Supervisor Adds Domes Project to 2025 Budget

Proposed Nature Learning Center addition. Rendering courtesy Friends of the Domes.

A new plan to save the Mitchell Park Domes has found its way into the 2025 Milwaukee County Budget.

The plan was created by the non-profit Friends of the Domes in partnership with Milwaukee County Parks. It was unveiled in early September and proposes a $133.4 million redevelopment of the iconic local structures and a transfer of operations to the friends group, which was formed in 1989.

Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez, whose district includes Mitchell Park, drafted a resolution that would effectively incorporate the plan into the 2025 budget, and the board’s Finance Committee unanimously approved the amendment Thursday.

The full board must still approve the amendment.

The plan was developed by the Friends of the Domes in partnership with Milwaukee County Parks with a goal of saving the structures, which are in need of significant investment. It would use $30 million in public funding and $35 million in private funding on top of a stack of grants and tax credits.

Martinez’s amendment, which has co-sponsorship from a majority of the board, authorizes the county to negotiate an agreement with the Friends of the Domes that includes a long-term lease allowing the nonprofit to assume operational control, supports listing the Domes on the National Register of Historic Places and commits the county to providing $30 million in support for the project over an unspecified six-year period.

The county has sought a solution for the seemingly insurmountable maintenance backlog at the Domes for more than a decade. Pieces of concrete began falling out of the structure in 2013. The county convened a Domes Task Force in 2016, which worked for three years on a plan for the Domes. In 2019, the task force and a consultant, Arts Market Inc., proposed a grand redevelopment of the Domes with a financing stack similar to what the friends group proposed in September. But the task force proposal did not have a governance structure or fundraising effort in place, and assumed rapid development timelines that ultimately proved unrealistic.

“This has been years in the making,” Martinez said.

Martinez noted that the amendment was redrafted to allow the county to commit to funding the project without immediately beginning to budget for it during the next cycle. The friends group, though, can still seek donations with proof the county is backing the project.

The amendment asks Parks, the friends group and the county administration to present a draft agreement and a plan for funding the county’s commitment by May 2025.

If approved as part of the 2025 budget, Martinez said the project gives the county a “chance to really get to get the Domes to where it needs to be, get it off our books and revitalize the 12th District.”

The department supports Martinez’s amendment and the group’s plan, said Guy Smith, executive director of Milwaukee County Parks.

The full board will next vote on the amendment during adoption of the annual budget.

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