The Mandel Group announced that it recently began foundation pile driving at The North End development, the $175 million mixed-use residential and retail project on the site of the former Pfister & Vogel tannery along the Milwaukee River in downtown Milwaukee. The eight-acre property is the largest brownfield site in downtown Milwaukee. "We’re excited to kick off the next step in development of The North End, laying the foundation for a vibrant new downtown community for Milwaukee," said Richard Lincoln, senior vice president of Mandel Group and project manager for The North End. The driven foundation piling will be completed this month. The pile system at The North End consists of steel pipe piles filled with concrete, which are pneumatically driven with a hammer and crane.
Over 300 piles with a total weight of as much as 100 tons will be erected in the coming weeks to provide a solid foundation for the new buildings. The former Pfister & Vogel tannery buildings have been demolished to make way for the new development. More than 25,000 tons of concrete was salvaged from the demolished buildings and pulverized using a 72-ton, quarry-grade crusher. All of the concrete was recycled and reused on-site as base fill, forming the subgrade base for the first phase of the development, which will include 83 apartments and 15,000 square feet of retail space. The first phase of the North End is expected to be complete by the spring of 2009. Later phases of the development will include 395 condominiums and another 15,000 square feet of retail space. The entire development is expected to take 5 to 7 years to build out.
