Diner, Euro cafe and burger takeout planned on Brady St.

Brady's Corner, a project that would combine a diner, a 24-hour European-style cafe, a walk-up window for butter burgers and perhaps a rooftop beer garden, is planned for 707 E. Brady St. on Milwaukee's east side.

The hybrid business would open at the site of the former Hybrid Lounge, the front of which faces Van Buren St.

Salvatore (Sam) Sivilotti, whose mother grew up off N. Warren Ave. in the Brady St. neighborhood, wants to open Brady's Corner and, in the long term, develop other buildings nearby.

Sivilotti has applied for a certificate of appropriateness from Milwaukee's Historic Preservation Commission. The certificate would allow him to make changes to the exterior, like the large windows he wants to add to brighten the interior. Brady St. is both a national and local historical district.

"It’s important for us to maintain and preserve what’s going on on Brady Street," Sivilotti said.

The L-shaped building wraps around the corner of Brady and Van Buren, with the two-story portion dating to 1890. It has few windows on the Brady St. side.

If the city backs the changes Sivilotti is proposing, he'd buy the building from owners Ashok and Usha Bedi. Usha Bedi operated the Indian restaurant Dancing Ganesha in the building from 1997 to 2007.

Sivilotti operates Natural Solutions, based in Menomonee Falls and operating in 17 states. The company owns large trucks that apply mulch to landscapes.

Sivilotti noted that the east side's only diner with breakfast items is Ma Fischer's on N. Farwell Ave. The lower east side's longstanding diner, the Brady Street Cafe, closed in 2009.

The new diner would be "traditional, old school," Sivilotti said, and occupy the first floor of the building. The second floor would have a 24-hour European-style cafe, like the ones Sivilotti saw on a trip to Italy, serving espresso, coffee and tea. 

He's proposing a walk-up window at the back of the building, where the kitchen would be, selling butter burgers and fries late at night on weekends in summer. Sivilotti noted the window would fill a street-food void since food trucks aren't allowed to park on Brady St.

He'd also like to add a rooftop beer garden with a rotating list of Wisconsin craft beers and some wines and sangria on tap. The beer garden would look toward downtown. Ideally, Sivilotti said, he'd like to install retractable glass panels so the garden could be used year-round.

Sivilotti said he has a restaurant operator lined up but declined to disclose the operator's name.

The project is expected to be reviewed at the Historical Preservation Commission's meeting April 11. If all goes as planned with the project, Brady's Corner would open in the second half of the year; delays could push the opening to spring 2019, Sivilotti said.

"Brady could use revitalization" on its quieter west end, he said, in addition to the opening of The Diplomat restaurant last year and the expansion of Casablanca restaurant in 2012.

"We want to create some buzz on that corner," he said.

Nearby, at 615 E. Brady, Up-Down, a company that operates bars serving craft beer among classic arcade games in Minneapolis, Des Moines and Kansas City, is building a new bar at the site of the former Comedy Cafe. The Brady St. neighborhood itself is densely residential, and nearby N. Water St. has become more residential with the construction of apartment buildings.

Sivilotti, 29, said his great-grandparents emigrated from Sicily to the Brady St. neighborhood. He likes to think they'd be pleased to know of his plans. The project, he said, "kind of cements our history" into Milwaukee. 

"We’re not in this for three years, we’re in this for 20," he added. "We want to be a staple in Milwaukee."