MILWAUKEE, Wis. – Milwaukee Area Technical College is pleased to announce that it has officially signed a new lease agreement Wednesday morning to construct a new shared-use training facility located in Deer District by the college's downtown Milwaukee campus.
The new facility is set to be co-developed and co-owned by the Milwaukee Bucks and J. Jeffers & Co. and will be located on the vacant land between West McKinley, West Juneau and North Phillips avenues and North King Drive.
"We're so excited for this facility." MATC President Anthony Cruz said. "More than anything it's about the transformative opportunities that it'll provide to our students and the community. We have some amazing student-athletes who will take advantage of this new facility, in addition to our other students…this has been in the works for about 15 months, and I'm so glad that this is finally coming to fruition."
MATC's 28,000-square-foot sports training facility is set to feature a two-court gymnasium that could seat up to 1,000 spectators, a fitness center, locker rooms, meeting rooms, concessions as well as other amenities that will help further serve the school's athletic and health and fitness programs.
As of now, MATC currently offers athletics in nine sports, some of which include men's and women's basketball and women's volleyball.
"Today's huge for our [athletic] department," MATC Athletic Director
Randy Casey said. "It's huge for volleyball and men's and women's basketball, who've never had their own home facility.
"It's just different when you can walk into your own gym and that's your home floor," he added. "You can market that, put everything on the walls and show that this is our place. It just changes things. From a recruitment standpoint, to be able to bring people in and show them your gymnasium and just the area it's in, that's phenomenal."
Construction is set to break ground later this summer and will take about 18 months to complete. In totality, the project is expected to amass 340,000 square feet. Above the athletic facility, the developers will build and manage 269 market-rate housing units – primarily studio and one-bedroom apartments.
"We're so excited to move forward with this new athletic training facility in the Deer District," said Michael Belot, the Milwaukee Bucks' Senior Vice President of Business Operations and Chief Real Estate Development Officer. "This development, in partnership with J. Jeffers and the city of Milwaukee, will continue to redefine downtown Milwaukee and the Deer District as a 365-day a year destination. We are delighted to welcome MATC to Deer District with a facility that would include a gymnasium, fitness center, meeting rooms and more for its students and sports teams to enjoy year-round."
Additional construction plans call for 13,000 square feet of street-level, mixed-use commercial space and an outdoor plaza near the southwest corner of King Drive and McKinley Avenue. As for parking, the facility is expected to include a 290-space parking structure on Phillips Avenue.
"As everyone here knows, MATC is extremely important to Milwaukee," Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said. "It's really important to the city and it's an academic institution that opens doors, that fills potential students and it has enormous value to the economy right here in Milwaukee."
The Deer District facility will also serve to attract and retain students to the college. This past fall, MATC's women's volleyball team won its first National Junior College Athletic Association Region 4/ District Championship and took its first trip to the NJCAA Division II Volleyball National Tournament. One year prior to that, the MATC men's basketball team won its first NJCAA Division II championship. The recent uptick in success has left some of its other athletic programs to consider making the jump to the NJCAA Division II level, which would allow the school to offer students additional athletic scholarships.
"I feel like this is a great opportunity for all our new incoming student-athletes," said MATC men's basketball freshman guard Ky'Moni Hunt. "They'll have a place to practice and have a better gym than what we have downstairs right now. They'll have home games right here in downtown Milwaukee instead of at Alverno College and I feel like more students will come out to games because it's closer to campus."
Any additional details about the new athletic facility will be shared as construction plans progress.
