What Is The Future Of Doyne Park?

Doyne Park. Photo taken Aug. 21, 2022 by Dave Reid.

In 2022, the golf course at Doyne Park was closed, another casualty of Milwaukee County Parks‘ budget crisis.

The nine-hole course needed a new irrigation system, worth approximately $250,000. It also needed staffing, another result of the department’s wider financial trouble. The neglected course had seen a 50% reduction in players and revenue. With no staff, people could play the deteriorating course for nothing.

After closing the course, Parks went to the community seeking ideas for new amenities that could take its place. The department had an idea for what to do with the area. As early as 2021, when the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors was briefed on the likelihood that the course would be closed, the department indicated it could be converted to a disc golf course — something the department has had success with in the past.

But after hearing from nearby residents, it seems unlikely disc golf will be coming to Doyne Park. Public input is currently pointing the department toward replanting the area as a native prairie and butterfly garden, or a bicycle amenity with the top preference being a mountain bike trail.

Doyne Park, 5300 W. Wells St., is a 35-acre park in the city of Milwaukee’s Story Hill neighborhood. Its northern border is the Menomonee River. The area was originally a stone quarry in the early part of the 20th century. After that it was used by the city as a landfill. It’s not fully known what was dumped at the site based on records kept by the state Department of Natural Resources. But it’s understood that wood, old appliances and street sweeping, at least, were dumped there and since 1998 a landfill gas system has been maintained at the site.

The Oak Leaf Trail runs through the park, which also has two half-courts for basketball, a soccer field and a playground. In order to plan for what would replace the golf course, which until its closure made up the lion’s share of the park, the department sought ideas from the community and nearby neighbors.

A webpage was created soliciting ideas for amenities; parks staff were posted at the park several times and spoke with “anyone willing to stop,” according to a recent Parks report, including “dog walkers, cyclists, walkers, joggers, neighbors, and non-local visitors.”

When the ideas from the webpage and the park-goers was presented to 45 people attending a community meeting — the majority of whom lived a half mile away or less — they picked the idea for a native prairies and butterfly garden as the favorite. That was followed by a mountain bike trail, and then a pump track, which is a bicycle track having an undulating series of rounded bumps and banking turns. A disc golf course, which was well-received online and in conversations at the park, was rejected at the public meeting.

Parks is planning to pursue funding in the county’s 2024 budget to design the new park, using the top three favored amenities as a guide.