Treats awaited guests at the groundbreaking ceremony. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Chancellor Mark Mone addresses the crowd. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Dignitaries including Chancellor Mark Mone and UW System President Tommy Thompson lift a toast Wednesday to the start of a new chemistry building at UWM. In the background is an excavator set to break ground on the project. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
The crowd lifts a toast to the project. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Cubes are carbon dioxide, a.k.a. dry ice, got the lemonade smoking. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
UW System President Tommy Thompson talks with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Chancellor Mark Mone (from left) talks with Scott Gronert, dean of the College of Letters & Science, and UW System Regent John Miller. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
An excavator scooped the first dirt at the site of the new chemistry building. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
An artist's rendering shows an aerial view of the new chemistry building from the southeast. (Kahler Slater)
This artist's rendering of the new chemistry building show the view from the north. The building at left is the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex. (Kahler Slater)
This rendering shows a collaborative area in the lobby. (Kahler Slater)
A rendering shows the lobby of the new building. (Kahler Slater)
A research lab in the new building. (Kahler Slater)
A project 10 years in the making, UWM’s new chemistry building finally broke ground with a ceremony on Wednesday, Jan. 26, at the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex, which is adjacent to the site of the new building.
Dignitaries including Chancellor Mark Mone, UW System President Tommy Thompson, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Scott Gronert, dean of the College of Letters & Science, toasted the project with lemonade (made to “smoke” with dry ice) as an excavator outside dug the first scoop of frozen dirt on a near-zero day.
“This new facility will represent much of what the Wisconsin Idea is all about,” Thompson said. “To meet the state’s biggest and thorniest challenges and, most importantly, to equip our students with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed.”
The new four-story, 163,400-square-foot building will serve as a gateway to the STEM buildings and departments that house those subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It will include space for the nearly 5,000 UWM students who take chemistry and biochemistry classes each year.
Construction is scheduled to be completed in late 2023 or early 2024 at a cost of $118 million.
