Boldt Lifts Modular Preconstructed Apartments

Appleton-based Boldt last week showed its modular prowess after a crane lifted 46 preconstructed apartments onto the future Trout Museum of Art at Lawrence University.

For seven days, Boldt used a crane to lift 46 units, each 74-foot by 13-foot, to make up the top two floors of a four-story, 120,000-square-foot mixed use project in downtown Appleton. The $38.5 million project will feature a 30,000-square-foot art museum on the first floor and market rate apartments overhead with opportunities for future student housing.

Boldt crews shut down College Avenue and moved units from a crane in the middle of the street, said Jonathan Ballmer, a vice president and general manager at Boldt. The company saved around nine months compared to building two floors from scratch by having the units built off-site in Minnesota and transported by truck, he added.

“There’s the efficiency of time and cost that go along with extended construction duration,” Ballmer said. “The site is very compact in terms of what the building represents relative to the site. Part of (the lift) ties into minimizing the impact to the neighborhood and the community. … By shrinking down the window of time we need for the installation of this unit, it dramatically decreases the amount of activity versus having all that work happen on site,” he added...