Can Money Grow on Trees? World’s Tallest Timber Tower Tests Milwaukee Market

Tim Gokhman didn’t set out to build the world’s tallest mass timber tower, but that’s what he’s about to do.

Gokhman, managing director at Milwaukee-based real estate development company New Land Enterprises, is putting the final touches on Ascent, a 25-story timber apartment tower set to open in July in downtown Milwaukee.

For many cities, the construction of a 25-story, 259-unit apartment building wouldn’t be remarkable. But the Ascent project represents the latest, and biggest, example yet of a rapidly growing global construction trend. Once it opens, the 283-foot-tall Ascent tower will be the world’s tallest tower primarily supported by wood that is pressed and glued together in a way that advocates say is as structurally sound as steel or concrete, with a fraction of those materials’ embodied carbon emissions.

And while its project costs may be higher than traditional construction, mass timber towers may also allow their developers and investors to charge above-market rents.

“We weren’t aiming to set a world record, just to create the best building,” Gokhman said.

Timber construction goes back centuries, but more modern timber towers are on the rise in the United States after some recent successes in Europe. The best example yet is Mjøstårnet, completed in 2019 in Norway, which at 280 feet is the tallest timber tower in the world, until Ascent opens to tenants this summer. Mjøstårnet is the third-tallest tower, timber or not, in Norway, and its lumber was sourced from the abundant spruce and pine trees in Norway’s evergreen forests.

Other high-rise, mass timber projects are taking shape as more real estate developers, as well as public officials, take aim at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings are one of the world’s largest contributors, with the production, transportation and assembly of concrete, steel, aluminum and other materials all generating significant carbon emissions. Traditional building materials such as concrete also often end up in landfills when buildings are demolished, leaving a lasting negative environmental impact. Building operations and construction combined are responsible for nearly 40% of annual global carbon dioxide emissions, according to a 2018 report from the International Energy Agency.

The carbon footprint of buildings made with sustainably harvested mass timber can be half that of similar buildings made from concrete and steel, according to a 2021 paper published by the Forest Products Laboratory, and more public officials are taking notice. The French government in 2020 announced a new sustainability law, taking effect this year, mandating that all public buildings be built with at least 50% timber or other natural materials. The city of Amsterdam has mandated that 20% of all new homes built in the Dutch capital be constructed with wood or other natural materials by 2025. London’s mayor also recently announced changes to the local building code, including embodied carbon caps in new construction.

While these are changes that could catch on in the U.S. and elsewhere, Gokhman said there are other advantages to using mass timber as a building material. One of them is biophilia, or the concept that humans innately desire connection with nature. “Turns out, human beings just perform and heal better in environments surrounded by natural elements,” Gokhman said.

New Land Enterprises tried for about a decade to build a tower on the Ascent site, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the company got investors and lenders on board. By 2018, Gokhman decided to build the tower out of wood after reading an article about mass timber.

“Aesthetically, it’s an attention grabber, and we wanted to truly differentiate,” he said.

The team worked with Wiehag, a timber engineering firm based in Austria, to source Ascent’s timber from sustainably managed forests. Gokhman connected with the company through associates at Portland, Oregon-based Timberlab, which helped with procurement, logistics and installation.

Due to its height, the tower is built on a concrete foundation and stacks its white spruce apartments atop a six-story concrete mezzanine housing retail space and a parking garage. The building’s elevator shafts and stairwells are also concrete, while the timber apartments are fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows.

The total project cost is $125 million, with asking rents at Ascent tower now ranging from $1,695 per month for a 573-square-foot one-bedroom unit, to $7,860 per month for a 1,999-square-foot three-bedroom unit. That’s higher than the average $1,256 monthly apartment rent in Milwaukee, an outperforming multifamily market reporting 7.2% annual rent growth and just a 3.3% vacancy rate, according to the latest CoStar data.

Ascent’s interiors include exposed mass timber where possible, and luxury amenities such as heated floors, timber balconies and Wi-Fi-enabled washers and dryers. There’s also a wellness floor that includes an indoor and outdoor pool, retractable glass walls, a sauna, lounge and fitness center. The rooftop features 8,000 square feet of amenities such as a kitchen, meeting rooms, fire pits, cabanas, an outdoor cinema area and shared workspaces.

