Milwaukee Bucks arena, parking-garage construction progressing

Work on the Bucks arena and related projects is chugging along, with the structural steel nearly finished on the arena and a nearby parking garage “substantially complete.”

The new $524 million arena, being built on 4th Street between West Highland and West Juneau avenues, is expected to be ready in time for the Bucks’ first home games of the 2018-19 NBA season. Tom Bond, vice president of San Antonio-based PC Sports, an owner’s representative for the Bucks arena, presented news on the project’s progress at a meeting of the Wisconsin Center District‘s board of directors on Friday. The district is a quasi-governmental entity that owns the new arena.

Bond said crews are 90 percent finished with placing the structural steel needed for the arena, and the related mechanical, electrical and plumbing work is “about half done. Just across Juneau Avenue, the construction of a new parking garage is on pace to wrap up in October.

“The garage is structurally complete,” with only interior work remaining, he said.

Mortenson Construction’s Milwaukee office is overseeing work on the arena, and Madison-based Findorff & Son is the construction manager for the parking garage.

Both projects are also “exceeding, in every category,” their contracting and workforce-development goals, Bond noted. Among other things, at least 25 percent of the construction spending on the projects is to go to small- or disadvantage- business enterprises. The project teams are also to ensure that local workers certified through Milwaukee’s Residents Preference Program perform at least 40 percent of the needed construction-labor hours.

Beyond the arena and parking structure, work also continues on a team training center and an entertainment district, a development that will have shops, restaurants and other entertainment-related venues.

Also on Friday, board members said they plan at their September meeting to discuss a study looking at a possible expansion of the district’s convention center.

Russ Staerkel, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Center, told the board that consultants hired to perform the study will submit a draft of their findings by Aug. 1. Since the board does not meet in August, they will most likely have to wait a month to take up the proposal.

The board hired a consultant in March to conduct the study. The study was commissioned a couple months after the board had heard from rival proposals to redevelop a nearby city-owned parcel.

Both proposals called for an expansion of the Wisconsin Center District-owned convention center. At least two developers have responded to a request for proposals from the city to redevelop a site at the corner of 4th Street and Wisconsin Avenue. The developers presented their proposals to the board earlier this year.