Last week Thursday, the Daily Reporter honored its Top Projects of 2017 and Wangard received three of those awards! As recently published by the Daily Reporter… nearly 700 leaders in the construction industry were in attendance Thursday night in Milwaukee for The Daily Reporter’s 19th annual Top Projects of 2017 event. Fifty projects from around the state were honored, including the Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commons project, The Corners of Brookfield, Uline’s corporate headquarters and the Memorial Union and Alumni Park at UW-Madison were honored at the event that took place at Potawatomi Hotel and Casino.

Wangard Partners was honored to receive three of the 50 awards including the 1433 North Water Street (Downtown Milwaukee), Freshwater Plaza (Walker’s Point) and Milwaukee Tool (Brookfield) developments. Check out the development stories below as well as the video from the evening courtesy of The Daily Reporter.

1433 Project Marries Past to Present

Crews Take a Fresh Approach to Freshwater Plaza

Milwaukee Tool Powers its Way Out of Recession

Bader Rutter’s high-profile move to downtown Milwaukee has been a huge benefit to recruiting employees, while at the same time impressing clients with its new riverfront location.

The advertising and marketing firm is the anchor tenant of a newly renovated, 122,200-square-foot building that melds the historic former Laacke & Joys building with a state-of-the-art glass and steel addition at 1433 N. Water St. along the Milwaukee River in downtown Milwaukee.

The open concept design, flooded with natural light, includes numerous conference rooms, huddle rooms, gazebos and seating areas, many with a river view. Check out the attached slideshow to get a look at the unique office space.

Greg Nickerson, Bader Rutter chairman, said the new office has impressed clients and helped recruit employees.

“The ability to walk into our building and immediately feel the energy has been a win,” he said. “We have many out-of-state clients. This new office space puts Milwaukee in a great light, and clients walk away impressed with our city.”

The many features helped Bader Rutter win a designation as one of Milwaukee’s Coolest Offices by the Milwaukee Business Journal in its 2018 awards program. Bader Rutter is the first of 10 firms that have earned that designation in the newspaper’s awards program.

The winners will be featured on the Milwaukee Business Journal’s website over the next two weeks and in our April 23 weekly edition.

The Bader Rutter development also recently won a 2018 Milwaukee Business Journal Real Estate Award. You can read about that award by clicking here.

I caught up recently with Nickerson to talk about the office and its unique features.

Q: Talk about the process that was used to determine the look of your office space? “For more than a decade, Bader Rutter served office space clients, such as OM Workspace, OfficeMax’s work furniture division. We helped them be thought leaders and, as a result, had some really good background on the industry. We patiently watched the open office trend emerge and read the critiques of its shortfalls. We approached the move to this space knowing both best practices. We had the luxury of time to digest the open office trend and to how we as an agency work and could use the space.

“We knew our look would be influenced by a couple of things right away: the historic Cream City brick features of part of the building and the river. That meant a real design challenge of layering in and respecting the old while blending in the new construction in a design that capitalized on the view and energy the river provided.”

Q: Has the office space been helpful in recruiting and retaining employees? “Absolutely. Clients, prospective clients and candidates both tell us they love the space. It has been helpful in recruiting when candidates see the workspaces as well as when we advertise that our headquarters is in downtown Milwaukee, close to many amenities and opportunities. The ability to walk into our building and immediately feel the energy has been a win. We have many out-of-state clients. This new office space puts Milwaukee in a great light, and clients walk away impressed with our city.”

Q: Can you explain some of the unique aspects of the space and how it is helpful to employees? “We intentionally built a centralized hub of activity with our café and grand staircase. It greets you as you enter, and a coffee bar, café and river view create an inviting and comfortable space. With tall café tables and soft seating at a fireplace, this area has become a way station for employees to connect between meetings or a place to host meetings.

“More building features are the three large overhead doors that open onto the riverwalk. Our common area, the Backyard, offers general seating and meeting space with two of the glass doors, and one of our client conference rooms has the third door. These open-air spaces are employee favorites.

“Another feature of the building is our neighborhood team design. Although it is an open concept office, employees all have their own desk area and desks are arranged in neighborhoods related to the clients served and the type of work those groups do. This has streamlined our workflow, especially as teams speak casually across their space, solving problems in real time.”

Q: Why was the café included and how often it is used for special occasions?

“In our previous space, we had a small array of vending machines stashed away in the basement. In this building’s design, we capitalized on the fact that our business runs on caffeine and a centralized coffee station and kitchen table encourages staff members to bump into each other and gather. We built the café to feature the coffee and elevated the vending machine options to healthier, fresh choices, centralized in the space to bring people together.

“Beyond the food and vending side of the café, the larger, open café and Backyard area are frequently used for events. From our annual football season kickoff tailgate party to Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day and other typical celebrations, we’ve recently begun using the café for all-agency announcements and events. We can accommodate seating in the area, have adjusted our sound capabilities to provide audiovisual for café speakers and have run some successful workshops and announcements there. The space is used for an all-agency event or announcement at least once per month. We also have hosted local community groups, Greater Milwaukee Committee events, an upcoming MMAC after-hours mixer and university groups.”

Q: Being on Milwaukee’s riverwalk, how did you work this community asset into your design?

“We have made the river part of our internal décor. Large floor-to-ceiling windows open up the building to the river, and our teams have access to the riverwalk from both our Backyard area and from our own parking lot. For all our windows — not just those on the riverwalk — we deliberately chose a nontinted glass to keep our building open to the public and to help our employees see themselves as part of the neighborhood.

