While the striking rock formations at Mill Bluff State Park in central Wisconsin took millions of years to form, the new Milwaukee Public Museum building inspired by those formations is moving a lot more quickly.
Less than a year after the groundbreaking ceremony for what MPM has been calling the Future Museum – going up at 6th and McKinley near the Deer District – crews from Mortenson – the project’s general contractor – are getting ready this week to pour the fifth and final floor of the building (though there’s also a roof to pour, of course).
“Every day it keeps bigger and bigger,” says MPM’s Chief Planning Officer Katie Sanders are we prepare to tour the site. “We started construction last June and it took several months to put in all of the underground piles that serve as the foundation. For some months now, we've been going vertical and pouring floor by floor and really doing about a quarter of each floor at a time and going in a pattern around the building and as it goes up.”
According to Sanders, the project has been moving along according to schedule and the museum is still expected to open in early 2027.
Topping off is expected by mid-July.
On-site, there are blue balls in rebar cages that are used as a bubble deck inside the concrete pours. These reduce the amount of concrete, making the building lighter, which allows for less steel. Using 20 percent less concrete cuts the carbon footprint.
“We do about a pour a week, generally, and that's on pace according to the schedule,” she explains. “So it's been moving along quite well, and it does really make a difference going by, if you come by once a week or every other week, you can see a dramatic change.”
They’re getting so close to being done with the pour that a mock-up of the exterior concrete panels – being fabricated in Germantown by Stonecast Products – is on-site already.
Passersby can expect to see the 670 panels going up soon. Work will begin on the east side of the building first so that work can restart on the parking garage, which after the foundation was constructed, has been in a holding pattern to allow crews access to the east side to install the panels.
Sanders says the concrete pours should be done in June or early July, and the panels should begin to arrive and go up in June. At that point the exterior of the building will really start to resemble the final product.
“The mockup,” Sanders says, “is intended to serve as a practice run for delivery and installation, and it also serves as a template for the crew to be able to see how things are supposed to be assembled.”
“The panel that you see out there is about half the size of a real panel,” she adds, noting that it is also sort of a “Frankenstein” with facets of all the different panels included, “so that they can start to see how those pieces need to fit together, how they'll come together.”
Before we head out to the site, we look at a tiny mock-up of the mock-up and Sanders points out the many poster-sized printouts hanging on the walls of the construction office conference room, which show in detail the sequencing of the project ... the order in which everything needs to occur for the project to work smoothly.
“The sequencing of the construction is really interesting,” Sanders says. “So you can see here, each image shows what one pour should look like, over here you can see how they're moving stuff around the site. So the sequencing of not just the panels versus the concrete pours, but also the scaffolding and the utility work and the MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) coordination.
“Really just it's been like watching a symphony, seeing all of the different pieces play together and really in a beautifully coordinated fashion.”
With that, we walk outside – thankfully the cool rain has turned to tentative sunshine – and we walk past the Frankenstein panel and a concrete floor test section and Sanders stops to explain the floor orientation in the building, which sort of has multiple sections separated by a trio of light wells that suggest the confluence of Milwaukee’s three rivers.
A C-shaped portion of the building – the larger part – has four floors (the planetarium takes up two, so really it’s five stories) – but in the gap of the “C” there is an extra, so-called “half floor.”
The half floors, Sanders says, are home to the building’s administrative functions, but do have some exhibit space, too.
“Then up all the way to floor four-and-a-half,” Sanders explains, “you can see that each floor is bigger than the last. The building is canted. There's actually an eight-foot difference from the ground to the top. And then as you go through the building, you’ll see the light well is kind of the opposite. It's smallest on the top and then gets bigger through the bottom, and then sheds natural light into the common space.”
We climb up the scaffolding stairs to the second floor where we can see down through a large circular opening. This is the planetarium.
Unlike the current planetarium, this one will have its seating (which will be removable) on the floor below. A dome will be installed atop the circular opening next to which we’re currently standing.
Between the dome and the second-story windows that face out onto the corner of 6th and McKinley, says Sanders, “will have this beautiful blue tile to really give the corner of the building this marquee moment. For cars coming off that McKinley exit it'll be a very dramatic entrance into Downtown.”
Just next to the dome will be the Milwaukee Revealed exhibit.
Just in front of that, facing McKinley will be a calming uplit space that’s directly above the main entrance (actually there are three entrances: on on McKinley, another for school groups on 6th Street and one from the garage).
The museum is calling this and a few other similar spaces, reflection areas.
“There are going to be benches on every floor above the entrances,” Sanders says. “It's a space for people to take a moment away from the exhibits, because one thing we heard regularly in focus groups was that the exhibits can be really overwhelming and people need time to just be able to sit and absorb them.
“And so these reflection lounges are a great way to get some light, which we don't want in the exhibit spaces, and take a break and reflect and calm and let those overly sensory experiences settle before going onto the next thing.”
Though we can’t see the light well through all the scaffolding, we can see the views of the Downtown skyline from each of the floors as we head up to the top, which suggests how beautiful the view will be from the rooftop terrace, which will actually be about 23 feet above where we stand once they pour the floors above us.
Sanders points out where there will be high density storage for collections – a three-story glass window will allow visitors to see into the collections areas – where administrative offices will be, the locations of public and staff elevators, and finally, we look down for an aerial view over the area to the north.
Just behind the building will be the parking garage, but adjacent to that will be a boardwalk over a bioswale, green space and landscaping, outdoor classrooms, a concrete path to the entrance and the sculpture currently being created by artist Mark Fischer at his Germantown home and studio. To the east of the parking structure will be a service drive off Vliet Street.
“We're absorbing part of the street into the property,” Sanders says. “As part of the 6th Street reconstruction, they're narrowing the lanes, so our property line will extend beyond where it is now. So it is a decent size of green space.”
As we look down and envision how the space will look in the future, with families and school children and others streaming into the museum, Sanders adds, “I’m proud of the fact that we gathered so much public input into this project. We listened to what people wanted and used that feedback.”
Sanders also told me that after more than five years working on the project, it is time for her to move on and she will leave her job at the museum, noting that, “it has felt like I've been sprinting a marathon for five years, and it's time for some fresh legs.
“When I joined the museum, there was a big idea that needed a lot of detail and execution and today, a beautiful and iconic building is being constructed and incredible exhibits are being fabricated. I'm so proud of my contributions to this catalytic project and the impact the future museum has already had and will have on Milwaukee and Wisconsin for generations to come. It will always be a highlight of my professional career.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
