Hindu Temple of Wisconsin

There had been several attempts to build a temple in the Milwaukee area since 1980. The community worshipped by renting space in churches and having all major Hindu functions conducted by priests hired from temples in Illinois. In 1995, leading members of various Hindu communities in southeastern Wisconsin decided to try again. They formed an Exploratory Committee and incorporated Hindu Temple of Wisconsin as a nonprofit corporation in March 1996, created a business plan and organized various sub committees to handle this massive project. A group of board members and some community members visited various Hindu Temples in North America and researched design, construction, by-laws and financial aspects of operating a temple. Gradually, the temple project gained momentum and started attracting new members and volunteers. After months of hard work, the board members came up with the by-laws, the structure for fund raising and the blueprint for what is now our temple. At the same time our religious and fund raising committees actively solicited funds from our community and came up with various categories of membership for donors. The present piece of land was located in May 1997 and an offer to purchase the 22 acres for $252,000 was made by the Hindu Temple. The land had to go through probate as it was an estate property and the court approved the sale on Aug 8, 1997. The Board along with Ramesh Kapur (of Kapur and Associates, the architects for the project) designed the preliminary drawings for the temple and came up with 26,000 sq. feet for a Hindu Temple, and 5,000 Sq. feet for a Jain Temple and Library, in a record time of two months. On October 23, 1997, the project was approved by the City of Pewaukee. The land was purchased and transferred to the Hindu Temple on October 31, 1997, a very proud and memorable moment and a great relief to the board members and all the volunteers. The next 15 months were spent on designing the facility and getting various approvals. The final drawings went to bid in January of 1999 and the board chose Panko Constructions to build the temple. Construction started in June 1999 and was completed in a record time of one year by June 2000, at a cost of $3.4 million. In July 1999 Tri-City Bank provided a Loan of $2.0 million dollars and enabled us to complete our project on time. The Jain community was also interested in a place of worship and their membership worked with the board to come up with a Temple funded by the Jain community, and designed it to be an integral part of the Hindu Temple complex. The Jain Temple opened for worship in July 2000. Both the Jain and the Hindu Temple worked on designing various shrines inside the buildings and marble and granite deities were ordered from India. In the meantime, Utsav murthis (made of special metal) were placed in the shrines. The Jain Temple Pratishtha was done in May 2001 after their temple construction was completed. The Hindu Temple had 4 artisans from India working on building the shrines for 18 months. The first group of deities in the Hindu Temple had Pratishtha done in June 2002 and the remainder in June 2003. The temple had deferred the construction of a Mukhya Dwar and the main Gopuram from the initial plan. In 2006, donors came forward to be the main sponsors for the Gopuram and Mukhya Dwar project. A sum of $200,000 was pledged by the families and the project cost a total of $250,000. The Gopuram was finished in 2008 and Mukhya Dwar was completed in 2010. The Hindu community has grown tremendously since the temple was built in 2000. The temple plan also called for installing a Dhwajastambh (the traditional flag pole), within 13 years of the Pran Pratishtha. The overwhelming support of the community made it possible to pay off our initial debt of 2 million dollars in the year 2014. A master plan for the expansion of the temple, “Vision 20/20”, was developed in 2011 to project the needs of the temple till the year 2020. Phase 1 of the plan is set to start in April 2015 and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The cost of the project is set at $2,000,000. The new addition will be 8,200 Sq. feet and the upper level will have a Dhwajastambham, bigger front office, new rest rooms, coat room, lobby, a new staircase to the lower level and more parking space. The lower level will add a small auditorium, new rest rooms and a coat room. Also, in this expansion we will increase the lobby upstairs by 900 sq. feet to accommodate more devotees. In the lower level, 900 Sq. feet will be added to the cafeteria space. The next phases will address storage, priest and temple facilities, classrooms and a bigger auditorium and parking lot. We need continued support financially from all our community members so we can keep up with the Vision 20/20 plan and offer the best service and facilities to our community. We the members are proud of our achievements in the last 20 years and commit ourselves to leave a legacy of Hindu religion for our future generations to come

• 1999 – Ground Breaking
• 2001-2002 – Phase I construction
• 2002-2003 – Phase II, after Pranpratishsthapana
• 2006-2007 – Phase III, Gopuram
• 2011 – Vision 20/20 plan
• 2015-2016 –Phase IV, Dwajasthambam and Expansion