Parks Will Resurface 9 Playgrounds This Year

Johnsons Park. Photo from Milwaukee County.

Milwaukee County Parks is working on resurfacing nine playgrounds across the system this year.

There are an estimated 112 playgrounds in the county parks system. Each year, the department makes an effort to replace or resurface as many old playgrounds as it can. It tries to replace five playgrounds and resurface at least 18,000 square feet of playground annually.

In 2025, the budget included approximately $780,000 for playground resurfacing. This proved enough to fund a mixture of poured-in-place rubberized surfaces and engineered, wood-fiber surfaces for nine parks: Clarence and Cleopatra Johnson Park, Walker Square Park, Atkinson Triangle, King Park, McGovern Park, Smith Park, Brown Deer Park, Greenfield Park and Cannon Park.

So far, the department has finished resurfacing at Cannon, Brown Deer and Johnson; and it’s nearly finished with McGovern, according to Parks.

The rubber surfacing holds up better in the long run, requiring less maintenance. Some of the playgrounds already have the modern surfacing, but are just heavily used. Others have sand, which is more expensive to maintain.

The department has a list of playgrounds in need of replacement and a number in the system were last rebuilt in the 1990s. The result is that each year, the department is inevitably replacing one of the oldest playgrounds in the system. Recently, that was Mitchell Airport Park: the oldest county playground. Parks managed to build a new one in time for summer this year.

This year, the department is replacing the playground at Popuch Park on the northwest side. The playground equipment there was installed in 1999. Construction is expected to begin this fall.

The county parks system has significant infrastructure needs. An estimated $500 million in infrastructure and maintenance spending is needed every five years to keep up with it all. The department never receives that level of funding, though. In recent years, buoyed by federal stimulus funding, policymakers have been able to drive more funding into parks improvements.

And in the 2024 and 2025 budgets, county supervisors managed to pass amendments providing cash funding to the parks — $500,000 in 2024 and $600,000 in 2025 — for unspecified improvements, giving the department additional resources to tackle its infrastructure needs.

It appears unlikely that trend will continue. The county is going into the 2026 budget process with a $46.7 million budget deficit it needs to close and County Executive David Crowley has directed department heads to prepare for 10% across-the-board budget cuts.

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