Cobblestone Hotel & Suites Opens Downtown; Wissota Chophouse Steakhouse Begins Service

WAUKESHA — The Cobblestone Hotel & Suites opened downtown this month, bringing 130 guest rooms and an adjoining full-service steakhouse, Wissota Chophouse, to a stretch of the business district that has spent the better part of two years defined mostly by a roundabout nobody can drive through correctly.

The hotel occupies a five-story building near the East Avenue roundabout, close enough that General Manager Richard Petersen said staff have started giving directions in roundabout exits rather than street names. "Third exit, past the fountain, you'll see us," Petersen said. "If you hit the Piggly Wiggly you've gone one exit too far."

Wissota Chophouse, the hotel's attached restaurant, began dinner service this week with a 52-seat dining room, a 28-seat bar, and three private event spaces sized for parties of 15 to 60. Dinner service begins at 5 p.m. daily. Petersen confirmed pre-opening staff training has been underway for several weeks but declined to specify an exact opening date for the hotel itself, citing final permitting and supplier coordination.

The Soft Opening That Wasn't Soft

Despite the lack of a confirmed date, the restaurant's first Tuesday service sold out its dining room by 6:40 p.m., a fact the front desk attributed partly to curiosity and partly to a downtown parking situation that left several early diners with no easy way out until the meal was over anyway. Servers reported the 22-ounce bone-in ribeye, priced at $58, as the night's top seller, followed closely by a walleye special that ran out by 7:15.

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who attended the first night's service in what he described as "an unofficial capacity," praised the restaurant's private dining rooms as a potential venue for future committee meetings currently held in the Municipal Building's basement conference room. "That room seats 14 and smells like a copier," Puchalski said. "This one seats 15 and smells like a ribeye. I'm not saying anything. I'm just doing math."

"That room seats 14 and smells like a copier. This one seats 15 and smells like a ribeye."

— Councilman Gary Puchalski

Location, Location, Roundabout

Petersen said the hotel chose its downtown site specifically for proximity to the Fox River and the county's growing calendar of festivals and tournaments, and acknowledged the roundabout was a known factor going into construction rather than a surprise that emerged afterward. "We built the valet loop assuming guests would miss the first exit," Petersen said. "Turns out most of them miss the second one too, so we built in extra stacking room."

The city has previously floated awarding a symbolic "key to the city" to the first driver to navigate the roundabout correctly on the first attempt. As of this week, Petersen said, no hotel guest has claimed it, though one Cobblestone shuttle driver has reportedly come close twice.

Bob Krueger, the retired city Department of Public Works supervisor who reviews infrastructure projects in a personal capacity, toured the hotel's exterior traffic flow Wednesday and rated the valet approach a 7 out of 10, calling it "generously wide for a downtown lot" but noting the drop-off lane merges into the roundabout's outer ring "at an angle that assumes confidence the average guest does not have."

What's Next

Wissota Chophouse plans to add a Sunday brunch service by early September, and the hotel's three event spaces are already booked through the fall, including a September wedding reception and what Petersen described only as "a fair committee thing." Diane Vandehey, chair of the county fair planning committee, confirmed the group has reserved the mid-sized event room for a planning session but declined to say whether funnel cake or cream puffs would be served, citing ongoing internal sensitivities.

Petersen said the hotel expects to reach full staffing within 60 days and will announce an official ribbon-cutting once a date can be confirmed. Asked when that might be, he said only that it would happen "downtown, near the roundabout, third exit."