Garrison said while there are friends’ groups that help individual parks, no entity existed to make donations to the system overall. The board will be chaired by Tami Garrison, director of community affairs at MillerCoors, who was approached by parks officials and County Executive Chris Abele. A consultant’s plans call for investing $66 million in a long-term plan to revitalize Mitchell Park. “We need to provide recreational spaces and open space for everyone, and increasingly we want to focus on underserved communities,” Smith said.įundraising for improvements to the Mitchell Park Domes is on a separate track, he said. One goal is to pattern projects as it did this year when it teamed up with the Green Bay Packers to replace damaged playground equipment at the 4-acre Center Street Park at N. Some potential projects: Playgrounds (which have a lifespan of about 20 years) planting trees to replace those that have died from emerald ash borer infestations upgrading bike trails and playing fields and purchasing equipment to support community science projects such as aquatic monitoring. Smith declined to discuss near-term financial goals, but said the goal is to pay for work across the system’s 157 parks in ways that will complement projects at individual parks funded by friends’ groups. 25 when initial sources of funding will be announced. Only $1.6 million was appropriated for that purpose in the county's 2019 capital budget. RELATED: County and city infrastructure backlogs portend tough decisions, Wisconsin Policy Forum report saysĪccording to a report in June by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, a backlog of capital projects in the county parks requires $39 million in spending each year between 20. As examples, Madison and Dane County, Chicago and Seattle are all using parks-specific foundations, he said. Where Milwaukee has lagged is in adapting the foundation model. Parks and recreation industry figures show the average parks system recovers about 29% of costs from outside sources, he said. Smith said the parks department has used partnerships, vendor revenue and other relationships to pay for 56% of operating costs. News of the foundation was first reported by the Milwaukee Business Journal. “We felt this was the perfect time to do this,” said Guy Smith, director of the parks system.
The campaign, which has raised $100,000, led to the launch of the foundation, which will raise money for an endowment for the park system. The foundation is an outgrowth of a campaign that began a year ago through a fund at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation that was earmarked for parks operations and capital projects. Milwaukee County Parks is hoping to get a financial shot in the arm from a newly formed foundation that will raise money for the system’s cash-strapped infrastructure needs.Ī group of largely private companies and nonprofits has formed the Milwaukee Parks Foundation to help finance projects and address a growing backlog of deferred maintenance.
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