Milwaukee's Bet on Cargo: Mitchell Airport Opens a 337,000-Square-Foot Air Cargo Center Built for 747s

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport opened its new Air Cargo Center on Wednesday, October 14, completing a 337,000-square-foot freight facility built to handle the largest cargo jets in commercial service — and to convince Wisconsin manufacturers that their goods no longer need to truck south to Illinois to fly.

The facility, developed with Dallas-based Crow Holdings under a public-private partnership, sits in the MKE Regional Business Park on the campus of the former 440th Airlift Wing. It can accommodate five Boeing 747-400 aircraft simultaneously. Airport officials project it will generate more than $1.3 million a year in aircraft landing fees and more than $1 million a year in ground lease rents and fees, alongside the jobs and tenant business a working cargo hub pulls in behind it.

Military ground, second life

The land has been waiting for this assignment for nearly two decades. The 440th Airlift Wing transferred to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina in 2007 and was later deactivated; its Milwaukee campus was turned over to the airport in 2008 and rebranded as the MKE Regional Business Park. Some buildings found airport uses and others went to short-term tenants, but the site — a full military airfield campus sitting beside an international airport — remained one of the most valuable underused parcels in Wisconsin aviation. The cargo project is its anchor tenant moment.

"Today marks an exciting new chapter for Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport and our entire region," Airport Director Brian Dranzik said at the ribbon cutting, describing a facility that began as a vision to transform underutilized airport property into an asset for Wisconsin businesses and a bigger role for Milwaukee in the movement of goods.

Private money, public land

The financing is the other half of the story. Most of the roughly $75 million capital cost came from private sources: Crow Holdings funded construction under a long-term ground lease with Milwaukee County — a 50-year term — with the county holding the option for all improvements to become its property at the end of the lease. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley praised the structure at the project's groundbreaking for delivering one of the largest drivers of economic activity in Wisconsin at no cost to airport or county taxpayers.

Construction began in February 2025 after years of planning, with ARCO/Murray as general contractor. The scope grew as it went: the project expanded by nearly 50,000 square feet during development and took on large-scale repairs to roughly 16 acres of public taxiway beside the site — work that allows modern wide-body cargo aircraft to operate on that side of the airfield consistently for the first time. The development also delivered a new Milwaukee County highway maintenance facility. Earlier project materials estimated the hub could more than quadruple the airport's cargo capacity, with apron flexibility for pharmaceutical and cold-storage freight, Class 1 cargo and other specialized users.

The build-out was a regional production in itself. Project partners included CBRE, The Sigma Group, Westwood Professional Services and architect GMA alongside ARCO/Murray, and the finished site pairs the cargo building with the county highway maintenance facility and the taxiway work in a single coordinated development — the largest construction project on the airport's south side in a generation. Airport and county officials have framed the return in three currencies: the direct revenue in landing fees and ground leases, the tenant payrolls a working freight hub supports, and the harder-to-count value of keeping Wisconsin logistics spending in Wisconsin. The airport's own summary of the opening promised the facility would support job creation, attract new business and strengthen the region's position as a growing hub for air cargo operations.

The Illinois pitch

The business case was never subtle. From the first announcement, the airport and Crow Holdings pitched the facility as an alternative for businesses looking to avoid the congestion, delays and higher costs of shipping through Illinois airports — Chicago's orbit, specifically, which has absorbed generations of Wisconsin freight by default. The argument to a Wisconsin manufacturer is simple arithmetic: cargo that starts in Wisconsin should fly from Wisconsin, saving the truck leg, the tolls and the queue. Airport officials also argue a busier cargo operation lowers overall operating costs at Mitchell, which can help attract passenger service as well as freight.

Whether the freight follows the concrete is the question every speculative cargo build asks — Crow invested ahead of finalized tenant commitments, betting on regional manufacturing demand. What Wednesday settled is the supply side: the building is real, the apron can take five 747s at once, and Milwaukee now has the physical plant to make its pitch. Crow Holdings has tapped a CBRE leasing team to market the space on its behalf, and the tenant hunt targets freight forwarders, cargo carriers and logistics firms — the operators whose signatures will turn a ribbon cutting into a route map. The next chapter — signed tenants, scheduled freighters, tonnage on the books — is the one that decides whether the bet pays.