As a Marquette undergraduate, Rick Wiegand, Bus Ad ’81, walked the streets near campus, admiring historic buildings. He launched Wiegand Enterprises during his senior year to fix up properties and lay the groundwork for a career as a real estate developer.
Fast-forward several decades and Wiegand now has that career, along with an impressive record of renewing some of the very properties he admired on his long-ago walks in Milwaukee’s Near West Side.
Given the neighborhood’s struggles over the years with poverty and neglect, Wiegand has sometimes played the role of trailblazer and lonely visionary — like when he took a big swing in the early 2000s reopening the Ambassador Hotel, a once-grand, then-seedy and now-grand-again art deco landmark. But what’s been surprising recently is how collaborative his work has become — and how its impact has blossomed along with his list of partners.
Indeed, for his most recently completed project, a group effort led by the Near West Side Partners — a nonprofit coalition of businesses, residents and institutions, including Marquette University — transformed his corner property at North 27th and West Wells streets into Concordia 27. It’s a place where affordable housing, economic opportunity, health services and vibrant social spaces converge, and it’s been hailed as the vibrant community hub the neighborhood has long needed.
“The attention that this project has gotten and the number of people, the hundreds of people, who have embraced it — I don’t think I really envisioned that,” says Wiegand, also a Near West Side Partners board member. He leads a list of Marquette alumni, faculty, staff and students who played valuable roles and made the project happen in collaboration with community members.
C27, as it is affectionately known, opened in June 2024 as the showpiece of a decade-long strategy by Near West Side Partners to help the neighborhood thrive by removing nuisance businesses, engaging community members and offering support to partners like Wiegand, who were willing to take risks. In short time, Concordia 27 has become an anchor property, offering hope to residents and inspiring nearby development of The Beacon, a new Aurora Health Care center offering physical, mental and social wellness programs.
“It’s the power of partnerships,” says Rana Altenburg, Arts ’88, associate vice president for public affairs at Marquette and a founding board member of the Near West Side Partners.
The Building
The story of Concordia 27 could begin with a building. Built in 1925, the 80,000-square-foot Cecelia Building came to Wiegand’s attention in 2015, while putting together a deal to buy the adjacent City Campus. By that time, he owned 30 properties in Milwaukee — including the Ambassador Hotel — and had embraced a philosophy around real estate in neglected neighborhoods: to create lasting change, acquire buildings linked to crime and raise standards for their use.
The Cecelia Building was one such property. Shops in the building sold pornography and drug paraphernalia and attracted problematic or criminal activity. Wiegand could see that it would undermine any positive changes he made to the adjacent City Campus. So, when the Cecelia Building came onto the market that same year, Wiegand snapped it up. After terminating leases to make repairs, he scouted around for new tenants. He had dozens of proposals, including from Children’s Wisconsin, a brewery and a massive indoor vertical garden. Unfortunately, the deals all fell through. It sat empty for nine years.
But then in 2020, Marquette’s late president, Dr. Michael R. Lovell and his wife, Amy, toured the vacant Cecelia Building as a potential site for Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee (SWIM). This initiative, launched in 2016 by the Lovells and Frank Cumberbatch of Bader Philanthropies, provides training, resources and services to promote healing from trauma. Rising demand caused SWIM to quickly outgrow its space at St. Joseph’s Hospital, but with the square footage of nearly one and a half football fields, the Cecelia was far too large for its needs.
Meanwhile, Wiegand knew that the Near West Side Partners was looking for a new headquarters, and he was also working with the Milwaukee Center for Independence to find 15,000 square feet for their commercial kitchen. “I thought, ‘Well, let’s get everybody together here and see if we can carve out the space for everybody in this building,’” he recalls.
The Community
Or the story could begin with the Near West Side Partners. On July 21, 2021, the day after the Milwaukee Bucks won their second NBA Championship, celebration was in the air. Yet, NWSP’s executive director, Lindsey St. Arnold Bell, felt anxious. She was co-hosting a virtual, three-day Appreciative Inquiry Summit with Harley-Davidson. The goal was to ask residents, local businesses and institutions that were still dealing with COVID-19 to collectively reimagine a thriving, equitable Near West Side community. She wondered if the Bucks’ win, and the inevitable partying, would impact turnout.
The C2 Behind C27:
Near West Side Partners Celebrates a Decade of Catalytic Collaboration.
Near West Side Partners formed 10 years ago out of neighborhood safety concerns after a bullet went through the window of an occupied Harley-Davidson conference room where a meeting was taking place. That incident, thankfully, resulted in no physical injuries, yet it became a catalyst for the formation of the nonprofit organization that includes five anchor institutions: Advocate Aurora Health, Harley-Davidson, Marquette University, Molson Coors and Potawatomi Ventures.
