What’s happening at the community center?

By Kana Coonce

Contributing Writer

KEWAUNEE – Though the building itself is almost 100 years old, Lakehaven Hall celebrates its 10th anniversary serving the public as a community center and event venue this September.

Approximately 7,000 people attend events at Lakehaven Hall annually, according to the center’s website, with over half of the events held there free and open to the public.

Built with Cream City brick in 1927 as part of the Frank Hamachek Machine Company, the building served first as a warehouse, then as a carpenters’ shop for the company until 2002, when the company closed its doors for good.

After that, a group of investors from Chicago had plans to turn the building and the area around it into an art colony, with Lakehaven Hall itself to serve as a storefront, but plans fell through when they went bankrupt.

In 2013, the building was purchased by the Vollrath Company, a Sheboygan-based company that produces industrial kitchen equipment.

Bob Orr, who would go on to become one of the original presidents of the non-profit Lakeshore Community Center (LCC), Inc., had been the plant manager at Vollrath’s Kewaunee location for 20 years at the time.

“I was getting ready to retire,” Orr recalled, “and I said, ‘I’m interested in starting a community center, and that building would be great.’”

Though Vollrath originally intended to use their newly acquired land to install a dust collection system in the factory, Orr persuaded then-president Terry Kohler that donating Lakehaven Hall as a community center would be a smarter financial move for the company.

Vollrath had terms, of course.

If they were going to donate a building, they wanted to donate it to an established nonprofit, not Orr himself, no matter how many years he’d given to the company.

So Orr enlisted the help of a friend of his, a lawyer who was in town at the time.

Together, they established LCC, Inc. as a 501(c)(4), a non-profit designed to promote social welfare.

“[LCC’s mission statement] is fundamentally to preserve the building for the betterment of the community,” said Orr.

“I grew up here, and there were a number of us who remembered the youth club,” Orr explained when asked what motivated him to start a community center. “I’m 74 years old now. Sometime after I left town, the youth club disbanded, and that became a senior center for a while. There was nothing that had a youth focus or was for the entire community, young and old alike. My hope originally was that we would have enough events there that we’d have people drive by and wonder what’s happening at the community center.”

Once LCC had acquired the community center in question — now equipped with bathrooms courtesy of Vollrath — one of their first goals was to set up events that were “open and free to the public,” said Orr.

In order to do so, however, LCC needed to figure out a source of income, both to pay property taxes and utilities and to fund events.

“We had no idea at the time how we were going to fund building improvements,” said Orr. “The only thing we felt strongly about at the time was that we didn’t want to compete with local businesses.”

In August of 2013, they hit their lucky break. Fully booked for weddings, a local venue called up LCC to see if they might be able to offload some of their bookings to Lakehaven Hall.

“Weddings became the only real source of revenue that we needed,” said Orr. “We immediately started 4-5 different events of our own.”

Some of these events, like a weekly movie night held throughout the summer, no longer exist.

“Typically the families that came (to the movie night) were people who couldn’t go to movies,” said Orr. Before each movie, attendees could make crafts related to whatever film was being shown that night.

Other events, like Winter in the Village, Lakeshore Hall’s annual five-day holiday event in which LCC sets up Christmas trees and provides entertainment, and whoever likes can set up their personal Department 56 holiday village collections, have endured over the past 10 years.

“To me, that’s the highlight of every year,” said Orr.

Other regular events include Lakehaven Hall’s Halloween Extravaganza, a two-night affair geared toward youngsters; a garden show held on Memorial Day; and more recently, a smokeout first held last Labor Day.

“They’re funded by some of the events that we book— weddings that we book,” said Orr. Lakehaven Hall is booked for a wedding almost every week between April and October. Orr believes that Facebook is to thank for Lakehaven’s popularity as a wedding destination, with guests coming from — to his knowledge — as far as Madison, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Now that it’s fully self-sustainable, Orr believes Lakehaven Hall’s future is bright.

“I’m proud, but more than proud, I’m happy that this was able to become a reality,” said Orr, reflecting on the past decade, “and time goes fast, but 10 years is probably the period of time when, if you’re not going to make it, you don’t make it. And if you can get through that first 10 years, and you’ve got a stable group that’s committed to making it work, it’s probably going to work, and it’s going to be around for a long time after I’m gone.”

Lakehaven Hall’s 10th anniversary celebration will be held alongside their second annual Smoke N Art Fest on Sept. 2 from 10 a.m. to 4 pm.

The event will feature an amateur meat smoking competition, with judging starting at noon; an artisan marketplace in and around the building; raffles and prizes.