Six Grants Approved for 2007

Acting on recommendations from its grants screening committee, the Cedarburg Foundation Board approved $6,000 in six grant requests at its March 6 meeting.
The projects and their grant amounts were:

• North Shore Academy of the Arts, $1,500 to help pay for a changeable set for theater productions.
• Visiting Artists Series, Cedarburg Performing Arts Center, $1,500 to help pay for the appearance of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
• Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Ozaukee County, $1,000 to fund an after-school mentoring program in which at risk at-risk students aged 10 through 14 attend weekly supervised meetings.  .
• Helping Hands Healing Hooves, $1,000 for scholarships to help individuals with developmental disabilities participate in an equine program.
• Peter Wollner Post #288 of the American Legion, $500 to help with the renovation of the war memorial in Cedarburg Veterans Park.

Grant to Improve Scout House

The Cedarburg Boy Scout House in Boy Scout Park near Riveredge Drive and Bridge Road would be given a major make-over under a project initiated by the approval of a grant by the board of the Cedarburg Foundation at its Dec. 5 meeting.

The board voted to approve a $25,000 grant to be paid over five years. Mal Hepburn, past president of the foundation, said that the entire project was estimated to cost $250,000 and he envisioned community support for the rest of the money.

As laid out in preliminary drawings by architect Don Stauss, the nearly half century- old Boy Scout House would get an exterior renovation. This would include a new roof to give the house a larger gabled look, and new doors.

Within the building, a moveable divider wall would be installed in the main hall to allow for breakout meetings. Also the kitchen would be refurbished. The “footprint,” or area of ground covered by the building, would remain the same. To the north of the Scout House, a stone seating circle would be installed and landscaped for the use of Scouts as well as ice skaters who visit the park in winter.

Hepburn said that the Scout House was built in the earily1960s as a concrete block  building. In 1980, a brick exterior kitchen wing and storage area was added along

the south side, thanks to a local fund-raising effort. The city owns the building today and provides maintenance and repairs.

John Heyer, for 12 years scoutmaster of Troop 830, one of three Boy Scout troops in Cedarburg, said that the present Scout House is used heavily during afternoons and evenings during the school year by two Boy Scout troops, four Cub Scout packs and one Venture Crew.

Grant to Help Assemble Quilt Museum

A grant of $9,000 from the Cedarburg Foundation will help piece together the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts at a pioneer 1850s farmstead on Portland Rd. on Cedarburg's east side.

The foundation's board approved the grant to the Wisconsin Quilt History Project, Inc., governing body of the museum, with the intention that it pay for a larger fund-raising effort. As envisioned, the quilt museum project will cost about $4 million, an amount that includes the renovation of seven existing buildings, including a field stone house, a wooden barn and other outbuildings of generic pioneer Wisconsin agriculture.

Foundation President Jim Coutts presented the check recently to Kay Walters, president of the project. Also present was Vicki Capadona, who serves as a board member both of the foundation and the quilt museum project.

The project's mission is to create "a living museum dedicated to education, preservation and creativity as celebrated in the needle arts." When finished, the museum will rank as the important quilt museum in the Midwest.

When it is fully up and running, the museum promises to be a vibrant place of classes, workshops, research, exhibits, festivals and preservation of the vestiges of pioneer fabric art and utility. Thousands of historical quilts will be available for study and viewing not only in the present wooden barn, but in another barn to be reconstructed on the site.

At present, an interim museum and gift shop are maintained in the field stone house.

The property is known as the Hoffman Boeker farm. In its day the farm was 74 acres in size but as Cedarburg grew it dwindled to the 2.2 acres that contained the buildings. Most of the rest of the land was developed.

The farmstead was bought by the Wisconsin Quilt History Project after two sisters who last owned the place insisted that the farmstead be protected. The Cedarburg Landmarks Commission subsequently declared the farmstead a local landmark.

The Wisconsin Quilt History Project was formed in 1988 to call attention to and protect the beauty and utility of

pioneer needle work. It documented the history of 7,000 quilts in Wisconsin. Some 100 of these quilts are illustrated in "Wisconsin Quilts: Stories in the Stitches," a 2001 book written by Wisconsin's first poet laureate, Ellen Kort.

Since purchasing the property, a feasibility study and a business plan were finished. More recently, a site plan for the renovation and use of the buildings and landscaping has been prepared.

The Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville has awarded a grant of $801,167, which will materialize if it is matched on a two-for-one basis with $1,602,334 to be raised by the Wisconsin Quilt History Project by March, 2007.

Therefore the organizers of the Cedarburg Quilt Museum are bearing down on a major fund-raising effort. It is to help pay for that effort that the Cedarburg Foundation has made its grant of $9,000.

Grant to Help Buy Rivoli Theatre

The Cedarburg Foundation Board approved a $25,000 grant to the Cedarburg Landmark Preservation Society to buy and renovate the Rivoli Theatre at W62 N567 Washington Ave. Other than the special fund-raiser to pay off the mortgage of the Cedarburg Cultural Center, the grant was the largest in the foundation's six-year history.

The preservation society plans to restore the façade to its movie magic grandeur of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The Foundation's grant is part of a campaign launched last December that has already raised more than $300,000 of the more than $700,000 project.

The Rivoli is the last single screen movie theater in Ozaukee County. The late Mark Morgan of Cedarburg converted the old Boerner Department Store into the theater. The storefront was covered with black and white structural glass, topped by a brightly lit marquee. A ticket booth was set between two doors. The geometry was classic Art Deco.

The doors opened on Saturday, Jan. 11, 1936. Adult admission was 25 cents a ticket and 15 cents on "bargain night" each Tuesday. Kids paid a dime. The first fans in the door were treated to Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," billed as "humanity's most thrilling love story" and starring Ronald Colman. Admission included a newsreel and a cartoon.

"One of the ingredients that makes Cedarburg is the Rivoli," said Donald Levy of the Preservation Society. "It's part of being a small town and small towns have movie theaters. It keeps downtown Cedarburg viable."

The Rivoli's purchase will be part of an ongoing effort to preserve the historic charm of our small community. Levy and the other members of the Preservation Society actively sought to buy the building after they heard that investors were interested in buying it and converting it into retail shops.

"In Ozaukee County and in most of Wisconsin, Cedarburg has one of the rare Main streets intact. It's a preserved original downtown which hasn't been destroyed by a Wal Mart or anything else," Levy said. "Our goal is to preserve that atmosphere."

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