Gokhman said the development team didn’t just buy lumber. Due to the novelty of the project, engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti and Korb+Associates Architects first designed the timber tower digitally. The tower’s mass timber pieces were then fabricated offsite before being shipped to Milwaukee. The pieces slid together and were stacked like Legos or Lincoln Logs.

Those pieces include timber columns, beams and cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. The panels consist of several layers of lumber boards stacked in alternating directions, bonded with structural adhesives, and pressed to form a solid, straight rectangular panel. These panels are placed flat and the columns and beams are screwed in.

“We were purchasing the exact pieces we knew we needed based on the plans. Everything arrived on site ready for assembly — predrilled within 1/16 of an inch accuracy,” Gokhman said. “We received the timber in weekly shipments — planned so we would receive the lowest-floor materials first, and so on, as we moved up. Each shipment was packed strategically so it could be unloaded in the precise order for each piece to be put into its place.”

Not everyone is sold on high-rise timber construction.

Many cities have banned it due to fire concerns. Notable examples include Chicago, which established a downtown fire district prohibiting many types of high-rise wood construction in the city’s central business district after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that displaced 90,000 people and destroyed nearly 18,000 buildings. The city revised its building code in 2019 to allow mass timber, but only in interior construction and only in buildings up to 85 feet tall.

Even the current iteration of the International Building Code, a model building code aimed at providing a base standard for local jurisdictions, only permits mass timber buildings up to 18 stories.

To satisfy public officials, New Land Enterprises conducted burn tests, both with Milwaukee’s fire department and the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. Those tests found that mass timber can withstand temperatures up to 518 degrees Fahrenheit before it begins to char. That charring, which starts from the outside when cross-laminated panels are used, adds a protective layer that insulates the structural integrity of the wood beams behind the char, said Jodi Hogerton, a marketing manager at New Land Enterprises.

“It creates a more predictable burn, whereas, when you get steel or concrete that hot, they can start to bend or expand in[ward], in ways that aren't quite as predictable,” she said.

New Land Enterprises obtained a building variance from the city of Milwaukee to build higher than the 18 stories permitted by the International Building Code after convincing officials of the tower’s safety.

Another challenge, common to all recent construction projects, involved supply chain disruptions. Specifically, an international shortage of shipping containers led to delays at the beginning of the project, Gokhman said. However, the team did spare itself from last year’s historic rise in lumber prices. Gokhman said his company bought all of Ascent’s timber years ago, upon completing the design of the tower.

Wiechmann Enterprises is New Land Enterprises’ partner in the development, while Ascent’s $87.6 million in construction financing comes from Bank OZK and Hines Realty Income Fund.

Ascent will soon be the tallest timber tower in the world, but it may not be for long. Danish architecture studio Schmidt Hammer Lassen in April announced plans for a 383-foot-tall residential timber tower set to open in 2026 in Switzerland. Other timber towers in the works, including a planned 70-story tower in Tokyo and an 80-story tower in London, aim even higher.

More modest timber construction is on the way in the United States as well. Apex Clean Energy opened its eight-story timber office building last month in Charlottesville, Virginia. Google is opening a five-story timber office building in August in Sunnyvale, California. Timber House, a six-story mass timber condominium building, opened in May in Brooklyn, New York. Seismic testing of a 10-story wooden building this fall in California may further push the boundaries for building with mass timber.

There are still clear obstacles preventing mass timber construction from going mainstream, though. Experts say that conventional construction may still work best for coastal areas. Taller structures, such as the Ascent tower in Milwaukee, may still require a concrete base. And environmentalists warn that humanity can’t log its way out of climate change, and worry that a timber construction trend could lead to the deforestation of old-growth forests, which contain more carbon.

But for New Land Enterprises, the completion of Ascent this summer marks not only the culmination of years of work, it also potentially opens new avenues for developers.

“Initially, no one really knew how challenging this project would be. But yeah, this project is rewriting building code,” Hogerton said.