Northwestern Mutual North Tower Renovation

More than a year and a half after Northwestern Mutual announced plans to renovate a building and move nearly 2,000 employees from Franklin to downtown Milwaukee — and a year after the project began — NM offered a sneak peek at the work Thursday.

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The company is spending about $500 million to transform the 395-foot-tall 1990s North Tower, designed by Madison-based Flad Architects, on the north side of Mason Street between Cass and Marshall streets.

That effort began indoors last year, says Tracy Lutterman, NM assistant director of construction management, before the project became especially visible as it moved outdoors.

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“What we accomplished last year was to remove everything from the building, including all of our furniture, carpeting, inventory of equipment in the attic,” she says, as we stand in an open section of the 18th floor, overlooking the Milwaukee lakefront and the company’s 2017 tower on Mason Street.

“NM took care of it and we recycled, we donated. We ended up diverting 1.3 million pounds of waste from the building. We worked with our community partners to donate much of this furniture. So it was all very useful and we reused some of it ourselves,” adds Lutterman.

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“Since then, we have removed all the cladding from the building. Now we can see work underway to extend our floor plate (to create a) curvature that matches our tower next door.”

This redesign is part of work to make the exterior of the 540,000-square-foot building, previously clad in gray stone, mirror its taller sibling across the street.

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The 550-foot, 32-story Tower and Commons project was designed by architects Pickard Chilton, who also did the work to redesign the shorter, 19-story North Tower.

During our visit we saw the roof, which offers stunning views – as do many of the floors below – and we saw workers installing one of the beams that is creating the curvature.

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Before work could begin, says Jake Poull of Gilbane Construction, who is one of the superintendents on the job, some strengthening work had to be done so that some structural elements could support the additional weight.

The building demonstration, he says, offered few surprises.

“Nothing too crazy,” he says. “You always find something like this at a mass demonstration. But it was cool to see how well the structure was built. It was originally started in 1987, 1988 and opened in 1990, and they weren’t building buildings of that magnitude back then, so it was huge to realize that we were able to maintain that and build off of it. This saves a lot of work.”

On the second floor, we saw an area that is being used to simulate areas with a lot of detail, such as bathrooms.

“When we dismantled the panels on the outside of the building, we started at the top and worked our way down,” explains Lutterman. “Now we are rebuilding from the bottom up. So this is a mockup of what we’ll see in the bathrooms going all the way up.

“There are a lot of details in construction, right? So we do a dry run here, we all get into a meeting, we go in and check and make sure everything is where it’s supposed to be, including where the back of the house things are, where the plumbing is, and making sure that our team will take care of this construction going forward, so they have access to everything they need. We make sure it’s right here before they keep climbing.”

Outside, we see the new section of the building being constructed over what had been North Cass Street to create a green-roofed lobby and rooftop garden that will connect the tower to the existing parking structure to the west, which is also being renovated. .

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The parking structure, Lutterman says, is closed for safety but is expected to reopen to employees next year. This is ahead of the tower, which is expected to open, on schedule, in early 2027.

The North Tower will remain connected to the Tower and Commons on Mason Street by an existing walkway.

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According to Lutterman, several spaces in the new complex will be open to the public, including two courtyards, a public plaza and the lobby with an adjacent area that is being called the conservatory.

“This entire project aims to double down on Milwaukee,” says Lutterman. “This is our headquarters. We want to invest here. So part of that is investing not just in our employees and their future, but also investing in the community. So we have a community space that we will see when we look at our square.”

This echoes what Northwestern Mutual chairman, president and CEO John Schlifske said in a statement when the project was announced in February 2023.

“Our decision to build the Tower and Commons downtown made a major statement about the attractiveness of the Greater Milwaukee area as a place to live and work and created job opportunities for our broader community that continue to have a ripple effect through today.

“We believe in Milwaukee – which has been our hometown for nearly all of our 165+ year history – which is why we rose to the challenge to ensure we met and exceeded the bold hiring goals set with the city.”