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This story is part of The uprising in Sherman Park: 10 years later, a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service series examining resilience, collective action and ongoing efforts to address the inequities that sparked a pivotal moment in Milwaukee’s history.
Ten years after the Sherman Park unrest, the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace in Milwaukee stands as a reminder of how the neighborhood chose to rebuild.
The marketplace, opened in a former bank building at 3536 W. Fond du Lac Ave. that was damaged during the unrest, has helped dozens of small businesses grow while becoming a gathering place for the community.
As Milwaukee marks 10 years since the tragic events that unfolded after a police officer shot and killed Sylville Smith on Aug. 13, 2016, business owners reflect on what the Sherman Phoenix has meant to them and their businesses.
Some businesses have stayed
When the Sherman Phoenix opened in November 2018, it was home to 27 small businesses. It has since been home to about 60 small businesses. Now, the marketplace houses about 16 businesses.
For Alan Moore, an owner of 2 Kings Barbershop, the Sherman Phoenix has been home since the day it opened. He says being part of the business collective has been unlike any other experience in his career.
“I love it,” Moore said. “I’m a people person, so I like working with other people. A lot of people here were becoming business owners for the first time, so we were all taking the same journey together.”
He spent more than two decades cutting hair before moving into the Sherman Phoenix. But unlike the stand-alone barbershops he owned previously, the Phoenix put him alongside restaurateurs, retailers, artists and other service providers.
“I’m working next to people selling clothes, people selling food, people providing all kinds of services,” Moore said. “Listening to their experiences and watching them grow helps me grow as a businessman.”
That diversity, he said, is what makes the Sherman Phoenix unique.
“I like to call it Black Wall Street,” Moore said. “It’s like a small city of businesses all under one roof.”
The model didn’t just attract customers – it drew attention from across the country.
Moore remembers visitors traveling from places like New York and Chicago to see the Sherman Phoenix firsthand, hoping to re-create the concept in their own communities.
“People came here to study it,” he said. “They wanted to duplicate what they saw here and take it back to their state.”
Businesses grow
Several successful businesses, including Funky Fresh, The Classic Shoppe and Honey Bee Sage Wellness & Apothecary, had their beginnings inside the Sherman Phoenix.
Among the entrepreneurs who took the journey was Adija Greer-Smith, owner of Confectionately Yours.
Greer-Smith joined the Sherman Phoenix just months before it opened in 2018 after meeting JoAnne Sabir.
Sabir, co-developer and co-founder of Sherman Phoenix, encouraged her to turn her successful home-baking business into her first brick-and-mortar location.
“I told her I didn’t have the resources,” Greer-Smith said. “She said, ‘I’ll help you. Don’t worry about all those particulars you’re worried about. If you think you really want to run a business, I can help you be successful.’ ”
With support from community leaders and loyal customers, she opened her bakery that November.
But just over a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic threatened everything.
“I just didn’t believe for a second that that was it for me,” she said. “I was like, all this didn’t come up this fast just for me to be closed this fast.”
Instead of shutting down completely, she launched a cookie drive that donated nearly 30,000 cookies to organizations and corporations while the bakery was closed to the public.
When businesses reopened, she says those acts of service came back around. Corporate catering orders helped sustain the business during one of the most difficult periods for small businesses across the world.
In 2021, Confectionately Yours expanded with a second location inside the African American Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin, 1920 N. Martin Luther King Drive.
Greer-Smith says the Sherman Phoenix gave her the opportunity to grow but also exposed the realities of running a business.
“There’s so much more to opening a brick-and-mortar than just your desire and your ability to do good work,” she said. “You have to know so much and have different resources to help you be sustainable.”
Looking back, she believes the Sherman Phoenix fulfilled its mission but there are lessons to be learned.
“I think the idea, the concept, the leadership, all of those things were great,” she said. “But it moved so fast. The resources for businesses to sustain and grow weren’t all in place yet.”
She says that changed over time as leadership added more support for entrepreneurs.
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Greer-Smith said. “The developers created the opportunity, but over the years everyone learned that businesses needed more support to stay successful.”
Confectionately Yours has evolved from a bakery into a full-service cafe, catering company and event venue. It employs eight employees at its North Martin Luther King Drive location.
“We’ve shown strength. We’ve shown resilience, and we’ve shown growth,” she said. “With growth, change is necessary.”
Challenges for Sherman Phoenix
The organization experienced leadership turnover, with Stacia Thompson departing as president and CEO in October and being replaced by Interim Executive Director Romero McCants.
The marketplace’s delinquent property taxes made headlines in 2025, though it has made some payments since then.
McCants told NNS in December that the organization was working on three-year strategic planning, with an emphasis on building internal capacity, expanding community engagement and increasing support for tenant businesses.
According to McCants, retail and food-based businesses continue to face challenges amid broader economic pressures, making community support especially important.
The goal was growth
For Sabir, seeing the Sherman Phoenix reach its seven-year milestone is both humbling and gratifying.
“My co-founder, Juli (Kaufmann), and I were able to create an institution that lives beyond us,” Sabir said. “It lives beyond the community vision and into a new community vision.”
Today, Sabir watches from a different vantage point as new businesses, new leadership and new collaborations continue to shape the space.
“In a time where a lot of brick-and-mortar businesses are not surviving, the Sherman Phoenix is still going strong,” she said. “When you ask me how I feel, I feel grateful.”
Sabir says the project has grown far beyond what she imagined when it began.
“We answered a call to action,” she said. “I don’t think I could have imagined how broad and expansive it would become beyond the bricks and mortar, beyond the desire to support emerging entrepreneurs.”
She describes the Sherman Phoenix as more than a collection of storefronts.
“It’s an entrepreneurial home,” she said. “An ecosystem, a hub and a model for community advancement.”
Although entrepreneurs have come and gone over the years, Sabir says she still follows many of their journeys.
“Watching everybody and seeing what’s possible when people bring their collective gifts to the table has been incredible.”
These days Sabir has relocated to Florida but works as a strategic consultant focused on community development and land reclamation projects across the Midwest, helping organizations acquire land and develop projects designed to strengthen neighborhoods.
She says the Sherman Phoenix helped shape that path, and she’s grateful to everyone who has carried its mission forward.
As the Sherman Phoenix begins its second decade, there continues to be both promise and challenge. For some businesses, the Phoenix became a permanent home. For others, it served as a launchpad.
Its greatest legacy, people say, isn’t just the businesses that have occupied its storefronts. It’s the entrepreneurs, relationships and community that continue to grow because of it.
“For me, it’s a model of cooperative economics, a model of being stewards of relationships and gifts that I have been able to look into across the nations,” Sabir said. “It’s more than what I could have imagined.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Sherman Phoenix remains a symbol of growth for Milwaukee business owners is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
