Domes Win Strong Donor Support

Mitchell Park Domes. Photo taken July 14, 2025, by Graham Kilmer.

In less than three months, the Mitchell Park Domes have drawn another $1 million in donations to finance their redevelopment.

The Milwaukee Domes Alliance (MDA), the nonprofit that operates the Domes, is leading a massive, multi-stage redevelopment of the structures estimated to cost $133 million in total.

The MDA is banking on significant philanthropic support for the project’s complicated financing. The project calls for three distinct phases of fundraising and construction. To break ground on the first phase and release funds committed by Milwaukee County, the group needs to raise $17.1 million in private donations. To date, it has raised $9.2 million, according to Christa Beall Diefenbach, who presented the latest fundraising numbers to the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Parks and Culture Tuesday.

That’s up from the $8.2 million MDA was reporting at the end of March. Since then, the project has also secured listing on the state’s register of historic places, moving the project into place for national registration. Historic registration is critical to securing historic preservation tax credits needed to finance the project. The State Building Commission has also granted the project $2 million.

The budget for the first phase includes $2.9 million from the state. “So we still have $900,000 left to raise in that area, but that was a really great push forward in terms of those funds and on the fundraising campaign,” Beall Diefenbach said. 

The project has also secured lead gifts from the We Energies Foundation, Herb Kohl Philanthropies and Lynde Uihlein. For this, the new lobby will be called the We Energies Foundation Lobby and Herb Kohl Philanthropies will have its name on the Little Sprouts Dome, a signature piece of the first phase of development.

The latter will be created by redeveloping an existing greenhouse into an interactive play area for children, or “Little Sprouts.” The first phase also involves the redevelopment of the entryway and lobby, an expansion of the gift shop and development of a cafe. Beall Diefenbach expects the Little Sprouts Dome will be “very popular” and drive revenue through admissions and memberships.

The project is on track to hit fundraising benchmarks in time to release the first tranche of $12.9 million in taxpayer funding from Milwaukee County, Beall Diefenbach said.

In 2025, Milwaukee County committed $30 million over six years to the project. The county owns the Domes, and under the development agreement, MDA will control the structures through a long-term lease and be responsible for operations and maintenance costs.

The project was developed in partnership between MDA and Milwaukee County Parks. It was the result of more than a decade of work by county staff, supervisors and consultants to chart a sustainable path forward for the unique conoidal structures built in the 1960s.

The county had deferred major maintenance at the Domes for years when, in 2013, chunks of concrete began breaking off from the structure, leaving policymakers with a choice between finding a plan to save the Domes or eventually financing their demolition. The project moving forward now draws on ideas first developed by consultants working with the county’s Domes Task Force, which convened in 2016.

Under the deal with the county, MDA has to break ground no earlier than April 2027 and no later than December 2028. Beall Diefenbach told the committee that shouldn’t be a problem.