It took a lengthy six-year process and significant demolition, but two abandoned, blighted buildings—including an old casket factory built in 1919—have finally gained new life in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
The Northern Casket Co. and Winnebago Cheese Factory are now the Brooke Street Lofts, a 62-unit community located just minutes from downtown Fond du Lac. While the lofts boast a playground, a community room, a business center, and more, you wouldn’t have believed it a few years ago. Prior to the transformation by Commonwealth Development Corp. and Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development, the buildings had sat vacant for decades.
“Most people wouldn’t be able to fathom the initial blighted stage these buildings were in, especially the casket factory,” says M+A Design’s Lucus Petrie, project architect and designer. “Graffiti everywhere, deteriorating wood everywhere, and, with a hole in the ceiling, water continued to pour in for quite a while. We had 4 feet of water to remove when we started, and it took three months of demo to get it to ground zero where we could even begin to move forward with construction.”
The $20 million project overcame many challenges along the way, including the remediation of lead-based paint and asbestos, but still finished on budget and ahead of schedule.
“While the project took six years of attempts for it to be feasible for development, once closed, it finished on budget and ahead of schedule,” says project developer Jonathan Nesburg of Commonwealth Development Corp. “It now offers 62 beautiful and unique affordable homes to the community.”
Units at Brooke Street Lofts are reserved for residents making between 30% and 60% of the area median income. Numerous residents were on the verge of homelessness prior to its opening.