Today, Milwaukee’s Near West Side, which stretches from Marquette’s campus past Harley-Davidson’s headquarters on West Juneau Avenue in the Martin Drive neighborhood, is not just surviving but thriving as a collaborative community.
Rana Altenburg, Arts ’88, Marquette’s associate vice president for public affairs, has been a partner and champion for change since the NWSP’s inception. She has consistently advocated for community well-being, collaboration, inclusivity and social progress. “Near West Side Partners has grown exponentially since its inception, especially with a talented executive director and program staff, who are able to tap resident and business resources that result in measurable success in safety, housing, commercial corridor development, and community health and wellness,” says Altenburg, NWSP’s board president.
Some of the partnership’s biggest accomplishments include double-digit decreases in crime, more than 50 new small businesses, the Concordia 27 mixed-use development, increased home ownership and improved perceptions of the area. “Even the mayor and his family decided to live in the Near West Side,” Altenburg says.
Lindsey St. Arnold Bell has been the Near West Side Partners’ executive director for two years and says the secret to the organization’s success is simple: the people. “From the leaders of our anchor institutions to our neighbors, local businesses and community organizations, the Near West Side is full of passionate people who care deeply about their neighborhood and are willing to do the hard work to make it better,” she says.
– Melissa Barclay
“I thought for sure nobody was going to join me,” says St. Arnold Bell. But 200 engaged people joined the Zoom meeting. “I think they really had a hunger to think about how we could come out of COVID-19 better than we went in,” she says.
Attendees brainstormed concepts such as creative green spaces, inclusive gathering areas, arts integration, youth resources and a community center offering health and wellness services. It’s a little hard to imagine, St. Arnold Bell says, but summit participants came up with the name Concordia 27, the possible location at 801 N. 27th St., and a list of potential partners.
“It was a little bit of lightning in a bottle,” she says.
To carry out the vision, summit leaders formed a working group co-chaired by St. Arnold Bell and Heidi Chada, then a vice president for the Milwaukee Centers for Independence (she’s now interim CEO). The group met monthly to pinpoint partners, a design and funders. By May 2022, the Concordia 27 project launched with a $5 million commitment from the state of Wisconsin. “We did a lot of fast and furious behind-the-scenes work to really show that we were making progress on this vision,” St. Arnold Bell says.
The People
Ultimately, the story of Concordia 27 can’t be told without the people. It was early November 2021, and the scent of fried catfish drifted into the event room of Daddy’s Soul Food on North 27th Street, where several tables had been set — not for dinner but for dialogue. Dr. Abiola Keller, H Sci ’01, and Dr. Kristin Haglund, Nurs ’92, faculty in Marquette’s College of Nursing, along with students and Center for Peacemaking Ambassadors, were there to engage community members in an activity designed to validate and prioritize ideas collected in surveys and during the July 2021 Appreciative Inquiry Summit.
Participants received a stack of index cards — 71 in all, each one containing an idea that filled this blank: “To make the Near West Side a healthier community, we need ___.” People were asked to sort the cards into categories, name the category, and then rank those categories from highest to lowest priority. With the kitchen’s hum in the background, everyone got to work — not just that evening but on four other occasions.
In all, 138 people participated in this concept-mapping project, which resulted in several high-level priorities: vibrant social space, health and wellness services, sustainable businesses, an inclusive neighborhood and quality, affordable housing. Those priorities not only confirmed that people wanted a community center but informed the balance of tenants and services. “The building itself will not advance the health of the community,” explains Keller. “It’s what we do in that building that matters.”
Once the community’s desires were validated, the pieces fell into place. Tenants were selected, including SWIM, Centers for Independence, and the offices of the Near West Side Partners itself. The building’s layout was reimagined and affordable apartments were designed. Wiegand sold several of his properties to finance renovations, while St. Arnold Bell, Altenburg and government partners helped secure $9.5 million in public funding. In June 2024, Concordia 27 opened its doors and now stands at the literal and symbolic heart of the neighborhood.
As a follow-up, Aurora Health Care is investing $50 million to transform the former Wisconsin Avenue School — one block away — into a collaborative health and wellness facility dedicated to empowering individuals and families to achieve physical, mental and social wellness in Milwaukee.
“We are now rebranding the 27th Street corridor ‘The Health and Wellness Corridor,’” says Altenburg, applauding the sense of purpose and momentum Concordia 27 has helped bring to the street. “C27 is a microcosm of what we stand for. If you want to understand Near West Side Partners, go to C27.”
