McGovern Closed, More Senior Centers Next?

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

When the McGovern Park Senior Center closed this fall for mold contamination, it was likely just the first closure of a county-run senior center.

There are five senior centers owned and operated by Milwaukee County, each with increasing maintenance needs, each with a shaky future. The county does not have funding to pay for their needs without making multi-million dollar cuts to other county services. To keep up with maintenance, the county should be spending an additional $3.8 million annually on senior center repairs, the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) reported to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors‘ Committee on Parks and Culture Tuesday.

The county board adopted a 2026 budget in November that included significant spending cuts across county government to close a $46.7 million budget gap. Administration officials have repeatedly warned that the county cannot afford to maintain all of its existing infrastructure, including the county’s five senior centers: Kelly, Wilson Park, McGovern Park, Washington Park and Clinton Rose.

In June, County Executive David Crowley‘s administration brought a plan forward to redevelop the McGovern Senior Center. The proposal called for the county to partner with a private developer, Jewish Family Services (JFS), to demolish the existing senior center and build a new one with three floors of affordable senior housing above at no cost to county taxpayers. The county board voted to reject the project, largely over concerns that the proposal included senior housing inside the borders of a county park.

A few months later, Milwaukee County was hit by a once-in-1,000 years storm and the senior center basement was flooded. Mold grew and despite efforts to clean it up, the building is considered unsafe for human habitation. The administration did not predict the storm or the immediate closure of the senior center, but officials warned supervisors in June that the facility’s days were numbered.

“We’ve had three floods, three floods in that building in the last five years,” said DAS Director Aaron Hertzberg.

Hertzberg and other administration officials presented a new report on the state of the county’s senior centers Tuesday. It was created in response to the board blocking the McGovern proposal.

“One of the things we realized was there was not a shared understanding of the existing conditions of these facilities from a facilities perspective, from a funding perspective, and from a programming perspective,” Hertzberg said.

The report illustrates the funding gap between what the senior centers need and what the county spends. There are aging electrical systems that raise concerns about fire hazards, mechanical systems that need replacing, roofs that need replacing, water infiltration, rotting wood and failing windows, said Sean Hayes, director of facilities management. There are birds living inside the siding of Wilson Senior Center.

At McGovern, just cleaning up the mold, which is now growing inside of the air vents, is estimated to cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hertzberg said.

The county needs approximately $23 million over the next five years to fix all the immediate needs of the building, funding that does not address long-term sustainability issues, like the fact that McGovern Senior Center frequently floods because the basement sits at the same level as the adjacent lagoon.

“We’ve got a building that’s literally built into a lagoon,” Hertzberg said.

The county’s senior centers are, structurally, approaching the end of their useful life, Hertzberg said, “which generally means they need to either be replaced or receive significant reinvestment.” 

They are also the site of senior programming and meals, which the county spends approximately $1 million a year on. The senior center programming is not mandated by state law, like other county services. If county budget deficits continue as projected, there will be less property tax funding available for non-mandated services.

“We’re on the verge of approaching a major crisis here,” Hertzberg said.

However, the administration is committed to finding a solution, and will work over the next year to identify ways the county can continue to provide senior centers and senior programming in the county. That may not mean the county maintains all of its senior centers, though it may still own some, Hertzberg said.

The county is currently working with developer Scott Crawford, Inc. to potentially move the Kelly Senior Center from its location in Warnimont Park to the former Bucyrus Erie industrial campus.

“So, really, the crux of this is the funding,” Sup. Anne O’Connor said.

O’Connor, who voted against the McGovern proposal, said she feels like the board is “still short on answers,” adding that it’s a frustration she also had with the McGovern project.

“I know some of the community bristled at some of the solutions proposed, but I’m not sure people have a full understanding of what’s at stake here, which is literally no programming if we can’t find funding,” O’Connor said.

Sup. Steve Taylor, who voted in favor of the McGovern project, objected to O’Connor’s suggestion that the administration was not clear about the lack of funding for senior centers.

“We were being told that this was going to be an outcome,” he said. “It just happened sooner than they thought.”

Sup. Felesia Martin, whose district includes McGovern Park and who led board opposition to the project, said the county should have looked for a site outside of the park to build a new senior center. “When you have a city like Milwaukee that is literally littered with buildings, warehouses, etc, that have been closed… and yet you want to continue to build on green spaces.”

Before working on the mixed-use proposal, county officials did consider rebuilding outside of the park, but heard opposition to that idea, too, Hertzberg said.

“I am telling you today it will take a lot of creative thinking. It will be compromise. We will not find consensus. We will not find a solution that everybody loves,” Hertzberg said. “We will not find a solution, unfortunately, that meets the full vision that we’ve talked about or continues to do the programming that we currently serve in the same way that we’ve been doing it for many, many years.”

O’Connor said she is frustrated with “the dilemma” the county faces. “It feels really unfair to me that government that is really trying hard to deliver all these amazing services has such limited access to the funding to make it happen,” she said.

Sup. Sheldon Wasserman, who voted in favor of the McGovern project, suggested the crisis facing senior centers is of the board, and the county’s, own making. He noted that former, and current county executive both supported deals with the state that took millions in funding away from the county to fund stadiums for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Milwaukee Brewers; that the county board has agreed in recent years to provide $45 million for the development of a new museum; and in the past year agreed to fund the redevelopment of the Mitchell Park Domes.

“Milwaukee County’s board has made decisions about what we think priorities are,” said Wasserman, who is chair of parks committee. “We don’t think this is a priority, because if we really thought it was a priority, we would have given them the money.”

The county has more budget deficits projected in the future. The parks system has an estimated $500 million in maintenance needs in the next five years, Wasserman said.

“If anything, shutting down one senior center was kind of like this really worked out, I mean, I hate saying it,” Wasserman said, “But this flooding, and… the roof, when there’s birds flying through it, if that roof collapses, how much money will we save on that building? Because we won’t repair that.”

The county has pressing funding challenges for housing and transit. Senior centers should be run by another organization other than the county, Wasserman said.

“I think that we should really somehow have new partners who have better experience, more talented, who have money in their pockets and are willing to go,” he said. “My best interest is giving these seniors the best they can, and maybe we’re not the ones to do it.”

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