Northwestern Mutual Plans $500M Milwaukee Campus Expansion

Northwestern Mutual campus rendering. Image courtesy of Northwestern Mutual

While many office users pull back on their footprint, Northwestern Mutual is making a major commitment to the workplace. The insurance giant revealed plans to expand and redesign its nearly 2 million-square-foot home base in downtown Milwaukee, with a $500 million investment that will pave the way for the relocation of 2,000 employees from the company’s 880,000-square-foot campus in Franklin, Wis.

Northwestern’s development project will center on the campus’ North Office Building, a 540,000-square-foot structure at 818 E. Mason St. The property first opened its doors in 1990, joining the campus’s historic 320,000-square-foot office facility at 720 E. Wisconsin Ave., which made its debut in 1914 in all its neoclassical-style glory. In 2017, the firm expanded the campus again, altering the Milwaukee skyline in the process with the approximately $450 million addition of the 1.1 million-square-foot Tower and Commons.

READ ALSO: What’s Ahead for the Office Sector in 2023

Once the City of Milwaukee approves the proposed TIF, Northwestern will be able to move forward with its development plans at the North Office Building as soon as fall 2023. If all goes as planned, the insurer will relocate staff from the Franklin campus over the next three to five years, with an anticipated completion of the construction project in 2027.

Envisioning for the future

Northwestern’s latest development plans at the Milwaukee campus will position the company not just for consolidation, but also for future growth, being about much more than space. The company endeavors to knit the campus together and create an environment that unites employees in a premier environment that encourages collaboration in the workplace, promotes connection with the community and assists in the retention and attraction of top talent.

The development project will be a multi-faceted undertaking. For starters, the company will conduct a comprehensive renovation of the North Office Building that will yield an aesthetic connection to the Tower and Commons facility. The plan also calls for office space redesign to enhance the amount of usable square footage. Additionally, Northwestern will improve employee amenities and events space. Exterior changes are on the agenda as well, with new connecting structures and a pedestrian plaza designed to activate nearby Cass Street.

READ ALSO: Amenities and the New Office

Northwestern, which has maintained a home base in metropolitan Milwaukee for the last 165 years, has a great deal of local government support for its latest expansion project, as it did for its Tower and Commons. The City of Milwaukee has put forth a proposal for tax increment financing for The North Office Building project. If all goes as planned, financing to help facilitate the project will come in the form of a developer-funded tax incremental district.

While Northwestern will initially foot the bill for the project, the company will benefit from having a portion of the incremental taxes returned to its coffers upon completion of certain commitments, including maintaining a minimum of 5,375 staff members assigned to the campus upon the project’s completion, and a minimum of 5,750 employees on site by 2030.

Downtown takes center stage

Northwestern remains in the thick of it, as it grows its presence in Milwaukee’s central business district. Overall, the city’s office market has yet to recover from the consequences of the pandemic; the metro closed 2022 with an average vacancy rate of 21.7 percent and net negative absorption of approximately 142,000 square feet, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield. However, the downtown submarket is seeing substantial activity.

“Need for employees has driven many firms to relocate to the CBD recently,” the report states. “Access to the workforce will continue to determine movement in the market as there has been continued interest by suburban firms in touring spaces downtown, either looking to relocate or open a new branch.”