Behind the Scenes: Baird’s Enduring Partnership with WCD

Behind the scenes of Baird’s naming rights partnership with the Baird Center is a longstanding Public Finance client relationship with Wisconsin Center District (WCD). Since 1996, Baird has advised WCD on a number of transactions to fund major development projects, such as Fiserv Forum and the Baird Center expansion, with significant positive impact on Milwaukee’s economy.

Fiserv Forum, owned by WCD, is operated, maintained and managed by the Milwaukee Bucks organization. In 2015 Baird worked on the $524 million construction project, which has been heralded as a crucial investment that helped set the Bucks on the path leading to the 2021 NBA championship.       

In early 2019, Baird began working with WCD on a project to expand Wisconsin’s largest convention center. Initially, the financing team’s plan called for a bond offering in late April 2020 to fund the expansion project. However, that March as the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic threatened tourism-related revenue streams, Baird and the others on the financing team quickly pivoted to revise the plan to refinance and restructure existing debt and fund preliminary costs related to the expansion, addressing short-term capital maintenance needs as a result of anticipated revenue short-falls. The revised offering was issued in June 2020.  Later that year, with interest rates near all-time lows and utilizing a revised structure, WCD’s expansion project offering moved forward. 

In October 2020 during the height of the pandemic, the financing team met on the 29th floor of Baird’s headquarters in downtown Milwaukee, in now-familiar masks, to issue $444 million through the bond market. 

Pictured (L-R): WCD Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Steve Marsh, Baird Public Finance Investment Banker John Mehan (retired, 2023) and WCD President and Chief Executive Officer Marty Brooks.