A lease with growing Milwaukee call center marketing firm Atlas MKE helped a riverside Third Ward office building bounce from 30% to 90% occupancy after losing tenants earlier this year.
Atlas MKE is taking over 12,200 square feet at 215 N. Water St., refilling its top two floors and a rooftop penthouse and patio that CEO Kristian Pettengill said will become a shared common space for workers. Pettengill said his team of 25 employees will complete the move from their current home in the nearby Tannery office park at the end of this month. Within about two years, he hopes to have 100 people working at the location.
Pettengill founded the company in 2021 as a public benefits corporation, committing 25% of its profits to charities. The company handles cold-calling and lead generation for sales teams at its clients’ businesses.
Atlas MKE’s need for space to grow helped with the quick turnaround for the 215 N. Water St. building in the Third Ward. Revel Investments of Milwaukee acquired the five-story office building in 2019 from an affiliate of the Dohmen Co. Foundation.
Dohmen moved its operations out of the building’s third and fourth floors in May to its new headquarters on North Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, said Steve Pape, Revel managing partner. EWI Worldwide moved out from its fifth floor space in August.
Since that time, Revel Investments has moved into space on the building’s ground floor, Atlas MKE took the top two floors, and a third tenant Pape declined to disclosed is finalizing a lease for half of the third floor.
Pape credited the leasing activity to a much-discussed “flight to quality” among office tenants that are seeking workplaces that are attractive to employees.
“That flight to quality theme, at least for the Third Ward market, I think it holds true,” Pape said.
Pettengill said Atlas MKE is committed to operating in the Walker’s Point and Third Ward area, which is one way it found the Water Street building as a future home after outgrowing its space in The Tannery campus building coincidentally named "Atlas."
“We have reached our capacity here (in The Tannery),” he said. “We could find a room in Wauwatosa or in Franklin, but we are part of this community. We in our bylaws have married ourselves to the Walker’s Point and Third Ward area.”
Pettengill, a veteran of the U.S. Army, said the company’s charitable contributions include gifts to Milwaukee Homeless Veterans Initiative and Walker’s Point Youth and Family Center. The company in its first year of business donated $35,000 in profits to nonprofit organizations, and its employees performed 1,900 hours of volunteer work that counted as paid work time at the business.