Restaurant planned in renovated building on Pewaukee Lake

After uncovering windows original to the 1920s building, removing four layers of drywall and unearthing other surprises, a renovation project is close to wrapping up at W278-N2315 Prospect Ave. in Pewaukee, and the Edgewater Supper Club is closer to opening.

Owner Bernie Kook bought the building that last housed the Sandbar sports pub in fall 2015, renaming the downstairs, lake-level pub the Edgewater and making repairs to the kitchen and to the patio with a prime view of the lake. 

"I bought the 32 pier slips and two apartments on the second floor, and they gave me the bar and restaurant for free," said Kook, who founded All County Electric Supply 25 years ago and sold it three years ago,

After renovation of the main-level restaurant and exterior of the 94-year-old building, he hopes to open the restaurant in mid- to late June but still is seeking a chef and other staff.

His aim is a casual restaurant serving simple but well-made food including steaks, he said.

Besides finding the original windows, which had been nailed shut and covered in drywall, the project has uncovered elements such as woodwork meant to look like fluted columns on the building, originally constructed in the Southern Colonial style. 

The building, which Kook said opened as a hotel in 1923, had terrazzo floors, but they were broken and couldn't be salvaged.

In construction, three 30-cubic-yard trash bins have been filled with old drywall — four layers thick in some areas — and other refuse, such as a suspended ceiling that had hidden a 10-foot ceiling, the owner said. Redoing the 40-by-25-foot deck filled a fourth 22-foot-long container.

Kook has renovated buildings before. "I like making things work; I like taking old properties and fixing them up," he said.

This building, he said, "has so much opportunity and so much potential, it's shocking."

Kook notes the Prospect Ave. building is a short drive from I-94 on Highway SS, with views of the sunset. The main-level restaurant has 28 feet of new windows that will let diners look out to the lake.

The renovation, he said, is intended to "put the thing back together the way it should be."

"At 94, we're all going to need a little bit of help," he said.