BUILDING BLOCKS: Fiserv Forum

(Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Bucks)

Project name: Fiserv Forum

Address: 1111 Vel R. Phillips Ave, Milwaukee

Size: 730,000 square feet, 128 feet tall, with seats for 17,500 during basketball games

Cost: $524 million, $250 million of which is coming from public subsidies

Start month: June 2016

Completion month: July 2018

Owner: Wisconsin Center District

Construction Manager: Mortenson Construction, Golden Valley, Minnesota

Architect: Populous, Kansas City; HNTB Corporation, Kansas City; Eppstein Uhen Architects, Milwaukee

Significance to the region: The Fiserv Forum, named after the Brookfield-based financial-services company Fiserv Inc., is the latest in a series of projects that’s slowly transforming downtown Milwaukee. Like the Bucks’ former home – the BMO Harris Bradley Center – the new arena will be a venue not only for basketball games but also touring acts such as The Killers, Justin Timberlake, Pink, Elton John and Fleetwood Mac.

The Fiserv Forum is outfitted with the latest in communication and display technology. It will have more than 300 distributed-antenna systems and 16 wireless-access zones, ensuring fans can use WIFI services throughout the premises. The arena’s center-hung scoreboard is more than 3,900 square feet in size, making it the large of its type in use in the NBA.

More than 3,800 craft workers spent two million total work hours building the Fiserv Forum. Just over three-fourths of the project’s contracts went to Wisconsin companies.