MILWAUKEE — We are getting a clearer picture of the fate of the Mitchell Park Domes. You may remember when it shut down more than seven years ago because of falling concrete.
Sheldon Wasserman, County Supervisor and chair of the committee on parks, tells us all options are on the table. This includes repairing all three domes, rebuilding just one, or demolishing them all together and building a new development.
He says the one thing residents who live near the Domes have agreed on, is that Mitchell Park as a whole needs attention, “It’s more than just the Domes. It’s the park. It’s Mitchell Park, and you have a lagoon there it's polluted, it's decrepit, it's becoming a cesspool, you have basketball courts that are falling in disrepair.”
In 2016, concrete the size of tennis balls was falling inside from as high as 80 feet. Wire mesh wrapping has been the temporary fix. After years of working with consultants and even creating a task force in 2019, there is still no action plan.
Supervisor Wasserman believes the appetite to spend $20 to $30 million in estimated repairs for the Domes, is lessening. Especially when the committee on parks learned Tuesday, a feasibility study done this past spring projects that The Friends of the Domes could likely raise $20 million to help rebuild the entire park and also projected that $3 million could be raised by individual donors to save the Domes, which is roughly $57 million short of their goal.
In the meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez made clear, “More than anything, I want the money for Mitchell Park itself.”
Supervisor Wasserman says his goal is for a final decision on the fate of the domes to be made by the full board of supervisors by the end of this year.
