Parks Planning ‘High-Impact’ Investments in 2024

Kellog PEAK Initiative community center. Photo by City of Milwaukee Department of City Development.

Milwaukee County Parks plans to make $500,000 worth of “high-impact” investments in 2024.

A “high-impact” project is one the department can implement quickly, and which will register with park users immediately, Deputy Parks Director Jim Tarantino explained to the Milwaukee County Board’s Finance Committee Thursday.

“It also means leverage,” Tarantino said. The department will put money into projects that have the potential to drum up additional philanthropic funding.

The Milwaukee County Board added $500,000 to the 2024 budget for park improvements and asked the department to come up with a list for the board to review. The Finance Committee approved the list Thursday.

Tiefenthaler Park, in Midtown, is slated to receive one of the largest investments in the spending package. In 2021, the Kellogg Peak Initiative finished a $5 million expansion of its headquarters* in the park. What was once a park pavilion is now a community center, Tarantino said. Now Parks wants to make additional investments, turning the wading pool into a splash pad, planning an upgrade to lighting throughout the park and redoing pathways.

Parks is hoping this investment can leverage even more philanthropic funding for the park, he said. “We’re working with the Milwaukee Parks Foundation to do some fundraising for more work in the park,” he said.

With another $100,000 bucket of money, the department plans to pay for new striping at tennis and basketball courts, open up more free picnic areas and begin long-term planning for some of the system’s larger parks. “A comprehensive plan is really what’s needed for some of our larger, more complex parks,” Tarantino said, “to understand what future infrastructure would go into place rather than what we have traditionally done, which is to be reactive to the needs of the community or what needs to be fixed.”

For the tennis courts, specifically, Parks plans to add striping to three tennis courts making them playable as pickleball courts. “We want to add more [pickleball],” Tarantino said. “We hear the demand from the community.” 

The department will also spend $80,000 on upgrades to pavilions. In past budgets, funding for pavilion upgrades has focused on exterior work, now the department plans to put some money into the interiors of these facilities. Much of it will be on new kitchen equipment and appliances. “In many cases, we’ve maintained decades-old refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, everything that you can think of in the kitchen spaces,” Tarantino said.

The department also plans to spend $150,000 on its seasonal labor pool, with $100,000 for funding and $50,000 in incentives. The aim is to increase seasonal staffing to open more facilities this summer.

In Walker Square Park, the department will use $50,000 to re-turf the park. But the hope, Tarantino explained, is that this funding will help the department leverage additional funding through the Milwaukee Parks Foundation, which is “actively fundraising” for the park.

Finally, $20,000 will go to purchase new gym and fitness equipment for King Park and Kosciuszko Community Centers. In 2023, the Parks Foundation spent $12,000 on new fitness equipment and the department wants to “continue that positive investment,” Tarantino said.

The parks system has a massive half-a-billion dollar backlog of maintenance and infrastructure needs. The department has been forced to constantly look for areas where it can decrease its costs or scrounge funding. With the new projects, parks anticipates making proactive investments with the aim that county residents will be able to see some immediate results from the new 0.4% sales tax that made the projects possible.