UW-Milwaukee’s Waukesha campus could make way for housing

City and county officials hope to sell the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s campus in Waukesha to housing developers after the campus closes permanently in June.

The Waukesha City Council voted Tuesday night to change the land use plan for the 71-acre campus lot to residential. That allows Waukesha County — which owns the property — to field proposals from builders.

“Residential is the only thing that seems to make sense,” said Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly. “You wouldn’t want to put an industrial park in between all the residential there.”

For Reilly, leaving it vacant isn’t an option.

“A lot of times, people don’t want any development,” he said. “But this land is going to be developed. It’s not going to remain a vacant school.”

He said developers will have to demolish the buildings on campus, which has a central heating and cooling system. Keeping any individual buildings would require installing new systems in each one, which Reilly called “cost-prohibitive.”

UW-Milwaukee announced in March 2024 it would close the two-year satellite campus after the spring 2025 semester, citing declining enrollment and budget gaps.

Single- and multi-family housing could contribute to local tax base

Reilly said he expects both single- and multi-family houses to go up on the property, with the single-family houses along the existing neighborhoods’ edges.

Because the site is only 2 miles from the Waukesha County Airport, any multi-family buildings on the property’s central hill would be subject to height restrictions.

“A maximum building height up here could be about 50 feet, at the most,” said Waukesha Principal Planner Doug Koehler at a Plan Commission hearing for the amendment.

Dale Shaver, the director of Parks and Land Use for Waukesha County, said any new development would likely include small parks or publicly accessible trails.

He also said the county will start accepting proposals from developers in February, with potential tax revenue an important factor in its choice. Because its land is owned by a county, the school doesn’t pay property taxes.

“This would be a brand-new source of property taxes. So, yes, the county and the city are very interested in putting this property on the tax roll now for the first time,” Shaver said.

Shaver co-authored a report with a team of public officials and real estate developers that recommended the residential land use to Waukesha’s council. It projected the City of Waukesha would collect between $1.2 million and $1.7 million annually in tax revenue from new developments on the land, with the county netting around $250,000. It projected the school district to get about $1 million.

Development a chapter in longer-term trends

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s campus in Waukesha is one of six two-year UW campuses to close in recent years. Until 2018, when it became a satellite campus for UW-Milwaukee, the campus had been a standalone campus, UW-Waukesha — one of 13 two-year University of Wisconsin Colleges that offered associate’s degrees.

Shaver said he expects the county to choose a winning proposal in June. That would kick it to the city of Waukesha’s public approval process, through the Plan Commission and City Council.

He said construction on the site would start, at the earliest, in the summer or fall of 2026.