Inside Rite-Hite’s New HQ

Rite-Hite’s headquarters. Photos by Jeramey Jannene.

Rite-Hite‘s new corporate headquarters has all of the amenities of a modern office building, but also a dizzying amount of warehouse equipment.

And while it’s the glassy building that the public will see, the company is banking on the numerous loading docks, doors, fans and safety barriers to draw the attention of its customers.

Located just south of Downtown in the Reed Street Yards business park, the two-building complex features a “Customer Experience Center” with demonstration versions of the warehouse equipment company’s products, a “live dock” with a rain simulator and semi-trailers to show how the products work in real-world conditions and a training center where service technicians and customers can learn how to install and repair the various products.

The new complex, which fully opened in March, marks the complete relocation of the Brown Deer company to Milwaukee. Founded in 1965, the family-owned company tracks its success to the 1980 introduction of a dock-locking restraint (Dok-Lok) that secures a trailer to a loading dock. It’s grown substantially since then through acquisitions and new products.

Approximately 300 of its 2,500 employees, consolidated from four locations in the Milwaukee area, are now based out of the company’s headquarters.

CEO Micaela Bomhack said the complex is designed for a corporate arms race to attract the best people. “That was the center of this project,” said Bomhack during a tour last week. She said the complex would also be a global hub to train and grow the company’s service operation, which has employees in 140 countries, and to showcase its products to customers. “We do a ton of fly-ins, so we bring in tons of companies, tell them our story and what’s different about our products and focus a lot on differentiation.”

The four-story, 159,308-square-foot HQ North building sports a signature curved-glass facade that faces the downtown skyline, Harley-Davidson Museum and South Menomonee Canal. The upper three floors have collaboration-focused office space and three open-air decks, while the first floor includes the customer center and an employee cafeteria.

A skywalk across W. Freshwater Way links HQ North with the two-story HQ South and an attached 450-stall parking structure. The research and development-focused HQ South building opened last July and now houses 70 employees. The 108,552-square-foot building houses the training center, live dock, “Rite-Hite university” classroom for employees, additional office space and a research lab.

The company says it’s built for the future. “The buildings were constructed so we could add on,” said Sara Everts, director of corporate marketing and communications. That includes expanding the office building to the west and the research building to the east. Additional office space is also ready to build out within HQ North. “We are pretty actively trying to add business and companies.” Rite-Hite Holding Corporation announced its latest acquisition in early March.

The company hopes to bring more than 500 customers annually through the complex, with each visit starting with a tour of the customer experience center. Once products are identified in the customer service center, their application can be seen across the street in the eight-dock live warehouse area. The short walk between the two also provides an opportunity to highlight the company’s DuctSox fabric ductwork system.

The campus plan has been modified slightly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A virtual camera setup in the live dock area allows for demonstrations to a remote audience. Employees are in the office at least three days per week as part of a hybrid work arrangement.

The cafeteria space is designed to host not only employees, but visitors. Both are treated to free meals from an in-house culinary team. The space, which includes a cafe, also includes a gulf simulator, a number of games, large television and a patio facing the water and skyline. A heavily-traveled public riverwalk segment runs between the patio and canal, connecting Walker’s Point and the Historic Third Ward with the Hank Aaron State Trail.

There is no manufacturing done at the complex. The company’s U.S. manufacturing is performed at plants in Michigan, Iowa and Mississippi.

The development, rumored as early as 2019, replaced the company’s suburban Brown Deer headquarters, as well as the nearby regional office of its service arm Arbon Equipment Corporation, a Historic Third Ward office and a service facility on the far northwest side of the city.

In 2017, Rite-Hite contested a 6.5-acre eminent domain claim from the Village of Brown Deer on its suburban headquarters. In 2020, it publicly announced the move. Beyond leaving Brown Deer, one side effect of the move is that visitors no longer stay at suburban hotels, but are placed at a handful of downtown hotels.

In late 2019, the Common Council approved a $4 million amendment to the tax incremental financing district used to create the business park to fund the relocation of two Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District sewers that cross the business park, but don’t directly serve the 15-acre site. The move was billed as clearing an impediment to development and city officials said it would be required whether the then-rumored Rite Hite relocation occurred or not.

An affiliate of Rite-Hite purchased the 9.4-acre site from General Capital Group for $12 million. Eppstein Uhen Architects led the building’s design, and CD Smith led the general contracting.

Reed Street Yards, the formerly water-focused business park only attracted a single office tenant prior to Rite-Hite’s announcement. Zurn, then a subsidiary of Rexnord, relocated from Pennsylvania to a three-story office building in the business park. The Yards apartment building was completed in 2020 on the district’s eastern edge along S. 2nd St. A substantial amount of other development, including the Global Water Center, has taken place just outside the borders of the business park.

Arthur White founded Rite-Hite. Michael White, Arthur’s son, led the company for years and is now its chairman. Bomhack (née White) is the third-generation leader of the company.

Photos

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Renderings

Pre-Construction Site Photos

Live Dock Area