Dohmen, a life science services company, purchased a 42,141-square-foot building at 417 E. Chicago St. in the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee for $10 million, according to state records.
The building will become the company’s new corporate headquarters. Dohmen Chief Executive Officer Cynthia LaConte said the firm will move 110 employees from Menomonee Falls to the Third Ward building during the third quarter of 2014.
“We’re delighted to be moving back to Milwaukee’s beautiful Third Ward,” she said. “Our company was founded more than 155 years ago just a few blocks from the location that we’ve acquired. We’ve branched out across the U.S., including operations in San Francisco, and Ontario, Denver, St. Louis and Memphis, but our roots remain firmly planted in Milwaukee, where we were founded in 1858.”
The company moved its headquarters from Germantown to the Third Ward in 2009, and earlier this year temporarily moved the headquarters to the offices of its DDN and PlanIT businesses in the 800 Woodland Prime building in Menomonee Falls. That building was acquired last year by Kohl’s Corp. and its current tenants will be relocating.
The move of the Dohmen headquarters to Menomonee Falls was the first step in bringing the company’s Wisconsin operations together and next year all of those operations will move to the Third Ward building, said Dohen spokeswoman Carole Pfeil.
The one-story Third Ward building was constructed in 1964 on a 2.1-acre block. The building is completely vacant. Previously Milwaukee Magazine formerly occupied much of the building’s office space and a few bars, including Fanatics, also occupied space in the building.
Dohmen plans to completely renovate the building, and will occupy the entire building, Pfeil said.The building was sold to Dohmen by the Kathleen D’Acquisto Irrevocable Trust. It has an assessed value of $3.387 million, according to city records.
