Seeing an opportunity to combine cutting-edge technology, the precision of mass timber construction and experience with urban development, Milwaukee real estate executive Tim Gokhman is taking local mass timber innovation and expertise to the national stage. In March, Gokhman, managing director of Milwaukee-based development firm New Land Enterprises, launched a new venture, called Timber +
Seeing an opportunity to combine cutting-edge technology, the precision of mass timber construction and experience with urban development, Milwaukee real estate executive Tim Gokhman is taking local mass timber innovation and expertise to the national stage.
In March, Gokhman, managing director of Milwaukee-based development firm New Land Enterprises, launched a new venture, called Timber + Partners, a real estate development company that Gokhman sees as an opportunity to deploy New Land’s model of mass timber development nationwide.
New Land Enterprises is the firm behind the 284-foot-tall mass timber apartment tower Ascent in downtown Milwaukee. Opened in 2022, Ascent is the tallest mass timber and concrete hybrid building in the world. Mass timber is a more environmentally friendly way of building and can be more cost and time efficient.
Using the expertise gained from the Ascent project, the goal is to use the building as a prototype for more like it across the country.
“Timber + Partners’ sole mission is to create a new generation of buildings and do it in a way that even most teams across the country that are building with mass timber are still not,” Gokhman said.
“Because the prototype is based on a successful project, it offers a high level of precision in the development process,” is how the firm’s website explains it. “By iterating on a proven design, the amount of time and money spent on sizing and pricing a project in a new market is a small fraction of the typical predevelopment costs.”
The company plans to do this by using a proven set of combinations for things like columns, beams, spans and connections, which can be outfitted for buildings in different markets on different sites.
It’s kind of like IKEA furniture, Gokhman says.
“If you look at the way IKEA produces, IKEA has way more products than it does components because you can take those components and combine them in different ways to create different products,” he said.
This in and of itself is not a new concept – other companies have explored this idea in real estate development before, Gokhman acknowledges – but many of these companies have put the idea of componentization ahead of real estate fundamentals, he said.
“So, all of the sudden, the idea of a repeatable, efficient box takes over and people forget about unit mix, parking ratios, economics and resident preference,” Gokhman said.
What makes Timber + Partners unique, according to Gokhman, is its ability to keep real estate fundamentals front of mind because it’s born out of New Land Enterprises, which has been doing urban infill development for 30 years.
As a company primarily focused on urban development, Timber + Partners is also challenging the notion that building a repetitive product in urban areas is impossible because each site is different.
“It is true that most urban sites have some sort of variability, driven by the size of land, local codes, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t build from a combination of components that are known,” Gokhman said.
What’s unique about this moment in time compared to even a few years ago, is that there is now digital software that enables developers to design much faster and much more precisely than before, according to Gokhman.
“And it’s not a marginal improvement, it’s quantum leaps,” he added.
Mass timber development is best done through a digital design-oriented mindset in part because timber can be cut with a laser to near-perfect dimensions. For instance, for Ascent, all of New Land’s components were one-sixteenth of an inch apart, which is a level of precision concrete can’t achieve, he said.
“You have to make a lot of adjustments in the field (when working with concrete) which costs time and money,” Gokhman said.
The marriage of hardware and software is what allows mass timber and Timber + Partners’ model to thrive, and when combined with real estate fundamentals, building becomes quicker, cheaper and more successful – all of which is important in getting development projects over the finish line, he said.
“If you ask general contractors what percentage of the cost is rework, meaning what percentage of the cost is fixing problems, I’m guessing that number is going to be anywhere from 15% to 30%,” Gokhman said. “That’s a big number, and if you could lower construction costs even by 10%, that’s a meaningful impact.
