Bukacek gets ready to roll the presses

Exposed structural steel columns on the roof of The Journal Times building open the door for vertical expansion. Photos courtesy of Bukacek Construction

Those 10-inch bumps represent the future.

They’re the tops of the structural steel columns that support a new storage and insert building going up for The Journal Times in Racine. They’re capped and set at regular intervals on the roof, and while no one can see them from the street, Bukacek Construction knows exactly why they’re there.

“Right now, the building is for the storage of inserts,” said Peter Jundt, Bukacek’s project manager/estimator on the job. “Eventually, it will have an inserter, and, potentially, the back half will be for a new press. That’s a long time in coming, but they’re getting prepared for it.”

When that day comes, Bukacek can return to the site, remove those caps and, essentially, turn the building into a convertible. Jundt said Bukacek could add on to the structural steel columns, build new walls around them, put on a new roof and rip out the old one, adding up to another 30 feet in height to accommodate a new press.

But that’s for another day. Right now, Bukacek is concentrating on completing the 10,000-square-foot, 30-foot-high building.

When the contractor first started working with The Journal Times three years ago, Jundt said, the plan was to construct a storage building at another location. But Lee Enterprises, the project owner, opted instead to place the new structure next to the newspaper’s primary building on a tight downtown site.

“There was a parking lot to the north of the building,” Jundt said. “We took the footprint of that lot and placed the building in the space. The Journal Times now has an entire block on Wisconsin Avenue.”

The masonry walls of The Journal Times' new building are self-supporting, while the structural steel is designed to support the roof. Photos courtesy of Bukacek Construction

But that site had a history. Because it’s in the downtown, the property was home to a variety of different structures over about 100 years, Jundt said.

“It was kind of interesting the things we found,” he said. “We found foundations from old houses and buildings. We found a cache of old milk bottles, and we found old medicine bottles and old porcelain doorknobs.”

But Bukacek got the site cleaned up, and, as the project enters April, the contractor should have an enclosed building and will be nailing down the interior work.

And when Bukacek completes the building, it will turn its attention across the street, where the contractor will tear down an old firehouse and city garage and replace them with a depressed truck dock and masonry structure for deliveries.

It’s a lot to accomplish, but Jundt said Bukacek is ready.

“Every day is a challenge,” he said.

- Chris Thompson