“Once we arrived at 1433 N. Water St., we invested in a pontoon. We use the boat to reward employees and to entertain clients. We’ve involved the community by hosting local planners, representatives of Milwaukee Riverkeeper and developers on boat rides to help us learn the Milwaukee story as told from the water so, as we entertain clients on the river, we can talk about development and economic growth from that unique vantage point.”

Company information:

• Company: Bader Rutter

• Address: 1433 N. Water St., Suite 100

• CEO/President: Jeff Young

• Number of employees: 275

• Square footage of office: 58,447

• Architect/Designer: PRA

• Number of years in space: One year, as of April 25, 2018

View the entire article as published by Mark Kass – Editor-in-Chief, Milwaukee Business Journal here.

Wangard Partners Inc. is proposing a new business park that could break ground this summer in Sussex, and already has been approached by about a dozen companies that need land for new buildings.

“There is almost a 400-acre deficit of industrial park land in Waukesha County today,” said Stewart Wangard, president and CEO. “We have many firms throughout Waukesha County who are looking for sites so they can expand.”

Responding to that demand, the Milwaukee developer is working on a business park for an almost 70-acre property it owns at Highway 164 and Highway K. The company is in talks to get village rezoning and financial assistance to build a business park on most of the land.

Wangard said he hopes to start moving dirt this summer, and have sites ready for building construction to start later this year once new roads are in.

Wangard and Sussex officials were talking about this property in 2015. At that time, about 20 acres were tabbed for retail uses. The latest proposal has about 3.5 acres along Highway K reserved for new retail buildings. Wangard said there already is enough land on the market to meet retailers’ demand, but companies need acres for manufacturing plants, distribution centers and offices.

“When we started off, the community had requested additional retail, and there is very strong demand in all of southeastern Wisconsin for business park sites,” he said. “This project is designed to meet the needs of both manufacturers and those who distribute products.”

The project plan also preserves about 12 acres of natural areas on the northwestern edge of the property. Wangard Partners preserved a barn in that area that dates back to the 1800’s and was part of the original homestead on the property, Wangard said.

That northern, more natural area of the property could be developed for a company’s corporate campus, Wangard said, or for senior housing. The barn could become an amenity as part of a corporate campus, or converted into an entertainment or event venue, he said.

Plans under review from the city see potential for about 700,000 square feet of buildings that would create $47 million in new property value. To make it happen, about $4 million must be spent on site improvements, according to a Sussex report.

The village is in talks with Wangard over creating a tax incremental financing district to pick up some of those costs, according to a Sussex official. No details are available. The TIF district would use property taxes generated by the $47 million in new land value to pay off those site prep costs.

The Sussex review of the project will start with an April 17 review by the Plan Commission.

View the entire article as published by Sean Ryan – Reporter, Milwaukee Business Journal here.

Northwestern Mutual’s corporate headquarters in downtown Milwaukee was named Project of the Year Thursday as part of Milwaukee Business Journal’s 2018 Real Estate Awards.

City of Milwaukee officials have praised the new Northwestern Mutual building as a vote of confidence in the downtown real estate market. Northwestern Mutual is major owner and investor in real estate nationwide, so its decision to put this level of investment in Milwaukee sends a meaningful message to other companies.

Construction of the building also created work for hundreds of Milwaukee residents and several local small businesses. Northwestern Mutual and its lead contractors, Gilbane Building Co. and C.G. Schmidt Inc., strongly enforced local hiring and small-business contracting goals during the project.

Northwestern Mutual built the 32-story tower to house 1,100 existing employees, plus another 1,900 employees who could be added by 2030.

“We needed residents of the city of Milwaukee to have the opportunity to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime construction project that Northwestern Mutual was undertaking,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said.

The Wangard Partners projects and the category that they were honored in are listed below:

• Best New Development – Industrial

Milwaukee Tool – Phase I Expansion

• Best New Development — Retail

Freshwater Plaza

• Best Renovation – Office

Bader Rutter & Associates

View the entire article as published by Mark Kass – Editor-in-Chief, Milwaukee Business Journal here.

The Freshwater Plaza mixed-use development in Milwaukee’s new Harbor District will likely be getting more apartment and stores, instead of an office building.

Both Freshwater Plaza’s zoning change and a Harbor District water and land use plan received unanimous recommendations for approval Tuesday from the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee.

Freshwater Plaza, which is north of E. Greenfield Ave. and east of S. 1st St., is the first new commercial project in the Harbor District.

Wangard Partners Inc. opened Freshwater Plaza’s first phase, a four-story apartment building with street-level commercial space, in late 2016. Retail buildings, including a Cermak Fresh Market, have since opened.

Freshwater Plaza includes a vacant lot, owned by the city Redevelopment Authority, that was set aside for a future office building.

Under the zoning change, Wangard Partners can now instead pursue conceptual plans for a six-story building with 76 apartments, a parking structure and 46,000 square feet of retail space.

Stewart Wangard, Wangard Partners owner, and Ald. Jose Perez, whose district includes the site, said the change is needed because of strong demand for additional housing and increasing demand from new Walker’s Point residents for retail services.

Also, there’s been little interest from prospective office tenants at Freshwater Plaza.

City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux initially opposed the zoning change, saying the site’s original plans considered an office building an important part of Freshwater Plaza.

But Marcoux told committee members that department officials can accept the additional residential and retail building as long as it meets proper design standards.

Read the full article as published by Tom Daykin of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here.