Bank of America is lining up another outpost on Milwaukee’s South Side, with plans for a new financial center in the storefront currently occupied by a Dollar Tree on Historic Mitchell Street. The concept calls for a customer-facing branch with private meeting space and a drive-thru ATM. The bank filed its application this week with city preservation reviewers, setting up a formal design review for the historic corridor.
What's proposed
A new filing with the Historic Preservation Commission shows Bank of America would lease an 8,100-square-foot unit at 1300 W. Historic Mitchell St., replacing the Dollar Tree that has operated at the site since 2014, according to Urban Milwaukee. The documents indicate the rear of the building would remain unfinished, and that Colliers Engineering & Design is handling the Mitchell Street design work.
The building and the lot
Commercial-listing records show the parcel includes a large parking lot and totals roughly 0.69 acres, about 30,000 square feet, making it one of the larger single-parcel retail sites along the corridor, according to LoopNet. The structure appears in the Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory as the Mitchell Street Building Company Building, with a listed 1923 construction date that reflects the district’s early-20th-century commercial character; the state inventory also notes that the building has been altered over time.
Bank's wider Wisconsin push
Bank of America announced in 2023 that it would expand into Wisconsin and open multiple financial centers in Milwaukee and Madison, according to a company news release reported by PR Newswire. Local filings and reporting show the Mitchell Street proposal would join a branch under construction at 7630 W. Good Hope Rd. and a planned site at 5040 W. Fond du Lac Ave. in the city, according to Urban Milwaukee.
Next steps for the project
Because the site sits inside the Mitchell Street Historic District, any exterior work will need approval from the Historic Preservation Commission and related city reviewers, according to the City of Milwaukee Department of City Development. The filing starts that review process; there is no public construction timeline or closing date for the current tenant in the documents posted so far.
