Bentley squeezes in for Eastcastle Place

The Yale building meets its end during The Bentley Company's second phase of work at Eastcastle Place in Milwaukee. Photos courtesy of The Bentley Company

If only the gate was a little wider.

Only Don Schliepp truly knows how often he wishes for width while thinking of the 24-foot opening that provides the only access point to the Eastcastle Place project on Milwaukee’s east side.

“Everyday,” said Schliepp, The Bentley Company’s project superintendent on the job. “The biggest challenge is stocking the job and keeping the material readily available.

“We knew it would be an issue, and there are days when we wish we could do more, but we physically can’t.”

And Bentley has plenty to do. The contractor signed on last year to provide renovations and new construction to portions of the six-building Eastcastle Place campus, an elderly care facility formerly known as Milwaukee Protestant Home. The campus sits on an estimated city block-sized lot bordered by St. Mary’s Hospital and Downer, Prospect and Bradford avenues.

“When you look at it from above, we’re building a large project on a postage stamp-sized site,” Schliepp said.

Bentley approached the project in four phases, and the first focused on rerouting power and utilities from the Yale building on the campus. The rerouting was necessary because the second phase called for the demolition of Yale, a phase that Bentley’s team tackled in spring.

With Yale out of the way, Schliepp said, the third phase called for the construction of the project’s centerpiece, which is a 142,000-square-foot, four-story building with underground parking and 59 independent-living apartments. That phase, featuring a mix of precast, masonry, wood frames and poured foundation walls, has presented an entirely new round of challenges.

The Bentley Company digs deep to stabilize a neighboring historic structure. Photos courtesy of The Bentley Company

“One contractor can’t finish all their work,” Schliepp said. “It’s so intertwined. The masonry can’t finish all the walls until the precast is done. The carpenters can’t do their work until the precast is done. It’s a disjointed schedule.”

But as the end of August nears, he said, the framing of the building should be about three-quarters complete, which means the project team is closing in on the fourth and final phase.

That portion of the job calls for an interior gut and remodel of the historic Milwaukee Protestant Home into 23 new independent-living apartments. It also includes a remodeling of three floors of the Bradford Terrace building into skilled nursing and community-based residential facility space.

“It’s going along very well,” Schliepp said. “The project is where it should be. It would be nice to move ahead, but sometimes you just can’t.

“We’ve had contractors willing to work together. We haven’t had to break up any fights or anything.”

- Chris Thompson