Wisconsin Builder | Top 20 Projects of 2001

Open for Business

Construction team battled snow,
schedules for Mayfair Mall expansion

By Ellen Hickok-Wall
Daily Reporter Staff

Retail

The second-floor expansion of Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa offers new merchants selling teens' and women's fashions, children's merchandise and home furnishings. Hunzinger Construction Company added the second floor without sacrificing any shopping days. Crews worked around the clock to avoid disrupting mall hours, while third-shift workers performed demolition work at night.

Photo courtesy of Hunzinger Construction Company

Project Name: Mayfair Mall Expansion

Location: 2500 N. Mayfair Road, Wauwatosa

Owner: General Growth Properties Inc., Chicago

Architect: Carroll Associates Architects Ltd.

Engineer: Giles Engineering, Waukesha (concrete and soil testing, asphalt reinforcing and steel); Harwood Engineering Consultants, Milwaukee (structural and construction sequencing); Syntific Corp., Des Plaines, Ill. (mechanical)

General Contractor/Construction Manager: Hunzinger Construction Co., Brookfield

Project Cost: $25.4 million

Start Date: July 2000

Completion Date: August 2001

Description: The Mayfair Mall expansion increased the size of the retailer to more than 1 million square feet. Hunzinger added a second floor to the mall without losing any shopping days, with crews working around the clock to avoid disrupting mall shopping hours, and third-shift workers performing demolition work at night.

Record snowfalls during the winter of 2000 presented unexpected challenges for workers on the Mayfair Mall expansion - a project that had plenty of other obstacles to work around.

Managed by general contractor Hunzinger Construction Co., Brookfield, the expansion to the Wauwatosa shopping center required adding second-floor space and roofing in the middle of winter.

And what a winter it was.

"The beginning of December, we were trying desperately to get a roof on the second floor," said Jeff Antczak, project superintendent.

"Our project schedule told us that roofing needed to start, and we were ready to do that. The first thing we needed to do was get the roof loaded with the roofing material."

Antczak said the first layer to go onto the roof was insulation.

"Shortly after Thanksgiving, just before Dec. 1, we had seven semi loads of the insulation delivered to the job site and hoisted up to the roof," Antczak said.

Then the first big snowfall hit, he said, and crews struggled to dig out.

"Two days later it snowed again, and it snowed again," Antczak said. "It literally shut us down."

The mall was fully occupied and open throughout the renovation, so snow removal was a multifaceted endeavor.

"During the day, we put a team of 10, 15, sometimes 20 individuals up there shoveling and snow blowing, moving the snow to one area of the roof," Antczak said.

At night, the accumulated snow was transferred to trucks and hauled away.

Once it stopped snowing and the weather warmed up, the crews had to scurry to catch up to the schedule, Antczak said.

Avoiding disruption

A second, equally challenging, facet of the Mayfair Mall project, Antczak said, was scheduling work crews.

"Working around the public, which started with 6 a.m. mall walkers to the last show at the theater letting out at 11 p.m., our window of opportunity was four to five hours," he said.

But that window was governed by Wauwatosa's noise ordinance, Antczak said, so scheduling people to work evening and overnight hours was not the answer. So work crews had to do more work than planned during the day.

"It was due to the graciousness of the store owners and managers and the mall owners that we got the job done," Antczak said. "They were very instrumental in helping us by putting up with a lot of our noise and dust."

Tim VandynHoven, vice president and senior project manager for Hunzinger, said the mall renovation offered "just the kinds of hurdles that we strive for."

"How do you put a second floor on a facility and not shut something down?" he asked. "Other situations might be no-lost-time accidents. That job was 100 percent no-lost-shopping days."

New space

Construction began in July 2000, and the majority of work was finished in August the following year.

The expansion added about 284,000 square feet, including 17,000 square feet for the food court, 170,000 square feet for the mall expansion, 12,000 square feet for a Talbots and 85,000 square feet for a streetscape.

Mayfair's efforts to stay fresh and new appear to be paying off. Area citizens have voted it Milwaukee's best mall for 11 straight years.

That doesn't surprise VandynHoven.

"Mayfair is doing what it takes to stay the prominent mall, or the mall of choice," he said. "They want to be the jewel of all malls.

They're spending money on expansion and aesthetics. The finish level is extremely high and very unique. That's what draws people in and keeps the clientele going back. It's just such a beautiful project."