Downtown Milwaukee Dog Park Wins International Award
International Downtown Association recognizes park nestled under elevated freeway.
Downtown Dog Park grand opening. Photo taken Aug. 20, 2025 by Graham Kilmer.
Downtown Milwaukee’s first public dog park has earned international recognition a little more than a year after opening.
The International Downtown Association presented Milwaukee Downtown, Business Improvement District #21, and the Historic Third Ward, Business Improvement District #2, with a Downtown Achievement Award of Excellence for their work planning, developing and opening the Downtown Milwaukee Dog Park.
The award recognizes projects that respond effectively to urban place-management challenges and exceed the association’s judging criteria. It was presented during the organization’s annual conference, held Sept. 1 through Sept. 3 in Toronto.
The $2 million, 23,000-square-foot park opened in August 2025 at 103 W. Clybourn St. Most of the facility sits beneath an elevated segment of Interstate 794 on what was previously an underused gravel lot along the Milwaukee River.
The dog park competed in the Planning, Design and Infrastructure category, which encompasses projects involving downtown planning, streetscape improvements, sustainable infrastructure and wayfinding.
The honor follows a busy first year for the park, which welcomed approximately 25,000 visits by dog owners and their pets, according to Milwaukee Downtown.
The park includes separate fenced areas for large and small dogs, along with water stations. It was designed by GRAEF and constructed by Berghammer Construction Corporation.
The project was led by Milwaukee Downtown CEO Matt Dorner and Historic Third Ward BID Executive Director Paul Schwartz. The two organizations began publicly fundraising for the park in 2020 after surveys identified a dog park as one of Downtown residents’ most-requested amenities.
What began as a proposed $350,000 project grew substantially as the partners addressed utility conflicts, site conditions and the need to build a durable surface beneath the freeway.
Fromm Family Foods, a Mequon-based pet food company, became the project’s title sponsor. The Fromm-Nieman family is also developing Foxtown Landing on an adjacent site to the south.
Construction of the distillery, brewpub, restaurant, cocktail lounge and event center remains underway, with the building now topped out. Foxtown Landing is expected to open in 2027.
The City of Milwaukee is separately spending nearly $3 million to extend the Milwaukee RiverWalk past the dog park and Foxtown Landing.
The dog park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Visitors are required to obtain an annual or daily Milwaukee County dog park pass.
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