Over the noise of cranes and power tools at the construction site of The Couture, soon to be Wisconsin’s tallest residential building, local and national officials gathered Thursday to celebrate the progress on the building, the construction career pipeline it creates and what it all means for the future of Milwaukee.
“Behind me is a symphony,” said Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU). “When you see the men and women who are building that building, it’s some of the greatest music ever played.”
First proposed in 2012, it took nine years for Milwaukee-based development firm Barrett Lo Visionary Development to break ground on the 44-story project near the downtown Milwaukee lakefront.
“At Barrett Lo, my team and I have had the pleasure of being involved in a handful of game changing projects throughout the region,” said Barrett Lo Visionary Development CEO Rick Barrett. “As a Milwaukee guy, the crown jewel for me is The Couture.”
The building will have approximately 45,000 square feet of retail space on the first four floors, 322 apartment units and a new transit center, including a stop for Milwaukee’s streetcar.
So far, the construction at the Couture has created more than 2,000 construction-related jobs and, once completed, the project will create 150 permanent jobs, according to Barrett.
Speaking at the press conference, Mayor Cavalier Johnson said creating a pipeline for workers who come from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds is important to help the city grow.
“It’ll create stability in their lives, it’ll create stability in the lives of their family, it’ll create stability in their neighborhoods, which will create stability in our city,” Johnson said. “In the end, that helps us achieve the public safety that all of us want to see.”
Further, Johnson said that The Couture represents the future of Milwaukee, saying he wants to see more developments like this in Milwaukee’s future.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s taking lead service lines out of the ground or adding peaks to our skyline, like we’re seeing with The Couture, Milwaukee is on the upward swing,” Johnson said. “We’re depending on the men and women in the unions to make that happen.”
NABTU, an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry, is on a national road tour, and stopped in Milwaukee as one of five cities its officials will visit. The Couture’s construction is being completed with 100% union labor, Barrett said.
As of Thursday, the building’s core is built up to floor 33, the floor decks are built up to floor 30, precast panels up to 21, glass is at 16, inwall plumbing at level 10 and drywall level at eight.
Crews are adding, on average, one floor to the building per week.
“Tomorrow we’ll add another floor to that,” said Brian Hornung, chief operating officer of J.H. Findorff & Son Inc., the project’s general contractor. “We’ve put in hundreds of thousands of labor hours, with hundreds of thousands of labor hours to go. Over 38,000 yards of concrete have been poured to date.”
Cost estimates for the project have been around $191 million.
Much of the money came from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, or HIT, which provided $104.5 million in financing and owns the main construction loan for the project. The Couture is the HIT’s largest investment in its history.
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