GREEN BAY (NBC26) — A federal grant of more than $2 million will help make a plan to bring a pier back to Bay Beach Amusement Park possible.
- See a rendering of what the Green Bay Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department hopes Bay Beach Amusement Park will look like after various projects over the next few years
- The Environmental Protection Agency has granted the city about $2.4 million to make part of that dream come true
- Meet one mother who is excited about the city's plans
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)
Seeing the bay from a different point of view: Bay Beach Amusement Park used to have a pier in the 1930s and it will soon have one again. I'm Pari Apostolakos here in Green Bay where more than $2 million in federal money has been granted for long-awaited improvements to the historic park.
For people like Chelci Sila, Bay Beach Amusement Park is a longstanding family tradition.
"I've been coming there since I was a kid so it's nice to bring my kids here," Sila said Thursday evening.
While she was at the Bay Beach playground with her family, I told her about the new pier and re-vamped shoreline walkway coming to the amusement park.
"It would be nice, I mean you've got the really cool merry-go-round and Ferris wheel to overlook it," Sila said. "So I think a pier would be really cool too."
"There was previously a pier and a sand beach at Bay Beach Amusement Park but that went away in the 1930s," Green Bay Parks, Recreation and Forestry Director Dan Ditscheit said. "There was a pier that went out in approximately the same location that we're building this proposed pier."
Ditscheit said the idea to build a pier as a wildlife observation area and pave the shoreline walkway at Bay Beach has been in the works since 2018. The Environmental Protection Agency has granted $2.4 million to the city for the project.
"It's something that we've heard many times throughout the years that this is something that the public really wants to see out there," Ditscheit said.
Ditscheit says the total cost is estimated at $4.5 million. So, the city will use a previous grant of $200,000 and money which was bonded in 2018 for this project to make up the remaining $2.1 million.
"I think it would be a really cool addition if we had like a really big beach," Sila said when asked what other improvements she would like to see at Bay Beach.
Ditscheit said the parks department hopes to start construction next fall with a hopeful completion date of summer 2026. Only then will the city consider bringing back the sand beach along the park's shoreline. He said next year's amusement park season will operate as usual.
