Whitefish Bay’s Local Blog

Author: WFBBuzz

  • Meet the Dad Behind Dad O’Clock, WFB’s Newest Happy Hour Series at The Argo

    Meet the Dad Behind Dad O’Clock, WFB’s Newest Happy Hour Series at The Argo

    Erik Moser, our Whitefish Bay neighbor, husband, dad of two, and self-described high-pressure B2B sales veteran, had a health scare. Not a physical one, but a mental one. He says he was “bursting at the seams carrying 1,000 pounds.” The autopilot had kicked in: bills, investments, a nagging feeling of not doing enough at work. The kind of slow burn that doesn’t show up in a blood test but quietly takes a toll.

    “I started to feel myself turning into this autopilot dad around my family,” he says. The further he dug into how to actually improve his wellbeing, the more he noticed something missing, not just in his own life, but potentially also in the community around him.

    “We’ve lived in Whitefish Bay for seven years. My next door neighbors on both sides are great, but go two doors down and they might as well live on Mars.”

    That observation, equal parts funny and a little sad, is what planted the seed for Dad O’Clock, a biweekly happy hour for dads of all kinds launching Tuesday, May 13th from 4 to 6pm at The Argo.

    Old dads. New dads. Tall dads. Short dads. Cat dads. Dog dads.

    (Yes, he Dr. Seuss’d his original announcement. No, he is not sorry about it.)

    The premise is disarmingly simple: dads meeting dads, no agenda, no networking pitch, no ulterior motive. Just a bar stool, a beverage, and someone who might actually want to hear how your week went. 

    Conversation topics are flexible. Sports? Wisconsin everything, plus Tampa Bay Lightning hockey. Kids? his daughters are named Marley and Bowie, after Bob Marley and David Bowie respectively, which tells you something about the guy. Local politics? Erik has strong feelings about leaf-gate and Mother Nature’s decision to snow before the leaves were collected. He is not over it.

    What he’s really after, though, is something harder to put on a flyer. He talks about watching parents at the park, heads down on their phones while their kids play, and the irony of adults lecturing children about screen time while doing the exact same thing. He talks about how the digital age keeps making it easier to stay isolated, and how a simple “hi” from a stranger somehow feels harder than it used to.

    “People are more than happy to chat if you just say hi,” he says. “But for so many, saying hi can feel too uncomfortable, too awkward, or just not worth it. That’s where I want to step in: hey neighbor, let me buy you a drink and I’d love to hear your story.”

    For men, the cultural pressure to appear fine has always been louder than the invitation to admit they’re not. A Today Show commissioned study showed that 49% of men felt more depressed than they would admit to people in their lives.

    Erik has hosted plenty of events professionally, rooftop gatherings in New York, Chicago, and Miami. But those, he’ll tell you, were always money-motivated. Dad O’Clock is the first thing he’s done in a long time purely for himself. For his own wellbeing. For his community.

    And Erik is already thinking about the moms. He’d love to see someone step up to host a counterpart happy hour on a different day of the week. “Battle of the sexes, Whitefish Bay. Bravo TV, here we come.”

    He signs off as “Tootie Butt,” a nickname he says he earned through integrity, according to his daughter Marley. Whether that story holds up under scrutiny is a matter for another happy hour conversation.

    Dad O’Clock kicks off May 13th at 4pm at The Argo.

  • Klode Park: The Surprisingly Controversial Origins of Whitefish Bay’s Beloved Lakefront Park and its Warming House

    Klode Park: The Surprisingly Controversial Origins of Whitefish Bay’s Beloved Lakefront Park and its Warming House

    Today’s post draws on research from the superb Mimi Bird Collection and the Milwaukee Journal archives. If you haven’t already, you need to check out/follow the work being done by the Historic WFB page on Facebook. Additional recommended reading includes “Historic Whitefish Bay: A Celebration of Architecture and Character” by Jefferson Aikin and Thomas Fehring

    With the village of Whitefish Bay currently weighing plans to replace the aging warming house at Klode Park, it felt like the right moment to revisit the park’s surprisingly contentious beginnings and how a dispute over the first warming house ended up in court nearly a century ago.

    The story starts with a political maneuver that would feel right at home in a Netflix drama.

    Frank C. Klode in the 1940 US Census

    In 1928, the village set out to acquire the lakefront land that would become Klode Park. The seller? Frank C. Klode, the village president himself. State law prohibits (now, as it did then) elected officials from potential transactions that may include significant conflicts of interest, such as selling land directly to the village you represent, so a workaround was engineered: Klode resigned, a fellow trustee stepped up as interim president long enough to complete the transaction, and then promptly stepped back down so Klode could reclaim his seat. The park was named after him shortly after.

    The Milwaukee Journal didn’t let it slide quietly. In a February 1929 editorial, the paper noted that the village, then a community of only about 4,000 people and rapidly growing, had agreed to pay $103,000 (roughly $2 million today) for the property with virtually no public discussion and no open board session before the deal was done. The Journal pointedly wondered whether suburban governments were really as close to the people as they liked to claim.

    Mimi Bird, whose meticulous historical collection is one of the great treasures of Whitefish Bay, apparently had her own feelings on the naming of the park. She left a candid handwritten note about it in her records.

    Mimi Bird's Editorial Note on Naming of Klode Park
    Transcription – Note: I’ve never understood why the village board named this park “Klode” when the residents paid the Klode Family for the land. I would understand if the Klodes had donated the land! – M.Y.B.

