Hartland Piano to open satellite store in Port

The former Kissinger Appliance and Sales building on North Wisconsin Street in Port Washington is about to get a new life — this time as a piano store.

Hartland Piano, which has the largest piano showroom in the state, is opening a satellite location in Port in the former appliance store, a use approved by the city’s Plan Commission Sept. 17.

“I think it’s a great use for the site,” City Engineer Roger Strohm, a member of the commission, said.

“How awesome for us,” Mayor Ted Neitzke, the commission chairman, added.

Ellen McDonald, who with her husband Larry have owned and operated Hartland Piano in Hartland for 51 years, said the store will be run by their daughter Jen McDonald, a Port resident.

While the current 15,000-square-foot Hartland Piano facility offers everything from piano sales to music lessons to music therapy and is the home of the Waukesha County Conservatory of Music, the Port store will only have piano sales.

Lessons, she explained, “really are a different business” that requires more space and management.

Hartland Piano is an authorized showroom for Kawai, Shigeru Kawai and Yamaha acoustic and digital pianos and offers a selection of rebuilt Steinway & Sons grand pianos and in-house rebuilt and maintained used upright and grand pianos.

The idea of a satellite store came after their daughter, who is a manager at Best Buy, approached them about the idea of getting back into the family business, McDonald said.

“Three days later, we met with Ross (Leinweber, the building owner),” McDonald said, and not long after they signed a lease.

She said the family realized that there’s a market for a piano shop in the area between Milwaukee’s North Shore and Manitowoc after holding a successful 10-day pop-up shop at Costco in Grafton last winter.

Hartland Piano got its start when McDonald’s husband joined Corrao Music in Hartland to begin his private teaching career.

A few years later, he and Ellen, a music teacher he met in college, bought the business.

In 2000, they moved to their current Hartland facility, which was custom built to include a piano showroom, repair shop, showrooms, 40 lesson studios — they educate nearly 3,000 students each week McDonald said — and a performance venue.

“We’re very excited,” McDonald said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”

Hartland Piano is expected to open in its new space by Nov. 1, she said.

The Kissinger building at 700 N. Wisconsin St. has a long history in Port.

Kissinger Appliance and Sales, which started in West Bend in 1991, opened in Port in 2004

The Kissinger family purchased the building from Joan Biever after her husband Joe, who had operated Biever Appliance there for decades, died.