Business View Magazine | March 2018

171 our parks in the downtown Main Street area.” The Cast Iron at River Shores Complex is a great story of redevelopment of one of West Bend’s iconic industries–the former West Bend Company, famous for producing pots and pans.When the companymoved, that building sat vacant for a long time, until the Cast Iron Group came in and repur- posed the existing structures for residential and commercial, and added new greenfield growth.Not only are the Cast Iron Luxury Living apartments perfect for Millennials and seniors, they are pet friendly.The developer happily shares that occu- pancy is at full capacity and 80 percent of renters have at least one pet. “Speaking of private businesses,we would be remiss to leave out the non-profit organizations that help drive our economy,”says Gitter.“We’re talking about the downtown, filling up those Cast Iron apartments.We also have the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA), a large footprint building that’s driving a lot of trafficto the core.And GOWA (Gallery of Wisconsin Art) is right across the street. The City really appreciates another non-profit called Roots and Branches.They come down with pots and plants and get business owners involved in beautifying the downtown.Millennials, seniors, everyone likes to see so manypeople invested in having a vibrant downtown feeling. It makes it much easier for them to decide to move here.” Directly across the river,west of the Cast Iron development, is an underutilized former brewery building.The City is nowworking through the ap- proval process for a proposed 99-unit,single-fami- ly,market-grade apartment complex. It’s “a monster new building” that will change the landscape from the current assessed property value of $500,000 to an estimated $13.5 million for the newbuilding.