Board Will Vote on McGovern Park Senior Center With Housing

McGovern Park Senior Center. Photo taken May 24, 2020 by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors will review an unprecedented county project in the coming weeks: a senior center with affordable housing units developed in a county park.

The county is working with Jewish Family Services (JFS), a non-profit social service agency, to build a new McGovern Park Senior Center. The plan calls for a mixed-use building with a senior center on the first floor and 30 to 55 units of affordable senior housing on the floors above. JFS was selected by the county for its experience developing and operating supportive and senior housing.

Under the proposed development agreement, the county would give JFS a long-term ground lease of approximately 5.5-acres encompassing the existing senior center for a nominal fee of $1. The county would retain ownership of the underlying parkland. JFS would be responsible for all the development costs, as well as ongoing maintenance costs for the residential housing. The county would be responsible for some of the maintenance within the senior center portion of the new building. JFS would also construct a new parking lot and access driveway from W. Custer Avenue, and improve lighting and walking paths within the 5.5-acre project area.

JFS plans to go after low-income housing tax credits and use private financing. The county also has a $2 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) it can use on the project because it contains a housing component.

The project is being led by the county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Department of Administrative Services (DAS) and Milwaukee County Parks. County officials are trying to achieve several policy goals with a single project: save the increasingly dilapidated McGovern Senior Center, increase affordable housing for seniors and develop the first modern public senior center in the county.

The concept for a mixed-used senior center development was initially proposed by the county’s Commission on Aging. The commission was looking for ways to feasibly redevelop the county’s public senior centers given the county’s long-term structural deficit and massive backlog of unfunded infrastructure needs estimated at approximately $1 billion. The commission suggested county officials consider modeling senior redevelopment on the City of Milwaukee’s successful mixed-use library projects, which led to the development of several new libraries.

The proposed project in McGovern Park, however, has already faced some pushback for its suggestion of residential development within a county park. In April, when the county administration briefed supervisors on the project, Sup. Felesia Martin, whose district includes the park, flatly opposed the project for its residential component. “I will not vote for anything that says housing on parkland, period,” Martin said.

Martin did not respond to questions from Urban Milwaukee Friday asking if she still opposed the project.

Members of Preserve Our Parks also registered their opposition in April. “If you do such a development, you’re going to have every developer in town paying attention and noting the fact that parks are now available for development,” said Patricia Jursik, a former county supervisor and Preserve our Parks board member.

A spokesperson for Milwaukee County Parks told Urban Milwaukee the project will preserve the integrity of McGovern Park and that it was “a generational opportunity to revitalize one of our most vital public spaces.”

The county administration views the project as the only viable way to save McGovern Senior Center at this point. Relocating the senior center would sever its connection to the park, and building a new senior center elsewhere was “deemed financially infeasible under current budgets,” according to a May 21 report on the project sent to county supervisors.

Without redevelopment, the senior center will eventually be lost. “During the McGovern Park Senior Center Feasibility Study process, we asked: Is it feasible or prudent to reinvest in the old facility? All analyses pointed to ‘no’,” according to the report. “The building’s deficiencies, combined with Milwaukee County’s fiscal constraints, make a county-funded rebuild unrealistic.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said the project represented “a unique, once-in-a-lifetime funding opportunity” for the senior center.

“I am urging the Board of Supervisors to support this project because it will be a significant County investment in services, programming and amenities for the community, especially older adults who live near McGovern Park,” Crowley said.” Because funding isn’t available to address the maintenance issues at the current facility, and it will continue to fall in disrepair, this is truly the only opportunity we have, right now, to make generational improvements to the McGovern Park Senior Center, while also paving the way for future projects at Milwaukee County’s senior centers.”

A 21st Century Senior Center

The idea for the project is largely modeled on concepts the Commission on Aging developed in its MKE Hubs report, released in 2024. The report envisioned senior centers as community hubs for all ages, with modern amenities and programming. McGovern was spotlighted in the report as a potential site for a Hubs project.

“The [project] we are striving for is a vibrant, multi-use hub embedded in an active park, offering everything from nutrition and fitness programs to leisure and social connection, all in proximity to nature… replacing an unsustainable facility with a thriving, sustainable community asset,” according to the new project report.

The county has struggled to maintain the infrastructure it has. The new facilities it has managed to develop in recent years involved massive infusions of funding from the state and federal government.

While the residential component is causing the pushback, administration officials see the affordable housing component as an upside of the project. In their report to the county board, they note the dearth of affordable housing in Milwaukee, particularly for seniors.  There are nearly 200,000 seniors in Milwaukee County, and the population is growing. “Ensuring these older residents have access to safe, affordable housing is a pressing challenge,” according to the report.

DHHS held listening sessions for the project, where a majority of attendees lived outside of the immediate area. But most used the senior center. There was “overwhelming support” for keeping it in the park, as well as for affordable senior housing. However, there was concern about putting the two things together. “Of the 35 [attendees] of those who completed post-listening session surveys, 20% supported the proposed plan while 80% did not,” DHHS reported.

The majority of opposition to the project is coming from county residents that do not live in the immediate neighborhood surrounding McGovern Park, according to DHHS. “Neighborhood residents, most of whom are younger and not current senior center participants, were more in support, citing potential for their own and the neighborhood’s future,” the agency reported.

What Happens Next?

Supervisors on the county board’s Committee on Parks and Culture will be the first to consider the project proposal at their meeting on June 10.  The county administration is asking the board to approve the project by the end of their meeting cycle this month.

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