City of New Berlin Activity & Recreation Center

A vacant Walmart store in New Berlin has a new life thanks to a partnership between Burghardt Sporting Goods and the city of New Berlin.

The two teamed up to purchase the building, with Burghardt owning and using 82% of the building and the city using the remaining 18% for its new City of New Berlin Activity and Recreation Center. The city also built a 57,000-square-foot addition to expand the center’s capabilities. Moore Construction Services worked to bring the project to life.

The Activity & Recreation Center includes space for the city’s recreation programs, including summer day camps, a teaching kitchen, a dance/gymnastics studio, multipurpose rooms for fitness and art classes, an accessible indoor playground, an indoor gym with three basketball courts, six volleyball courts, nine pickleball courts, a concession center and meeting space, an elevated running/walking track and exercise space.

Constructing the large gymnasium required unique methods and materials, including long-span roof joists that were shipped in two pieces and erected with two cranes and bolted together in the air.

The New Berlin Activity & Recreation Center has generated a lot of excitement among community residents and spurred additional nearby development, said Bridget Fritz, director of business development with Moore Construction. For example, the property directly adjacent to Burghardt’s is being redeveloped into a new Sola Salon.

Located at the highly traveled intersection of National Avenue and Moreland Road, Burghardt’s and the recreation center attract “exponentially more people to the retail center, catalyzing more investment in that area and dramatically improving the quality of recreational programming for residents,” Fritz said. “The city’s Summer Day Camp numbers alone have almost tripled from previous all-time highs.”