The City of Milwaukee has unveiled plans for a $700m downtown development which it says “could include” the tallest mass timber tower in the world and the tallest building in Wisconsin.
The city gave no indication of the tower’s height, but said the regeneration scheme would accommodate 750 apartments, 300 hotel rooms, 17,500 sq m of offices, and 3,700 sq m of shops.
It would go up on a city-owned site on North Water Street on the east bank of the Milwaukee River close to the historic City Hall.
Now, it’s a multilevel parking garage for the Marcus Performing Arts Centre.
Last year, the city chose The Neutral Project, LLC as the site’s developer.
Vancouver-based timber specialist Michael Green Architecture (MGA) will design it.
Record upon record
Milwaukee is already home to the world’s tallest mass timber building, the 25-storey, 87m-high Ascent Tower, completed in 2022.
But The Neutral Project says another of its Milwaukee projects, 383-unit luxury apartment building, The Edison – also designed by MGA – is now under construction and will beat that record.
The as-yet unnamed North Water Street scheme would have to beat that.
Subject to council approval, the city will give The Neutral Project a one-year exclusive right to negotiation to give it time to secure tenants and financing.
A million Milwaukeeans
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said he wanted to grow the city’s population to a million.
“To do that, we need to be aggressive and reach for new heights,” he said.
“This project will help us do just that, literally aiming to set local and global records, but just as importantly add density and activity to an underutilised City-controlled parcel in downtown Milwaukee.”
Michael Green commented that the tower would set “a benchmark for achieving urban density and affordability while aligning with our common goal of low-carbon solutions to reduce the significant impacts of our changing climate”.
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