Waukesha City hall : a new home for the ‘public’s business’

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Waukesha’s new city hall, the third at the site since the start of the 20th century, is an up-to-date, 55,000 square-foot building at East North Avenue and Delafield Street in downtown Waukesha.

Beginning in September 2019, the project’s first construction phase included the new building and a skywalk connection. Plans for Phase Two called for razing the existing city hall, building a new parking lot and final landscaping work.

Standing at the crest of a 30-foot hill with busy downtown streets to the south and northwest, the project required ingenious engineering to ensure heavy machinery and materials could be brought to the site. Daniel Grams, Greenfire project manager, said, “The site orientation all together, the way that the building was situated, proved to be challenging. Sitting 20 or 30 feet higher than the parking lot just next door, only 12 feet away from the existing building, and we had to make sure all the employees of city hall could continue working.”

The project features a three-story glass curtain around an open atrium, a fourth-story mechanical penthouse containing critical building systems, and a 55-ton, 183.5-foot-long steel skywalk connecting the first-floor commons to a parking garage across North Avenue. This massive undertaking was months in the planning. The skywalk was set in two picks, requiring municipal cooperation for road closures.

“That was two days,” said Grams. “When they lifted those all the way into the air, they needed two cranes per piece. And when they set them down, they fit perfectly, fortunately for us.”

The building itself is composed of a large variety of materials.

“The first story was all very dark, almost black granite,” Grams said. “We had three different colorations of limestone for the rest of the building. The masonry contractor said it was one of the most significant masonry jobs in the state. Few projects utilize such massive stone.”

Grams is happy with the finished product. “The most rewarding aspect of the project was seeing it in its final condition,” he said, “an impressively large building situated on the top of the hill overseeing the city.”