Construction of the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center reached a major milestone on Thursday, May 31 as the City of Milwaukee issued the building’s certificate of occupancy, which now allows the Milwaukee Bucks to occupy portions of their new facility. On schedule to reach completion in summer 2018, workers continue to put the final touches on the building and transition the facility to ongoing operations.

“We are extremely pleased to reach this important milestone early and look forward to completing the arena over the next couple of months as scheduled,” said Mike Sorge, Construction Executive at Mortenson.“ It’s been exciting to see the project progress so well and we are grateful to all the exceptional craft workers and incredible project partners who have enabled us to get to this point.”

The groundbreaking for the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center was on June 18, 2016 and more than 3,800 workers have worked more than 1.8 million hours on the project to date.