After 20 years of hosting its Concerts in the Park series on a concrete slab with a tent, Ashwaubenon now has a bandshell.
The newest centerpiece of Klipstine Park will be dedicated at 10:30 a.m. June 17, ahead of the weekly summer concert series’ performance by Daddy D Productions from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The stage, which broke ground in September, was funded by three major donors – Ken and Marge Bukowski, Richard and Mary Ellen Happel and the Appleton family – with assistance from the village. Ashwaubenon secured a $50,000 grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation that will add a shade structure for picnic tables and seating in front of it.
Total cost of the project, including soil remediation, new utility lines, landscaping and the shade structure, is close to $400,000, said Rex Mehlberg, director of Ashwaubenon Parks, Recreation & Forestry.
The bandshell will make for a better viewing experience for audiences and easier load-in for bands, Mehlberg said. It eliminates the need for a 20- by 30-foot tent to be erected and taken down each week for Concerts in the Park, a free lunch-hour series started in 2006.
It will also host Zumba fitness events, and movie in the park nights are planned this summer. If a special evening edition of Concerts in the Park on June 30 goes over well, additional night concerts could be sprinkled in down the road, Mehlberg said.
The village is also working with the Ashwaubenon School District to see what usage needs or ideas it might have for students.
“We’re excited about it,” Mehlberg said. “We have programming planned for it right now with its inaugural season, but we also know with building other facilities in the past, once you build it, they will come. We know that as people know about it, we have a feeling more people will be interested in using it maybe for some things that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Visitors will notice musical notes across the front of the facade of the bandshell. They’re not just random. It’s the sheet music for the finale of the national anthem: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
“We wanted to have something up on top that was something special for the community, as a thank you or as a message,” Mehlberg said. “It’s a conversation starter about the bandshell.”
The idea for a stage at the 15-acre Klipstine Park, 900 Anderson Drive, was first floated 12 years ago as part of community facility projects package that included building a new community center, an indoor aquatic center and a performing arts center, but it was taken out to keep things at budget, Mehlberg said. It was Ken Bukowski, a former Ashwaubenon trustee, who played a lead role in resurrecting the idea two years ago and in securing the funding, he said.
The parks department hopes to have the shade structure, a series of colorful triangular shades, installed by the end of the season. It will help make up for the many mature trees the park lost to the invasive emerald ash borer.
De Pere-based IEI was the general contractor on the project.
2026 Ashwaubenon Concerts in the Park schedule
Concerts in the Park are held from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays (except special evening concert Tuesday, June 30) at Klipstine Park. Use picnic tables or bring your own lawn chair or blanket. Concessions sold.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Ashwaubenon’s new bandshell comes with musical message built right in
Reporting by Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press-Gazette | USA TODAY Network
