The historic, 15-story Wells Building was Milwaukee’s first skyscraper, completed in 1901. It features classic architectural details of the period: a stunning white Italian marble lobby and grand staircase, detailed domed mosaics, and an ornamental terra cotta exterior with brass finishings.
But inside, there’s far more than meets the eye.
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Beyond the splendid façade and arched entryway, its primary use isn’t offices or condos. The building has found new life as a network-dense hub known as a “carrier hotel” for web-based service providers and, at the same time, a burgeoning data center.
Since purchasing it for $7.25 million in September 2020, New Jersey-based Fifteenfortyseven Critical Systems Realty has invested upwards of $20 million updating the building’s high-tech infrastructure. With 130,000 square feet, it’s considered Wisconsin’s most “connected” office building, due in large part to its proximity to the extensively wired local AT&T headquarters next door.
The Wells Building houses nearly 30 data and telecommunications carriers, including Spectrum, Charter Communications, CenturyLink and AT&T.
“This building has operated as a carrier hotel for 20 or so years, but it occurred without any real organization,” 1547 Chief Revenue Officer John Bonczek says.
When 1547 first took an interest in the property, it found seemingly endless threads of twisted cable and wire coming into and running through the building, which served as a telegraph hub before eventually transitioning into an important site as a modern day carrier of internet and cloud-based traffic. “It was a beautifully chaotic mess of opportunity,” Bonczek says.
But the building lacked the core infrastructure needed to efficiently operate network equipment that require significant amounts of power and cooling. The building, which also houses a few traditional office tenants, had a hodgepodge of framework stemming from one-off infrastructure projects carried out by individual occupants.
“Some of them put their own cooling systems in place using city water, basically opening up the spigot and having it run constantly,” Bonczek says. The building also lacked any permanent back-up generators that are critical for ensuring interruption-free service.
Many of the building’s upgrades are situated behind secured glass-walled rooms or are hidden in windowless spaces behind locked doors.
Investments by 1547 include a series of cooling towers that sit atop the building’s roof amidst a panoramic cityscape backdrop, as well as a chilled water loop and equipment necessary to maintain an uninterruptible power supply. A pair of large, turquoise-colored generators sit out of plain view on the second floor – there’s a pad installed for a third and room for five more on the opposite side.
Building security has been beefed up with the installation of multiple cameras and restricted entry. “It’s not just because the equipment is expensive but what’s going over the network is mission-critical for our tenants,” he says.
It’s the kind of facility necessary to make the modern internet and telecommunications world work. “With all of the growth in content, carrier hotels in markets like Milwaukee, which has been primarily served along an interconnection emanating in Chicago, are becoming more important,” Bonczek says.
Beyond infrastructure investments, 1547 has converted 5,000 square feet of the building to a data center. Two additional entire floors will be renovated to host data center operations for a range of businesses, including banks and financial services firms.
Data center services are primarily for “edge” storage for new and more in-demand data, as opposed to infrequently accessed data that lives in larger centers.
“Once something is created it never goes away and [eventually] goes to live in one of those massive data centers once people stop looking at it,” Bonczek says. “But the stuff that is created and looked at today is going to sit at the edge in a center like this.”
Demand for edge data centers is soaring, fueled by the advent of 5G mobile service, cloud-based technologies and increased demand for high-speed streaming, among other factors, says Scott Schanke, professor of information technology management at UW-Milwaukee.
“With the advent of 5G, we are starting to see more ‘internet of things’ applications, and being able to interface with these edge data centers can get you a faster response time,” Schanke says, who adds that location matters with such services. “With video streaming, you can cache or save a lot of this content in these edge data centers. It’s better to have these centers in closer proximity to the people who are using the technology.”
The Wells Building does have a few traditional office tenants, and Bonczek says 1547 could invest an additional $20 million to $30 million in the building over the next five years or so.
“At the end of lease terms, if it makes sense, we will exit office tenants and continue to build this type of infrastructure to support the real value of this building,” he says.
