World’s tallest mass timber building breaks ground in Wisconsin

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Dive Brief:

• A construction team led by Fond du Lac, Wisconsin-based general contractor C.D. Smith recently broke ground on Neutral Edison, a 31-story tower in Milwaukee, according to C.D. Smith. Once complete, it will be the tallest mass timber building in the world, according to the project page from its developer, Madison, Wisconsin-based Neutral.
• Neutral Edison will contain 350 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, along with approximately 7,200 square feet of retail space, according to the contractor. 
• The building was designed by New York City-based design firm Thornton Tomasetti, which worked with C.D. Smith on Ascent, a 25-story building located in Madison that was the tallest mass timber building in the world upon its completion in 2022.

Dive Insight:

Neutral Edison secured $133.3 million in construction financing in January, per C.D. Smith. With construction underway, the building is expected to reach its full height in 2026 and welcome its first residents in 2027, according to the contractor.

It will feature a full-floor membership club with a fitness center, health clinic, spa, pool and sauna. The first floor will feature a membership workspace, café and organic grocery store and the top floor lounge will offer a community garden and entertainment deck.

The building is designed with a hybrid structural system, said Daniel Glaessl, partner and chief product officer at Neutral, in an email. Since a large portion of the mass timber superstructure is exposed, it required alternate code compliance — namely a fire rating that is equivalent to a construction type I-A performance, which Glaessl said it successfully tested.

Neutral also needed permits from five different agencies for the water source heat pumps that cool the entire building, Glaessl said. Those pumps utilize the thermal energy of up to 2 million gallons of river water per day, and had only been applied once before in Wisconsin, in an industrial setting, according to Glaessl.

The groundbreaking comes as President Donald Trump’s tariffs cause a significant amount of uncertainty in the industry, particularly among builders and apartment developers. Specifically, new taxes on foreign steel and aluminum will raise prices for contractors, experts told viewers at a June 3 webinar hosted by Swedish builder Skanska.

Nevertheless, those tariffs provide an opportunity for developers and builders to look to mass timber, said Chris Evans, president of Timberlab, a mass timber firm owned by Concord, California-based Swinerton.

“If steel prices go up and tariffs caused that throughout the whole system, then what that will really do is help make mass timber cost-neutral or better in more markets across the U.S.,” Evans said.