New Tower Scrapes The Sky
Glass facade on Northwestern Mutual's new tower is nearly complete.
Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commons
The 32-floor Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commons is almost entirely wrapped in glass. The glass curtain wall is coming via a unique partnership that has production humming along in a formerly empty building in the city’s Century City business park. More information on that project is available in an August column, “How To Create Central City Jobs.”
Crews can be seen working virtually around-the-clock on the $450 million, 1.1 million square-foot building. Besides the curtain wall, workers are spread about doing interior work, building a new curb extension to connect the complex with O’Donnell Park and installing skywalks.
Design work on the Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commonsis being led by architecture firm Pickard Chilton, with general contracting work taking place under the guidance of a partnership of Gilbane Building Co. and C.G. Schmidt Inc.
Construction of the building is expected to be completed in 2017.
Work on the adjacent Northwestern Mutual Apartment Tower is moving along as well. Foundation work is well underway, led by general contractor CD Smith. In addition to including 324 rental units, the 34-floor building will include 1,400 parking spaces for residents and employees.
Photos
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While this is awesome for the City skyline – unfortunately they will be laying off an unspecified number of people, which many are considering to be significant. 🙁
I’ve always thought the design for this building was handsome and its turning out to exceed my expectations. I love the transparency of the glass on the lower east side and the notching of the height of the tower on the southwest side. Is the back side of the commons pedestrian friendly. Nope. But, this was in the designs all along and should come as no surprise.
All this said, I hope Milwaukee is happy with the new NML Tower and Commons because, unless something impressive happens, I suspect Johnson Controls is going to bail. You’ve already lost the real headquarters (of both JC and Adient) to Europe. All the talk about a new international terminal at Mitchell is totally about a last ditch effort at keeping JC. And, every interview with Molinaroli is laced with both faint commitment to MKE and many caveats to actually staying there. He’s taking JC in a hugely global direction and, sadly, because I love Milwaukee, I don’t believe the city has the business chops or cosmopolitan nature to keep it. (WI is 50th in entrepreneurial activity…blah, blah, blah. MKE is a great hometown but two-thirds sucks. The greater business community is 73% hand-wringers and sell-outs.)
Be happy with 2-3 new towers, but all the money and financial control is leaving the city. Oh ya, by der. Summerfest.
@Max don’t believe the media lies. The news was leaked to the mefia, wasn’t supposed to get out. Company is going lean management, finding what savings it can and evaluating all departments. Some jobs will be cut, some departments are growing and hiring right now. Media can’t make a story out of that and people LOVE to exaggerate things for their own personal narratives.