    The controversy didn’t end with the purchase. Over the next two years, the park’s first warming house, referred to in the newspapers of the day as a “comfort station”, became its own source of conflict. Neighboring property owners S.L. Crolius and Adolph Lotter sued over the building’s location at the southern end of the park, arguing it would depreciate their property values by 25 to 35 percent. It’s worth noting that Klode’s own home sat at the northern end of the park, well away from the disputed site.

    The case was eventually settled. The village agreed that after the 1930-31 skating season, the original structure would come down and a new one would be built closer to the center of the park, a compromise that put some distance between the building and the complaining neighbors. In what was likely no coincidence, the old structure was demolished in March 1931 the day before a village trustee election in which several candidates were running explicitly on an “anti-Klode”, “anti-administration” platform. Whether the timing was strategic or serendipitous, it made for tidy politics.

    The park that caused so much fuss in its beginning days has been drawing people to the lakefront ever since. Nearly a century later, as the village considers what comes next for the warming house, it’s a good reminder that even the most beloved community spaces often have a complicated story behind them.

    Milwaukee Journal March 26, 1931
  • Klode Park Hosts Opening Day for New Pickleball Hours

    Klode Park Hosts Opening Day for New Pickleball Hours

    May 1st arrived in Whitefish Bay the way only Wisconsin can deliver it — low 40s with a light freezing rain tapping against the courts at Klode Park. It was a less than ideal backdrop for the first day of the village’s new, long-debated pickleball schedule.

    The southeast gate will unlock during play hours
    Photo Credit: D.S.

    The village installed locks on all three court gates as an enforcement mechanism for the new hours. A padlock went up today on the northeast corner gate, while magnetic timer locks were installed over the past few weeks on the southeast and northwest gates. The southeast gate will serve as the primary entrance and exit during play hours; the northwest gate will function as an exit-only egress allowing anyone to exit regardless of the locking mechanism being activated or not.

    The new summer schedule eliminates open-ended play seven days a week between 8am and 8pm in favor of structured windows, with courts closed entirely on Wednesdays and Sundays.

    The northeast gate will function as an exit only.
    Photo Credit: D.S.

    Despite the raw weather, a few hearty players showed up for the morning session. And when 11:30 a.m. arrived, true to form, the orderly citizens of Whitefish Bay cleared the courts right on time!

  • Whitefish Bay Proposes Significant Increase in Water Utility Rates. Here’s the Full Picture.

    Whitefish Bay Proposes Significant Increase in Water Utility Rates. Here’s the Full Picture.

    The village is moving forward with a formal rate case application to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission that would raise water utility base rates by 28%. While that number may raise eyebrows, the reasons behind it have been building for years.

    The last conventional rate case for the village was filed in 2020, resulting in a 15.5% increase. Since then, water rates have barely moved — just a 3% inflationary adjustment in December 2025. Six years of inflation (particularly high inflation at that), aging infrastructure, and a major federal mandate have quietly piled up, and the 28% figure is largely the catch-up cost.

    The Big Driver: Lead Service Line and Water Main Replacement. 

    The EPA now requires water systems across the country to replace all lead service lines by 2037. The village’s 2026-2031 Capital Improvement Plan includes replacing one mile of aging water main and associated lead service lines every year. That’s a significant, decade-long capital commitment and it’s a major factor in why rates will need to rise now and potentially again in the future. Projections already anticipate another significant conventional rate case around 2030.

    The village side of the service line replacement (from the water main to the curb stop) will be paid for by the water utility through debt issuances. The private side, from the curb stop to the home, will be the homeowner’s responsibility, with costs estimated at roughly $8,000 per line – a separate line item from the rate approval mentioned above. There has been discussion of allowing residents to space out payments over a few years versus a one time special assessment payment.

    For the average residential customer, the rate increase translates to roughly $91.74 more per year. Even after the increase, the village’s rates would sit in the middle of the pack compared to other Milwaukee County utilities, many of which are seeing similar impacts. Shorewood, similar in size and with a comparable historical infrastructure profile as Whitefish Bay, anticipates an increase of more than 50% on the average residential customer water utility bill over the next two years relative to 2025 bills. 

    The village plans to file the application by May, with new rates potentially in place by year’s end.

  • The Light at the End of the I-43 Construction Tunnel Is Finally (Actually) Here

    The Light at the End of the I-43 Construction Tunnel Is Finally (Actually) Here

    If you’ve driven I-43 north of Milwaukee over the past several years, you know the drill: lane shifts, orange barrels, and the slow crawl of what felt like a never-ending construction project. The I-43 North-South project spans 14 miles of Interstate modernization and expansion between Glendale and Grafton, and for most of that stretch, the work is done. Finished. In the rearview mirror.

    Except, of course, for that one nagging section.

    True WFB neighbors who have driven between Silver Spring and Bender Road recently know that stretch never quite got its finishing touches. No noise barriers. Just open freeway and all the sound that comes with it. Our Glendale neighbors have been absorbing that for a while now, and if you’ve checked the DOT’s project website lately, you’d be forgiven for assuming the project is wrapped up. The last update posted there dates back to April 2025.

    It hasn’t wrapped up. But it’s about to.

    According to the DOT’s public relations lead for the project, construction on the Silver Spring to Bender Road section is set to begin the week of May 4th. That means the TRUE long-awaited completion of the last unfinished piece of this massive project is finally on the horizon.

    Better late than never, but it does beg the question, which would be worse – traffic noise without the barriers for the houses along that stretch or pickleball noise for our neighbors around Klode ;-)?