An unnamed company is planning to build a facility and bring 250 jobs to Century City, marking the most recent milestone in the redevelopment of the former A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive site on Milwaukee’s northwest side.
According to an advisory from the Department of City Development, the company will construct a new 175,000-square-foot production facility in the business park near West Hopkins Street and West Capitol Drive.
City officials, including Mayor Tom Barrett and area Alderman Khalif Rainey, were scheduled to announce the name of the company and more details about its move this afternoon. However, the announcement has been held off until later in the week.
Although a DCD spokesperson declined to name the company on Tuesday morning, it is a “long-established Wisconsin company,” according to the advisory.
“The company anticipates breaking ground later this year and beginning operations in 2021,” the advisory states. “Initially it will bring 250 people to its new location; that number could grow to 500.”
The 80-acre Century City was once home to A.O. Smith’s large manufacturing campus, where thousands of employees helped produce millions of automobile frames.
In 1997, the company sold its automotive products business to Tower International, which then shut down the Milwaukee complex in 2006.
The site was acquired by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee in 2009. Since that time, the Redevelopment Authority has worked to prepare the site for development.
Currently, two other companies are operating in the business park. Milwaukee-based Good City Brewing recently moved office and warehouse operations there after buying the 53,000-square-foot Century City One industrial building at North Capital Drive and North Hopkins Street. The company occupies the southern portion of the building and has made the rest of the space available to other tenants.
Spanish train maker Talgo Inc. also has operations in the business park in a facility located at the northwest corner of North 27th Street and West Townsend Street.
Talgo left Milwaukee after then-Gov. Scott Walker canceled plans for a high-speed rail system in the state, for which the company had been making trains. But the company later returned to the city to perform work on a $73 million contract to overhaul rail vehicles for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It then received another $139 million worth of work from the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which it will also perform at Century City.
