Berghammer Construction: Shaping Southeastern Wisconsin for 90 Years and Driving Toward the Future

February 06, 2018
There’s a new era of renewal taking place in the Greater Milwaukee Region. Some projects are big and bold, changing the city’s skyline. Others are quieter, steadily moving forward one by one, but still playing a vital role in progressing Southeastern Wisconsin’s business development and culture.
 
Berghammer, in typical Midwestern fashion, has been at the forefront of this quieter construction movement – not just building, but building with innovative solutions that help their clients serve their customers better. This era, which includes projects of many shapes and sizes, will go down in history. And Berghammer, now under a new leadership team in its 90th anniversary year, is helping to shape this history.
 
2018 marks Berghammer’s 90th anniversary
 
Since 1928, Berghammer Construction has been building Wisconsin’s business landscape and culture, shaping Milwaukee and surrounding communities through unique projects and innovative solutions with incomparable customer service.

In celebration of its 90th anniversary, Berghammer has dug into its archives to appreciate and celebrate its rich history. Even many on the new leadership team, who’ve been with the company for years, didn’t know some of these new intriguing facts recently dug up about Berghammer’s past:
 
  • Hunting on Milwaukee’s lakefront? That’s right. One of Berghammer’s first projects, with construction starting in 1928, was the Milwaukee Gun Club, a trap shooting range on Milwaukee’s lakefront
  • A futuristic roof before Calatrava? It’s still there! Check out Elm Grove’s 1957 St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church, which featured one of North America’s first concrete compound curved (“hyperbolic paraboloid”) roof structures.
  • Helping build Milwaukee’s future leaders? Did you know Berghammer played a vital role in the 1950s in shaping Marquette University’s campus, including Life Science, Gym wings, Facility Plant, Library and Administration buildings?
  • The first to add skyscrapers to Milwaukee? The 18-story Central YMCA Building, located at 915 W. Wisconsin, was built in 1957 as the first skyscraper built downtown since 1930. For a time, it was Marquette University East Hall, and today is known as Straz Tower.
 
New team leads the company into the future
 
As Berghammer celebrates its past, its focus is firmly on the future. A new ownership group has recently taken over the company after Lief Nesheim was at the helm for 30 years. But just like Berghammer executes its projects, the leadership transition was so seamless, not a whole lot changed. In fact, some didn’t even notice. And that was actually the plan all along. 
 
With Jim Parks now at the helm, he intends to use both his traditional and non-traditional experience to foster the next phase of growth for the company, and much like his new role, he believes that Berghammer's most important work doesn't need to be in the spotlight.
 
Business as usual for the five partners at Berghammer means staying on the front lines of all their projects, going the extra mile whenever necessary to ensure success, and keeping an open-door policy to encourage employee collaboration.
 
The new ownership team includes:
  • Jim Parks – President & Principal
  • Kevin White – Executive President & Principal
  • Martin Chapa, LEED AP – Vice President, Healthcare Construction & Principal
  • Matt Iwanski, PE, LEED AP – Senior Project Manager & Principal
  • Chris Rosene – Chief Financial Officer & Principal
 
The wide breadth of talent and experience on the leadership team was a strategic move the company planned for years in order to allow Berghammer to diversify projects across many different sectors in the construction marketplace, including healthcare, churches, senior living, industrial, office, educational, restaurants and mixed-use complexes.
 
For more about the leadership team, see the ownership group page on the Berghammer website.