The severe flooding that hit Wauwatosa in August 2025 didn’t ruin the Wauwatosa Curling Club’s season of curling at Hart Park last winter, but the club’s seasonal routine, home base and hospitality will never be the same again.
The organization offers weekly league play and two or three tournaments throughout the winter. Its club room was located in the basement of Hart Park’s Muellner Building, below the ground-level arena where the club creates its ice house every fall. When torrential rains overnight Aug. 9, 2025, swelled the nearby Menomonee River to flood stage, the floodwater overwhelmed much of Hart Park, including the Muellner Building.
The Muellner Building's basement room sustained some of the worst damage in the park. It nearly filled with water. “If it wasn’t to the ceiling, it was pretty close,” longtime Wauwatosa Curling Club member Dave Traut recalled to Tosa Forward News in a phone interview. The club room’s bar, kitchen, tables, lockers and historic photos were lost in the flooding, though the club’s trophies were able to be salvaged.
Tosa Forward News' complete coverage of the 2025 flood is archived here.
Now, as Wauwatosa prepares to mark one year since the disaster — a hundred-year or thousand-year flood, depending on whom you ask — the Wauwatosa Curling Club has barely missed a sweep, but the fate of its basement-level club room is still up in the air. The club is working with the city on what use, if any, can resume in that room, knowing that anything put there could be vulnerable to future flooding.
“Obviously we don’t want this to happen again,” Traut said. Whatever the room is used for in the future, the club is planning for that worst case scenario. “It’s a slow process … We want to make sure we do it right the first time.”
Tosa Forward News also is marking one year since it began covering all things Tosa, starting with the flood and its aftermath. This story is offered to all readers, with no subscription required, though you are encouraged to support community journalism by becoming a member.
In the meantime, instead of lockers, curlers have had to keep their gear in bags on the building’s first floor. When the club needs a kitchen or a hospitality area, it uses the building’s second-floor Firefly Room.
Thankfully, the flooding did not cause severe damage to the shed-like space used for the club’s ice house, partly because the floor is a resilient concrete. Last fall, after the city replaced the room’s water-damaged drywall and restored power to the building, the Wauwatosa Curling Club was able to begin setting up its ice in November, about a month later than normal, and members curled through the end of March.
The club was founded in 1921 and now has about 300 members. Traut, a member for about 20 years, lives in Port Washington. Other members come from across the Milwaukee region.
Last season, the club was able to continue its tradition of hosting bonspiels, the big tournaments that draw many out-of-town teams. The Wauwatosa Curling Club felt acutely the loss of its club room during those tournaments.
“Part of curling is the social aspect of it,” Traut said. The club’s tradition after games was for the two opposing teams to come together in the basement club room for food, drinks and conversation. “It’s such a big part of the sport. It’s really ingrained in its culture.”
The club was forced to adjust. With the club room unavailable, teams gathered instead in a makeshift hospitality room in the building’s Firefly Room. “We still are able to do that,” Traut said. “It’s just a little different.”
The club has some money saved up that it could invest in a new club room, but it and the city have not yet decided what to do with the now-vacant basement space. “It’s very strange to see the basement without anything in it, just pure concrete walls,” Traut said.
A committee of the club is considering options. In the meantime, the club plans to be on schedule for its next season of curling. The weather outside may not feel like winter, but the traditional Oct. 1 start for setting the club’s ice is less than two months away.
- David Paulsen, a Tosa East Towne resident and editor of Tosa Forward News, has more than 25 years of experience as a professional journalist. He can be reached at editor@tosanews.com.
