Parks Department May Close 4 Pools
It's also planning to permanently close all wading pools by 2035.

The Washington Park pool. Photo by Alison Peterson.
Milwaukee County Parks is considering permanently closing, or divesting, four outdoor pools in the coming years.
A new comprehensive study of the county’s aquatics system recommends reducing the number of aquatics facilities, including eliminating all wading pools by 2035, and eventually consolidating pool offerings into new larger, regional aquatics facilities. The study concluded Parks should close the pools in Grobschmidt Park, Wilson Park, Washington Park, Jackson Park and Hales Corners Park.
It did, however, suggest Hales Corners Park Pool could be divested from the county taxpayer and run through a private-public partnership similar to TOSA Pool in Hoyt Park.
Counsilman-Hunsaker & Associates (CHA), an aquatics planning and design firm based in Des Peres, Missouri, produced the report for Parks. The study looks at survey data, trends in pool use, the cost of the system, as well as equity and access to aquatics facilities. It makes a number of recommendations for existing aquatics facilities, and offers guidance for how the system should move forward.
The Parks system has 45 pools, water parks, wading pools and splash pads that it owns and maintains. Most of the facilities are splashpads, of which there are 25. The location of the facilities largely tracks the population density of the county. The system costs nearly $3 million a year to operate and brings in less than $1 million in revenue. It is also an old system. The newest pool (Schulz Aquatic Center) was built 15 years ago. The two indoor pools at Noyes and Pulaski Parks were built 50 years ago.
The county has a long-term structural budget deficit that is on track to force service cuts across all operations in the coming years. It also has a massive backlog of infrastructure and maintenance needs, estimated at approximately $1 billion over the next five years.
“Aging infrastructure and mounting maintenance needs place a strain on the County’s aquatics budget,” according to the CHA report. “Many of Milwaukee County Parks’ aquatics facilities will begin to soon require significant investment for repairs or replacement. This necessitates a strategic prioritization of capital improvement projects and a long-term financial plan to ensure the system’s sustainability.”
Even so, the total cost of the recommendations in the new study — including closures, demolitions and new construction — would cost an estimated $21.3 million over the next 10 years.
In recent years, Parks has not opened all of the pools it owns. This past summer only three deep well pools and two waterparks were opened, alongside splash pads and wading pools. These pools were left closed in large part because the system did not have enough lifeguards to open them.
In combination with new aquatics facilities, and those owned and operated by municipalities and other organizations, the study aims to create a future system over the next decade that “allows for an even distribution of aquatic facility types.”
Pools and Waterparks
Declining lifeguards and attendance, coupled with mounting maintenance costs and an unfavorable budget future have already led Parks to start permanently closing pools. Holler Park pool was closed for good in 2024.
Under the short term recommendations in the report, the system would continue to operate and maintain Wilson, Sheridan and McCarty Park Pools. Grobschmidt and Hales Corners, which have not been opened in recent years, would be decommissioned. Though, the report suggests Hales Corners could continue to operate if a private entity took over maintenance and operation costs.
Both Jackson and Washington Park Pools would be demolished and replaced with “destination splash pads,” which are “akin to a mini water park,” according to the report.
“These often include multi-level play structures with slides, tipping buckets, interactive water cannons, ground sprays with varying patterns and heights, and themed elements,” the report states.
Instead of a constellation of community pools, aquatics systems across the country are moving toward consolidation: building a single larger aquatic facility with multiple amenities in areas where there currently are multiple pools, according to the report.
In the longterm, Parks is considering building a large “mega” aquatics facility on the South Side with both indoor and outdoor pools to replace Wilson and Grobschmidt Pools and other local facilities, like the wading pools that will be phased out.
Use of the county’s two indoor pools — Noyes and Pulaski — has been on the decline. The study recommends maintaining them for now, and marketing the facilities more to improve attendance.
Waterparks and destination aquatics facilities are where most systems are headed. Parks has three: Cool Waters Aquatic Center in Wauwatosa, Pelican Cove in Kosciuszko Park and Schulz Aquatic Center in Lincoln Park.
Wading Pools Out, Splash Pads In
The aquatics system report recommends phasing out all wading pools across the system by 2035.
A majority of wading pools across the system saw only 25 visitors a day during the 2024 season. The declining popularity is in line with nationwide trends, according to the report.
The study recommends continuing to operate high-use wading pools that have large maintenance needs. Wading pools with lower rates of use, however, should be converted to splash pads.
Splash pads are less complicated to operate, require fewer staff and provide ADA access and the heat relief the wading pools offered, according to the study. Parks has already started converting some wading pools to splash pads for those very reasons.
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