Justice Madl is a local business owner (Do Your Hair Justice), West Bend's 7th District Alderman overseeing the Barton area, and the president of the Historic Barton Business Association. This week, Alderman Madl joins me to talk about the new Barton Garten garden along the Eisenbahn Trail on Highway 144.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Historic Barton Business Association on Facebook

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com. Now, the group at the West Bend Sunrise Rotary did not let me down. I now have a number of great guests that will be coming up here in This week, my guest is Alderman Justice Madl. Madl is the Alderman in West Bend 7th District, which is Barton, and he's also the owner of Do Your Hair Justice Hair Salon in Barton.

And, uh, he and the historic Barton Business Association recently completed the Barton Garden, and they're always working to improve the Barton area. So with that, here are Fifteen Minutes with Alderman Justice Madl. On Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.

AldermMadldel, thanks for joining me today. So you're an alderman in West Bend's seventh district, which is Barton, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but you also own a salon. So can you tell us a bit about your business, how you get started and about that?

I started the business up in Barton about 11 years ago. You know, it was a, it was a little bit of a slow start, but we've really got the ball rolling within the last couple of years. For some reason, the pandemic, Really kick things in, kick things into gear. I'm independent out there. I'm by myself. So I think people were just more comfortable coming into the shop when there wasn't anybody else around.

Oh, sure. So that really, really got me moving. So

Um, and, and it's, it's kind of ironic because it's really not the businesses of Barton that are Barton voters. It's not really the constituency, you know what I mean? Sure. But, that was the catalyst. And so, when the next Aldermanic, uh, Election came up. I went ahead and put some signs out and got a hold of a buddy of mine who's in marketing and Ran a first campaign and fortunately it went really well.

I won by 13 votes. Oh nice. Did exact right amount of work

Can you tell us about the organization and what that organization is responsible for?

She's a former alderman of District 7. And it was, again, with that slow moving at first, but we had a really strong membership right from the start. When I say slow moving, it just meant we weren't immediately sure what our mission was. but it's slowly started to form, and basically it's to shine a light on Barton, you know, because Barton has been sort of in the, in a shadow for for many many years, ever since it was annexed into into West Bend.

And so, we're trying to create a better business community, a better community to live in, better, you know, community to play in, you know, a more beautiful community. And so it has sort of over the years morphed mainly into really making it a more attractive part of West Bend. It's felt for many, many years, like it's been neglected.

Sure.

Is that my pronouncing it right? That's correct. Yes. Yes. It's a,

Okay. And then it was just kind of left without care for a number of years. It was, I think the folks that were taking care of it just kind of aged out. You know, it was a group of older ladies that was managing it and they just didn't have the energy or the time or the willingness to do it anymore. So we, um, we saw this patch of weeds that basically the city was mowing around, which I don't, you know, it's not, it, It wasn't up to the city to maintain it.

Right. So I don't blame the city at all. But, and there, so there was some flowers in there. It was still some semblance of a garden, you know? Right. But it was very, very unattractive. So, Barton Business Association, you know, we, we kinda just look around Barton and see where the issues are and try to solve them.

Right. We picked up the garden issue and, uh, and sort of ran with it. I mean, it turned into. A lot more work than we expected. I spent a lot of time last year building steps into the side of the hill that goes up to the garden. The city came in and poured concrete platforms. It was really nice of them.

They did a great job. And I built a rock wall behind the platform that creates kind of a raised platform. Flower garden effect. And, and then there's a couple of the most expensive benches, uh, the, the Parks and Recs program program has. And those benches were donated by Rotary for one. And, uh, the Holbrook family up in Barton that owns the Jokers.

Sure. Yeah. Diane Holbrook was the person I was talking to. Kay Holbrook owns the bar and, and Kay Holbrook's son, Mason. A lot of people in the community are familiar with this name, Mason Holbrook. He was a young man that passed away from a heart condition a few years back. And so it's a memorial bench for Mason Holbrook.

