Inland reshapes history in the Third Ward

Members of the 222 East Erie project team work on the steel framing of the fifth-floor penthouse in December. Photos courtesy of Inland Construction

Historic renovations aren’t easy.

It’s a fact that Inland Construction is living with every day on its renovation of the 222 East Erie building in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward.

“It’s easy to grab a piece of land and build up,” said Mark Schnoll, a partner with Inland. “There are a lot of moving parts when you start tearing apart a building.”

There also are a lot of uneven floors, and there are walls buried beneath layers and layers of old paint. And on this particular building, years of wood settling has left the structure a little out of square.

“It’s a 114-year-old building that’s been renovated a number of times over the years,” said John Halaska, Inland’s project manager. “That leaves you with holes cut in ceilings and floors and all kinds of unforeseen circumstances. It’s been challenging to say the least.”

But it’s a challenge worth tackling as Inland moves closer to transforming the building’s space into a first floor for retail and commercial and the rest for high-end offices. And the contractor is topping it off with a 7,500-square-foot, fifth-floor penthouse.

“The existing building was a true four-story with a 5,000-square-foot, fifth-floor penthouse,” Halaska said. “We tore the fifth floor down and built a new, bigger one that houses mechanicals.”

When complete, the building will attach to the nearby Historic Third Ward parking structure and feature two new stair towers, four floors with new bathrooms and two new elevators. Supporting the new elevators forced Inland to plant helical piers 40 feet deeper than the bed of the nearby Milwaukee River, Halaska said.

The 222 East Erie building is in the midst of a top-to-bottom renovation. Photos courtesy of Inland Construction

And as the job moves into February, he said, the project team expects to be nearing the finishes stages of the job. But getting there wasn’t easy.

“We spent a month on interior demolition, removing old carpeting, old walls and old offices on the first three floors,” Halaska said. “We sandblasted the entire structure of the building to remove years of old paint to bring the wood back to its natural color and look.”

But the end is in sight, and he said the time spent restoring the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, will be worth it.

“When this thing is all said and done, this will be an exciting building,” Halaska said. “Is it going to be one of the best office spaces available in the Third Ward? I truly believe it will be.”

- Chris Thompson