No More Tea Parties, Comedy Club Moving Downtown

George Watts and Son Building. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Laughing Tap has found a new home.

The Walker’s Point comedy club is moving Downtown to the first floor of the George Watts and Sons Building, 751-765 N. Jefferson St.

“We have been looking to expand our previous location for a while, and so we started to look around a little bit,” said club co-owner Matt Kemple in an interview with Urban Milwaukee. “When we found the Watts building, it was just for us really the perfect location. And it’s a really great size for what we’re trying to do.”

The location will allow the club to expand its capacity by 50 percent, boosting its maximum capacity from 80 patrons to 120. In the future, it could also build out the basement as a second venue.

Kemple announced the move on Oct. 12, the final night of Milwaukee Comedy Festival. He has led the festival, which books shows at several venues, for two decades. For the last five years, Kemple, with partners Kaitlin McCarthy and Greg Bach, has also owned and operated The Laughing Tap at 706 S. 5th St.

The partners announced in April that they would close the venue in mid-June as they prepared to move to a larger, undisclosed space.

It would be hard for the new location to be more aesthetically different than the first location. The 5th Street structure was originally built as a garage with 20-foot high ceilings. It was later converted into a brewery, and ultimately, a comedy club. The new location is a Mediterranean Revival-style building constructed in 1925. It features large bay windows and an ornate terracotta facade.

Challenges with retrofitting the Walker’s Point building, and its high ceilings, to function as a comedy club were part of the reason a move was sought, said Kemple.

Only a “small build-out” is required for the Watts building, and there is an in-house team leading the design.

Continuum Architects + Planners purchased the Watts building in 2019, three years after the namesake Watts Tea Shop closed. It has its offices on the second floor of the 15,360-square-foot structure. Kesslers Diamonds operates a jewelry store along the Mason Street edge of the building. But about 5,000 square feet on the northernmost portion of the first floor had remained for lease — until now.

“We are hoping to be open by the end of the year,” said Kemple. He estimated, once permits are issued, that it would take two months to install bathrooms and a bar. “It’s going to be tight, but there is a chance we could open before the end of the year.”

The new location will come with not just more seats, but more offerings. An open mic night will be held on Wednesdays with traditional comedy shows booked Thursday through Sunday.

Kemple hopes the new location, across from the Pfister Hotel and near several other hotels, will be a draw for an important customer segment: tourists. “There are some shows where half of our audience would be from out of town,” he said. Once they’re in Milwaukee, they now won’t have to travel far to visit.

George Watts and Sons Building

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