Mass timber buildings are on the rise in Milwaukee, and industry experts anticipate the building method will only grow in popularity.
Milwaukee’s most high-profile mass timber project is Ascent. The 25-story downtown apartment building is going up at 700 E. Kilbourn Ave. and has captured international attention. Milwaukee developer New Land Enterprises said that at 284 feet tall, the 259-unit building will be the tallest hybrid timber structure in the world. Nineteen floors of apartments will be built atop a six-story concrete podium.
The first mass timber project in the city, however, was the 60-unit, $14.6 million Timber Lofts at 300 W. Florida St. in Walker’s Point. Milwaukee-based Pieper Properties Inc. opened it in 2020.Â
And there’s more to come. Madison-based developer The Neutral Project is crafting plans for a 224-unit mass timber structure at 1005 N. Edison St. downtown.
Mass timber isn’t the same as traditional lumber construction, said Adam Arndt, president of Milwaukee-based Catalyst Construction. The firm built the Timber Lofts and is working on Ascent with Fond du Lac-based C.D. Smith Construction.
“Mass timber is large timber combined together to make massive members, i.e., columns, beams and floor structures,” he said.
On Ascent, all the structural components above the parking deck are wood. He said this differs from a traditional apartment building in which the walls and floors are wood but covered in drywall or other material.
Ann Pieper Eisenbrown, owner of Pieper Properties, said she likes mass timber because it is more sustainable than traditional building materials, such as concrete or steel. It also cuts down on construction timelines. There’s also aesthetic benefits to it.
“With a mass timber ceiling you bring in a little bit of nature, a little bit of outdoors, especially in an urban area, which is where most of our properties are,” she said.
Using mass timber cut down the construction time of the Timber Lofts by 20%, said Pieper Eisenbrown. It will also save the Ascent project about two or three months of construction compared to concrete, said Jason Korb, principal architect of Milwaukee-based Korb + Associates Architects.
“The goal is to swing a floor of this building a week,” Korb said. “They’re going to work on Saturdays, so it’s every six days, a floor will go up. So, in theory the timber goes up top-to-bottom in 19 weeks.”
As with anything new, designers and builders go through a learning process with mass timber.Â
Ascent is Korb + Associates’ first mass timber project. Design work took two years, which was partly because of the project changing. But it also involved a lot of learning.
“I sort of liken those first two years to going to a graduate school course on mass timber,” he said. “We were learning, especially in the early days, at a pretty rapid clip, because what we learned as it evolved was that many of our assumptions were wrong.”
Arndt said Catalyst Construction benefited from its experience on the Timber Lofts when approaching Ascent because it knew what to expect with the planning and coordination of a mass timber project.
Ascent was first “built” digitally, meaning details down to every penetration in the floors and structural members were planned out. That prevents time from being wasted in the field resolving conflicts, because those conflicts were caught beforehand.
C.D. Smith spent about a year planning out the build before construction began.
Rich Severson, vice president of C.D. Smith, said crews make penetrations and set mechanical pieces into the floors of a post-tensioned concrete tower as they work their way up. This was the case for the 35-story 7Seventy7 apartment tower in downtown Milwaukee, which C.D. Smith also worked on.
[caption id="attachment_525453" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
An Ascent apartment unit rendering.[/caption]
With a mass timber tower such as Ascent, all that work is planned ahead of time. The pieces are fabricated according to those specifications and then are shipped out ready for installation. There is no cutting or drilling holes in the mass timber on site. It saves time on the field but means more planning on the front end.
“The pre-coordination … that we had to do to get it ready to be fabricated so we can assemble it in the field is extremely different than what you’d see anywhere around the country,” Severson said.
The stakes are high. If any measurement is off it could have a ripple effect.
“When you put those penetrations and plan for that, it darn well better be spot on, because if you move something even four or six inches, wherein normal construction you drill a hole (and) you’re fine, that is not the case with what we’re dealing with here,” Arndt said.
And since mass timber isn’t used widely in the U.S., these Milwaukee projects have to ship the materials from Europe.
The wood that will make up Ascent is a European White Spruce, Korb said. It’s almost pure white and is coming from sustainably managed forests in Austria.
“The Europeans are ahead of the Canadians (and they) are ahead of us (the U.S.), but the Austrians in particular have this down to a science,” he said. “Even inclusive of shipping, they were more price competitive than any of the American or Canadian manufacturers.”
Pieper Eisenbrown said she would have preferred to buy mass timber in North America to reduce transportation costs. But she assumes the material will be more widely available as it gains popularity.
It appears that’s where mass timber is headed.
Korb said his firm is in talks with a few other mass timber projects in Wisconsin, as well as a project in Arkansas. The Neutral Project is also working on a mass timber project in Madison.Â
Arndt said he expects mass timber within the next five years to go from 5% of Catalyst’s work to around 10-15%.
Pieper Eisenbrown said she’d consider using mass timber again on her next project, especially considering how well the Timber Lofts is performing.
“We loved it,” she said. “We love the product, we love the aesthetics. And it’s gone over well in the marketplace. We’re 95% (occupied) right now. We’re happy about that, it’s turned out very nicely.”Â
