UWM’s New Home for Entrepreneurs

The weather outside suggests that Friday Photos should feature an igloo this week, but we’ll instead head to the East Side to check in on a new building on UW-Milwaukee’s campus.

A dual-purpose building is under construction at the northwest corner of the intersection of N. Maryland Ave. and E. Kenwood Blvd. The two-story, 24,000-square-foot building will house a welcome center for the university and, more importantly, the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center.

Endowed by Sheldon and Marianne Lubar, the new center is intended to create a multidisciplinary environment for faculty and students to incubate ideas, build confidence and, ultimately, succeed as entrepreneurs. The Lubar’s gave UWM $10 million in 2015 to support the center’s development.

The Lubar name is a familiar one to the approximately 27,500 students enrolled at the university. Just across N. Maryland Ave. is the Lubar School of Business building, funded by an earlier gift from the couple.

“I believe there is no more important institution in Milwaukee and the state than UWM,” said Sheldon Lubar in 2018. “The university provides a pipeline of talent that is critical for our region’s businesses. We consider our investment in UWM a benefit to every citizen of Wisconsin.”

The center’s website touts four offerings, co-working and collaboration, flexible instruction, innovation labs and maker spaces, and touchdown and launch space.

The cold temperature, a balmy -2 on the thermometer at the time I visited the site, wasn’t enough to shut down construction on the facility. General contracting on the project is being led by SMA Construction Services of Green Bay. The center is being designed by Continuum Architects + Planners.

The project was approved by the State of Wisconsin Building Commission in 2017.

Can’t get enough? A live construction webcam is available on the center’s website.

The building is scheduled to open in 2019.

Photos

Renderings

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