Brown Deer Golf Course Adding Large Practice Facility

Putting green and driving range at Brown Deer Park Golf Course. Photo taken July 23, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Parks is adding a practice facility to the golf course at Brown Deer Park.

The department is planning to build out a 23,500-square-foot putting green, a 1,560-square-foot practice bunker and 5,300 square feet of asphalt cart paths, according to an advertisement seeking bids for the project.

‘We do surveys,” said Jon Canavan, parks golf and recreation turf manager. “The number one thing we hear is there’s no practice facilities.”

The new practice facility will be built just west of the existing driving range near the clubhouse, Canavan said. Parks will remove a small practice bunker and a concrete pad leftover from prior years and build out the new putting green and practice bunker. The existing putting green, which sits between the clubhouse and the driving range, will remain.

The plan is to replace the chipping green that can only accommodate roughly five players at once with a larger chipping green and bunker that can accommodate as many as 20. And there’s no doubt the demand for it already exists.

With few practice facilities in the county, the parks system’s driving ranges and putting greens see heavy use, Canavan said. Urban Milwaukee observed more than a dozen players using the driving range and putting green in mid-afternoon on Tuesday.

“People like practicing,” Canavan said.

The putting greens and chipping bunker will be free for the public to use, but Canavan said the putting green will be available for parties to rent and that a putting course can be laid out. At the driving range, where players sometimes queue to use it, golfers pay $6 for a bucket of balls.

The new facility is being paid for with federal funding from the American Rescue Plant Act (ARPA). In 2022, the county allocated approximately $6.4 million in ARPA funding for the construction of cart paths and irrigation systems in county golf courses.

A chunk of the funding was originally slated for new cart paths at the Whitnall Park Golf Course. Parks ended up pulling the project because it is planning a larger redevelopment of the course and the department did not want to split up the construction timelines. The funding was reallocated to some repairs around the golf system and “other golf infrastructure yet to be identified,” according to a report from the department in fall 2023.

The county’s 13 public golf courses have become a critical money-making component of the county parks system, which has more than 150 parks to maintain. During the COVID-19 pandemic there was a golf boom nationally, and Parks was well placed to take advantage of it, with an array of courses ranging from small par-three courses for beginners to larger, tournament level courses like Brown Deer.

The county’s budget is so diminished that the parks department has to generate approximately 50% of its operating revenue every year just to maintain its existing funding levels. Last year golf brought in nearly $11 million, or 20% of Parks’ entire operating budget.

The department has pursued investments in the golf system in recent years with an expectation that they will yield a return. The driving idea behind expanding the golf cart paths is that golf cart rentals have proven rather lucrative.

Brown Deer is already one of the premier courses in the system, and the new practice facility is aimed at making it an even more attractive option for golfers, capturing even more of the market demand for golf in the county. With a new practice facility matching the quality of the course, Brown Deer could become a one-stop shop for golfers looking to use high-end public facilities.

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