential piece of property and I just need somebody to work it,’” Neitzke said.

Yauck is at least the fourth developer to take a hard look at the property in the past decade, but previous efforts that centered on big-box stores failed. Assembling the land was among the major challenges.

After Neitzke captured Yauck’s attention, he set out to succeed where others could not and buy the entire block. He started in the same place as his predecessors by securing a deal to buy the former Chapman School in the center of the block from the School District of Greenfield.

That was approved in October 2014. The following month, Yauck first met with another crucial partner who, like Neitzke, has seen several development proposals for the land come and go.

“It didn’t take me but 15 minutes to like Scott, respect him and shake his hand,” said Gary Steinhafel, president of Steinhafels Inc.

Steinhafels Inc. owns the furniture store at the key corner of South 84th Street and West Layton Avenue. At Neitzke’s urging, Steinhafel years ago convinced his company to buy eight home sites around that aging store in anticipation of a developer like Yauck coming along. Steinhafel jumped at the opportunity to build a new store on the block and be surrounded by other stores.

But Yauck still needed to forge 39 separate deals with the block’s homeowners.

“It was always a difficult process,” Steinhafel said. “The biggest issue was getting the homeowners to participate, all of them. It was an all-or-nothing deal.”

Steinhafel hosted Yauck’s first get-together with the neighbors in the basement of his Layton Avenue store. Yauck met with everyone at once, and presented a uniform offer. Previous developers didn’t follow that tactic, and had trouble getting everyone on board.

Yauck offered fair-market value for the properties, plus a premium that would decrease every two weeks a homeowner didn’t accept the offer.

“We sort of saw the bell-curve of acceptance,” he said, “In the beginning with one party, we hadn’t even left the basement of Steinhafels and they said, ‘We’ll absolutely sell and would love to close tomorrow.’”

Yauck remembered it was quiet for about a week after that meeting, and then more homeowners accepted the deal after realizing the offer wouldn’t change. He secured the bulk of the purchases, but there were stragglers.

One had a reverse mortgage, another had a family member who had cancer. One resident was a widow who had intended to live the rest of her days in the house, but agreed to sell because neighbors had accepted the deal and she didn’t want to hold up the neighborhood. Yauck, in retelling their stories in April, recalled their names and could point out their homes on a map.

“We had to work hand-in-hand with each person, many conversations in the kitchens and living rooms of all of these homeowners,” he said.

In all, Yauck said he paid about 40 percent over market price for the land. He will recoup some of that through a $10 million incentive Cobalt will receive through a tax incremental financing district Greenfield officials approved for 84South last year.

Including infrastructure work, that TIF district will contribute $29.7 million to the development. That level of public incentive was not available for previous developers whose projects were smaller and would have generated less tax base than 84South.

“The fact that it is larger on one hand allows the city to get behind it more because it is transformative,” Yauck said. “The stars lined up pretty well on this. You need to have land available, you need to have zoning and political support. You need to have a market that is supportive.”

The retail market is stronger now, making it possible for Yauck to build two retail buildings of 250,000 square feet and have stores lined up for 10 of their 11 spaces.

Talks are underway with “numerous players” for the last available space, said Dan Rosenfeld, principal of Mid-America Real Estate–Wisconsin LLC. There is a lack of available buildings for retailers who want to move near Southridge Mall and 76th Street, he said.

“Clearly, market timing has something to do with it now versus then,” Rosenfeld said. “Retailers are seeing this 84th and Layton site as a natural extension of the Southridge area.”