New York Times. Washington Post. NPR. PBS Newshour.
Those are some of the major news outlets that have done reports on the Ascent project in Milwaukee. The 25-story, 259-unit apartment tower under construction at 700 E. Kilbourn Ave. has caught national and international attention on its way to becoming the world’s tallest hybrid mass timber building.
“I don’t think we anticipated this level of attention,” said Tim Gokhman, managing director of Milwaukee-based New Land Enterprises, the development firm behind Ascent. “We knew it would be newsworthy, but this is a little bit more of a grander scale than we anticipated.”
You could forgive New Land for focusing its attention on this single project. After all, the project team conducted studies and navigated approval processes that paved the way for mass timber construction of this scale in Wisconsin and the U.S.
But the firm is also building the nearby Nova, a nine-story, 251-unit apartment building at 1237 N. Van Buren St. It’s also building the 66-unit Element at Fifth and Mineral streets in the Walker’s Point neighborhood.
It is New Land’s hustle and innovative methods that kept it in the headlines throughout 2021, garnering its recognition as the BizTimes Milwaukee Best in Business Small Business of the Year.
Gokhman said Ascent will do more than claim the title of the tallest timber structure.
“I actually think it’s less important that we’re setting a world record and more important that we’re serving as proof of concept that tall timber works,” he said.
Although the technology has been around for a while, mass timber hadn’t been widely used in the country. Ascent helps legitimize the building method, Gokhman said.
The project went through 14 tests with the U.S. Forestry Service. Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services is now looking to Ascent while updating its commercial building code in hopes of making the code friendlier to mass timber.
Gokhman pointed to other innovative features of Ascent.
The seventh-floor swimming pool is enclosed and elevated, but the glass is operable, which gives tenants the feeling they’re outside during warmer months. Gokhman said he has heard of a similar pool being built in Chicago but hasn’t seen one anywhere else.
The HVAC system in Ascent is so advanced that the chief executive of Mitsubishi Electric Trane flew to Milwaukee from Atlanta this fall to visit the project site. Gokhman said the heating and cooling systems in Ascent are water-driven. It will use radiant hydronic floor heating similar to other New Land projects, but it will also use variable refrigerant flow technology.
“We do it because it’s all-around a better way to do it for the tenants (and) for energy efficiency,” he said. “In many ways it’s akin to mass timber. We believe that, in the right application, it’s a superior building technology. And we’ve always leaned toward superior building technologies.”
New Land has more plans for the area around Ascent.
The site where Ascent is being built is one of two sites the firm owns at Kilbourn and Van Buren. The other is across Kilbourn Avenue.
“We had always imagined two towers bookending Kilbourn Avenue,” Gokhman said.
This development vision also explains how Ascent got its name. Gokhman’s grandmother’s name started with an “A,” and his grandfather’s name began with a “Z.” His dad, New Land founder Boris Gokhman, wanted the two towers to be named after them. New Land plans to eventually build a “Z” tower.
Tim Gokhman said New Land also builds strictly in urban environments. You won’t see a New Land project in a car-centric community.
“My rule is, if it doesn’t have sidewalks, we’re probably not going to build there,” Gokhman said.
But Gokhman sees plenty of challenges in Milwaukee and ways it could improve. He referenced a recent Brookings Institution study that showed Milwaukee was one of only four major U.S. cities that shrank in population in the past decade.
Milwaukee should look at what similar cities, such as Cleveland, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, are doing differently, he said.
Gokhman said Milwaukee is lagging behind in its built environment – its streets, sidewalks and public spaces. Milwaukee is not pedestrian-friendly, which is a disadvantage as the city competes for talent, he said.
Gokhman said this fact will be a “huge opportunity” for the next Milwaukee mayor. He added that developers can also think about how to improve the sidewalks, calm traffic and achieve other improvements to the built environment as part of their projects.
“There are plenty of opportunities, and there’s certainly the ability, we just have to think a little bit bigger,” he said.
