Since 2007, Lowlands Group has steadily added to its restaurant portfolio, beginning with the Café Hollander on Downer and most recently rolling out a Northwoods concept via Buckatabon in 2020. Tuesday night, they quickly added a couple more as the Greenfield Plan Commission reviewed an ambitious venture at the 84South Development.
Working with Cobalt Partners, Lowlands Group officially revealed its plans for the Lokal, which will include:
- The sixth Café Hollander location and the first to have a single floor
- The Feisty Loon, “a playful junior of Buckatabon” that leans into its big brother’s Up North vibes
- An outdoor space with its own bar and food options focused on brick-oven pizza
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to develop our most ambitious project so far in Greenfield,” Lowlands CEO Eric Wagner said in a release. “We spent months getting to know the community, and we really hope to deliver an amenity that will serve as a gathering place for the entire area. This great corner is going to be highly activated, and our guests will be able to bounce between the restaurants and the outdoor space and make an entire evening or a whole day out of it.”
The setup has shades of Lowlands Group’s dining duo in Wauwatosa: Buckatabon to the west and Café Hollander to the east, although the area between them isn’t quite what you’d call a gathering place. The Greenfield project will most certainly check that box. Plans for the middle ground include a biergarten and general green space for a variety of things that bring people together, including live music, viewing parties for sporting events and backyard games.
The Lokal’s overall footprint will be sizable, with Café Hollander taking up 8,800 square feet and the Feisty Loon 9,300 square feet. Lowlands Group didn’t provide a measurement for the outdoor space, but the renderings below will give you a pretty good idea.
The Kubala Washatko Architects will design the restaurants and green space, with design and build-out support from Three Sixty, and Innovative Construction Solutions serving as the project contractor. The plan is for construction to begin in the spring and the restaurants to open in late 2023 or early 2024, and the outdoor area to follow around summer 2024.
