With a $20,000 donation from musician Jack White this week, Cactus Club has met the first phase of its fundraising goal to add accessibility improvements to its building. On Wednesday, Aug. 20, from 4-8 p.m., the venue will host a party to celebrate the completion of a ramp leading up to its front door and the installation of a mosaic on the ramp and stairs.
“It has taken the support of hundreds, if not thousands, of folks to bring this to life,” says Kelsey Kaufmann, the owner of Cactus Club.
Located in Bay View, the almost 140-year-old Cactus Club building at 2496 S. Wentworth Ave. is considered “legacied,” meaning there is no regulatory requirement to make the building accessible. Kaufmann and their team undertook an effort to improve accessibility after they took ownership of Cactus Club in 2020.
Kaufmann says they were surprised by how little support there was at the city and state level for accessibility. “Unless it’s for residential facilities or service providers, it’s nonexistent.”
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The Cactus+ Accessibility Initiative is a project that intersects infrastructure improvement, artist resourcing and community programming. In 2024, the initiative received a Wisconsin Special Projects Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts. With the financial support from this grant, Cactus+ was able to launch two new programs: In The Clouds, an artist residency program, and Ground Level, an artist empowerment series.
Now Cactus Club will soon have a 26-foot ramp to its front door. In 2021, the initial quote to build the ramp was $60,000, but that was only a baseline for concrete and railings and didn’t include other necessary elements – such as expanding a water main, structural engineering, architectural drawings, a curb bump out and permitting – that have increased the cost to about $120,000.
In addition to the Ruth Arts grant, Cactus+ fundraised for the project with three concerts in 2024, donating 50 percent of ticket sales to the Accessibility Initiative. A little over $26,000 was generated from those concerts.
Initially, the plan was to construct only a ramp – but that quickly turned into figuring out other ways to bolster accessibility throughout the club. The second phase of the project will include an accessible stage, bathrooms, greenroom, better sightlines and a lower ordering area at the bar,
Kate Klingbeil, a Milwaukee-based artist, the current artist in residence with Cactus+ and a longtime friend of Kaufmann’s, is designing and installing a mosaic on the ramp and the stairs of the building. The mosaic is a composition of hundreds of rocks and building bricks from Lake Michigan, collected over the last five years by Klingbeil.
“When I was invited to do this project, it was an absolute dream,” Klingbeil says. “It’s been something I’ve been wanting to do for many years – something public and outdoor and permanent. … It’s taking what’s underground and normally discarded or hidden and bringing it up to the light so everyone can celebrate it together.”
The railing of the ramp will be adorned with large, colorful resin beads that people can spin. “I think there’s something super important about recognizing that there’s so many opportunities for playfulness and fun and aesthetic experimentation in what is so often cast as mundane, utility architectural elements,” Kaufmann says.
