By Teddy Nykiel – Contributing writer
Barry Mandel isn’t one to spend a lot of time thinking about legacy.
Thinking about the details of a project? Sure. About how a deal needs to come together? Absolutely.
About how a development will serve residents, how it will spur nearby growth, how it will stand out from its peers? All the time.
But legacy?
“The truth is, I never think of my legacy,” he said recently. “It’s not part of my makeup. I’ll let it be written by others.”
That legacy has been written in bricks and mortar, with projects built by his eponymous company reshaping the path of the Milwaukee area.
“He led the resurgence of downtown Milwaukee by building multifamily housing, which enabled all sorts of people — young students, young professionals, empty nesters — to move downtown, and that caused many businesses to then want to locate their headquarters downtown, which then brings restaurants and retail,” said Lubar & Co. CEO David Lubar, a long-time friend. “So it’s all kind of a closed system, but it had to initiate somewhere.”
Mandel didn’t set out to lead a resurgence. In fact, he didn’t set out to be a developer at all.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earning a law degree from Georgetown University, Mandel worked as a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri, helping others put together deals. But the desire to be the one doing the deals brought him back to his hometown, where he led Trammell Crow’s Wisconsin residential division.
In the early 1990s, he founded Mandel Group. One of the company’s first projects was East Pointe Commons, the redevelopment of a long-vacant spot where a freeway had been torn down in the 1960s.
“We were the pioneers,” Mandel said recently.
That project proved there was an appetite for downtown living, and more projects followed — both by Mandel Group and others.
But the company’s focus — both downtown and in the suburbs — wasn’t on building structures, Mandel said: “We’re not creating buildings, we’re creating communities.”
From the beginning, Mandel believed in the importance of walkable, inclusive spaces.
“To create surprises where we provide for public space and public inclusion within our developments,” he explained, was central to the mission.
At East Pointe and in other projects, that meant transforming former industrial or contaminated properties into neighborhoods that invited people in.
Mandel Group Senior Partner Bob Monnat, who’s worked alongside Mandel for decades, said those choices weren’t the easy ones — they were the right ones. “Each product that we then produced, each community that we built became a signature element and a one-of-a-kind in a portfolio of work,” he said. “Barry has never done the conventional, easy, what the experts have told him he should do sort of business.”
That mentality carried over to the company’s suburban efforts. “We really set out to build communities that really didn’t want apartment,” Mandel said. “And we wanted to set a very, very high bar so that other apartment communities would have to at least meet our standard.”
Sarah Jelencic, Mandel’s longtime attorney, has seen this vision play out in countless projects. “He wants everybody to walk away from the table happy, or at least satisfied, or feel that something good has happened,” she said.
Integrity also defined his relationships outside the company.
“You have a person who, regardless of who he’s dealing with — it could be a resident, it could be an associate of the company, it could be an investor — high integrity across the board,” Monnat said. “He does what he says he’s going to do.”
Creativity, too, was a constant.
“Each project has been a unique design, which reflects his creativity and the creativity of his team and his architects,” Lubar said. “It’s not trying to squeeze every penny out of an attractive design. … Each one is unique.”
Mandel’s impact on the area extends behind his building, with a range of philanthropic involvement — including playing a major role with the “I Have a Dream” Foundation. Through that program, he is looking to have generational change, shaping the lives of 100 elementary school students over the coming decade.
Jelencic said that approach was part of a pattern. “He doesn’t want to just help one person,” she said. “He wants to put in a framework that lifts everybody up.”
Everyone — from students to residents to the real estate community.
Added Lubar: “We’re fortunate that he’s been here in Milwaukee rather than somewhere else.
