By Emily Doud
IOLA – The Chet Krause Legacy Park will be seeing the restrooms outfitted with plumbing in the near future after receiving a grant for $50,000.
The Vibrant Spaces grant was awarded in 2023 and was just released into the Chet Krause Legacy Park fund to assist in finishing the restroom project.
The grant is through Wisconsin Economic Development and is aimed creating community spaces in otherwise underutilized outdoor areas.
The grant money will be used to continue the transformation of Chet Krause Legacy Park in Iola.
Jerry Kopecki, owner of J.R.’s Sport Shop and Shivers, donated the land where Chet Krause
Legacy Park now sits after tearing down the house that was on it and leveling the land.
Once the land was donated members of the community created an ad-hoc committee to raise money and build the park, starting in 2021.
The goal of the park was to preserve the legacy of Chet Krause, the owner of Krause Publications, said Clifford Mishler, a member of the ad-hoc committee.
Mishler and Dave Harper, a village trustee and another member of the committee, both worked for Krause Publications for 40 years and hopped on the project once the land was donated to the village.
Other members of the ad-hoc committee included Pamela Parks, Mark Sether, Charlie Wasrud, Greg Loescher, Jerry Kopecky and Mark Doll.
“The commitment was that we would do a fundraiser to raise the money to develop the park,” Mishler said. “And once the park would be developed … we would turn the whole complex over to the village.”
Mishler said he started working at Krause Publications in 1963 and quickly noticed the generosity displayed by his new boss, Chet Krause.
Not only was he generous within the Iola community, but in the old car and coin collecting communities as well, Mishler said.
“We needed to have a monument to Chet Krause that told his story so that 25 years from now people around town wouldn’t say, ‘Who the hell was that?’” said Mishler. “It doesn’t take long for people to forget, the memory is not really great when it comes to good deeds.”
The park is next the first Krause Publications building that was constructed in 1957 to house his publishing efforts at the time, Mishler said.
The park currently has a mural, bronze statue of Chet Krause along with benches. There is an area for tables, sidewalk, a lighted flag, and the restrooms is one of the last projects to complete.
The park is slated to be finished by the end of summer when it will be handed back to the village.
The cost to finish the restroom project was $60,000, so the grant was able to cover the bulk of the project and ensure that it gets finished.
The goal is to have the restrooms open by June. There is not a date set as lining up plumbers has been mildly difficult.
The restrooms will be unisex, and they will be flush bathrooms as well, possibly with a baby changing station. The fixtures will be commercial and need minimal maintenance.
After the restrooms are finished there will be a few more plant installations and landscaping jobs to do, as well as some plaques to honor all the volunteers who donated not only money but physical labor to the project to help keep costs down.
Mishler said they are also going to add three smaller tablets that will have all of the names of the employees and their years of employment, all 2000 employees that worked at the company from its start in 1952 to it selling in 2002.
“Chet valued his employees very highly and he was very generous to them,” Mishler said. “Everybody that worked there became stock holders and when the company sold they got some proceeds from it, some got substantial proceeds.”
There are also plans for a bubbler, as well as one for pets, Harper said.
He said the project has been paid for entirely through donations throughout not only Iola, but the nation as car, coin collecting and sports memorbilia agencies that have previously worked with Chet Krause also donated for the project as well.
In total the ad-hoc committee has raised $429,284.00 to date between donations and grants, said Laura Krogwold, the village clerk.
