Downtown Appleton and Green Bay are undergoing transformation

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The Boldt Company has been busy in the Fox Cities lately.

The general contractor has taken on multiple projects in its hometown of Appleton, with the Fox Commons and new Trout Museum of Art on College Ave. The company is also undertaking renovations of the former Broadway Center to transform it into the new Green Bay Public Market. Recently, Bold finished expansion of “El Cinco,” for Georgia-Pacific’s Broadway paper mill, which added around 100 jobs to the area.

In Appleton, Dark Horse Development is transforming the former City Center Plaza into a 180,000-square-foot mixed-use redevelopment on College Avenue.

There are four different projects and Boldt is part of two, said Brad Hechimovich, a project manager with Boldt. Crews will do shell and core work of the main building and perform a buildout for Mosaic Family Health on two floors of the northeast corner. Shell and core work is budgeted at $13 million and will be delivered in August, he added.

“The city of Appleton has been a phenomenal partner in working with us,” Hechimovich said, as some public areas such as sidewalks were affected by construction.

Crews remodeled some of the former storefronts both facing the street and inside of the former mall’s halls, getting them ready for future retail uses. In the central building is a large foyer with a small stage to allow pedestrians to sit or watch live music performances, officials said. The space could also be used for farmers markets or other gatherings.

In the northeast corner, Boldt built conference rooms, work stations and wraparound service for doctors and medical students for Mosaic Family Health. Some of the historic brick from City Center will be kept visible in a parking area on the north end.

Subcontractors for Fox Commons include Hurckman Mechanical Industries Inc., Ahern Gross Plumbing Contractors, USA Fire Protection, Northern Electric and Suburban Enterprises.

Further down College Avenue, Boldt oversaw building a $38.5 million, 120,000-square-foot mixed use building on the northwest end of the Lawrence University Campus. Vertical construction was just starting in July, but when the project is completed, it will be home to the Trout Museum of Art and housing for college students.

The museum will move its location into the first floor of the building and use classrooms inside to teach students, said Reece Manteuffel, an engineering intern for Boldt’s Northern Operations. The second story will be offices for Lawrence University staff and music rooms. The third floor will have living units for students, which will be created through modular construction, he added.

In October, crews will shut down College Avenue and use a crane to lift modular units into the third floor before the final button-up, Boldt officials said. The project will be fully delivered in August 2025.

Modular units will be manufactured at RISE Modular in Owatonna Minn. and brought over to Appleton by semi-trucks, officials added.

This will be the first housing project with modular construction applied in Appleton, said Trent Jezwinski, the vice president of Healthcare at Boldt.

California-based Frederick Fisher and Partners provided design services and Neenah-based Davel Engineering & Environmental was the civil engineering consultant for the project, officials said. Ahern Gross Plumbing Contractors and Northern Electric returned to the subcontractor team, while Boldt self-performed concrete, iron work and carpentry.

Up in Green Bay, the company is working with On Broadway, Inc. to renovate the former Broadway Center mall into a public market, like the Milwaukee Public Market in the city’s Third Ward neighborhood. The nonprofit bought the building in 2019 and started construction recently after being delayed due to the pandemic.

The first floor will be home to 20-26 different merchants and vendors with spaces ranging from basic tenant space to access to commercial kitchens, said Mary Rhode, the vice president of marketing and communications for On Broadway. Currently, the nonprofit is working to transition previous office tenants from the second floor.

The next project phase calls for demolition of the glass wall facing Broadway Avenue and push it eight feet toward the street, Rhode said.

“We started to come out with renderings to give people the concept,” Rhode said. “People who had been to public markets understood it. There’s been a lot of education we’ve had to do, that this isn’t a food hall or co-op. We wanted to give them a dictionary definition of what a public market is. Once we got past that point, a lot of people fell in love with what it will be.”

The nonprofit surveys the public often through social media, which helps drive ideas for the development’s future, Rhode added.

The project has a $12.5 million capital campaign goal to pay for renovations, which Rhode said is 70% of the way through. The market is expected to open on April 2025, around the same time as the NFL Draft.

On Broadway’s design team includes Milwaukee-based GRAEF and New Jersey-based RHG Architecture + Design.