How will people use the garden now that it's up and built?

It is jam packed this year. I don't know if we've got 20 or 30 flats of flowers planted up there along with it. West Bend, Kewaskum, Slinger.

Yep, yep, yep. . And we had the mayor came and did a proclamation. It was just a lot of fun. We had, we had, we, it was, it was very well, very well attended. Great. Um, we also had a, a hot tub raffle. Oh, nice. I cannot remember the name of the guy that won the hot tub, but someone won the hot tub raffle.

Somebody's enjoying that right now. That's

Um, she was very open to the idea of partnering with us, which was really important because, uh, then she handed us Susan Steinhoffel as if she's a commodity, but she really is. I mean, she's, she's helped us out a lot. She came up with the design idea for the garden. She comes out there, she orders all the flowers, roots and branches, donates most of them.

We, the HBBA has some budget for the garden, but a lot of it is just due to community effort. And so we get all those flowers and she takes them out and puts them right where they need to be planted. We've got a lovely group of volunteers. I'm really sorry. I can't remember the church they come from, but you're out there, you know who you are and we really appreciate you.

Yep, yep. So, what do you guys do in there?

We get hammered, you know. Sure. So, the parade finishes, and we just get a huge rush of people come over and obviously it's a bunch of hungry parade goers. And so we're five or six deep for two or three hours, it's amazing. It's a lot of fun.

And we just had the Kewaskum 125th celebration. Oh, nice. And we had the privilege of, and it was great, and I appreciate everybody that came, but we were running a brat fry stand. Right at the end of the parade and the Wisconsin Badgers band played right there afterward. You got your buck fifty. And we got slammed.

But we sold out of brats. I'm sure you did. Helped raise fifteen hundred bucks for the memorial. That's awesome. So thank you to everybody who bought a brat. That's awesome. But I know how much, how much work that can be when you're running around trying to fill those orders when you don't do it for a living.

So in addition, the uh, Historic Barton Business Association also has something to do with the Christmas lights, right?

And then there's sprays that were donated by the bid downtown, along with a bunch of other stuff. They were amazing. Thank you very much. Downtown bid that hit from Barton Avenue on North Main out to approximately MPTC. Those sprays exist and Friends of Parks last year donated a large sum of money to help us put new bows on those sprays.

Thank you very much, Friends of Parks. And then there is a number of really old. Ornaments that go up on the light poles from North Maine all the way up well to Salisbury on bar on Barton Avenue. And those are also lit up. And there there's plugs on the poles. So those are really pretty. And then there's three Christmas trees that are lit up at the firefighters Memorial park, which we also designated.

Um, and then there's another. Christmas tree that's lit up down right in the middle of Barton Garden, actually. Sure. And then those, I think there's six of the large, I don't know if they're crab trees or what those things are, but they're big, full looking trees that are completely lit up with white lights, and it's just beautiful during Christmas.

That's excellent. It's amazing. So

So, again, there's a couple of volunteers with the HBBA that are really consistent in doing that every year, and we really appreciate them.

And, uh, you know, we've got a list. I'm feeling like we don't have a strong next project established yet, but we do want to get flower baskets that wrap around the light poles on Barton Avenue, and some maybe freestanding ones that could go on North Main. So more flowers. Sure. There's some signage stuff that we've been talking about.

We'd like to see some coming into West Bend and welcome to West Bend slash Barton signs, you know, um, that have the rotary symbols and Kiwanis and all that stuff. There's a couple of entry points to West Bend in our area that are lacking that. And really just to continue putting on fun events for the community and continue to do everything we can to make Barton a more beautiful, enjoyable place to be.

Thank you so much, Fuzz. Thanks again to Alderman Justice Madl for joining me on this week's show. Be sure to visit the Barton Garten next time you're out for a ride on the Eisenbahn trail or walking, whatever you're doing. It's a beautiful place. Stop on by and that'll do it for today's episode. Next week, we talk about German night and Regnerfest in West Bend.

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