Park Place

One of the greatest legacies left to us by the men and women who built Milwaukee into a modern city is the extensive and well-designed park system they created.

Milwaukee was the first city in America to adopt the “greenbelt” concept of establishing parklands along all its major waterways to serve both as floodways and natural recreational corridors – the system we know as our parkways, the routes followed by most of our bike paths.

This was accomplished during the 1930s; other cities did not recognize the wisdom of establishing greenbelts until the 1970s and later.

With more than 150 parks and parkways encompassing 15,000 acres, Milwaukee County offers more open spaces and natural areas than does Chicago.

Unfortunately, our impressive park system is now in trouble. Since 1982, when the County Board of Supervisors and the County Executive dissolved the Park Commission that built this system and took over responsibility for the parks budget, deep annual funding cuts have left the Parks Department an empty shell.

In adjusted dollars, the parks budget is now less than two-thirds what it was 25 years ago. In constant dollars, it is only about half. And more cuts are planned for next year. The parks staff has been cut from more than 1100 full time workers in the early 1970’s to just over 260 – barely sufficient for proper park maintenance.

The Park People was founded in 1978 by former Parks Commissioner Joy Teschner to advocate for our park system. She clearly foresaw the danger of taking this public treasure out of the hands of an independent commission of volunteer citizens and placing it in the political realm.

The Park People has responded by forming more than 36 individual park Friends Groups to take stewardship of their neighborhood parks. The Park People also has proposed legislation to return to an independent citizens’ commission to govern the parks through the creation of a separate Park District.

Our goal is to ultimately create a network of 150 Friends Groups numbering 10,000 or more concerned citizens to protect every park in the system and to demand adequate funding and staffing for all our parks.

We will be posting regularly on this site about issues affecting our parks and the efforts of Milwaukee County residents to rebuild and revitalize this precious legacy. Sometimes, we’ll tell you a feel-good story about how people have stepped forward to raise money and awareness for their park’s needs. We might share a bit of the history of some our less well-known parks, such as Franklin Park, one of three designated state natural areas in Milwaukee County.

But sometimes, we’re going to stick a pin in our elected officials, demanding to know why our tremendous park system has been allowed to deteriorate and what in the world is taking them so long to do something about it.

Through the Park Department’s own admission, our parks system has come to have incurred more than $150 million in “deferred maintenance” – the crumbling infrastructure of rutted roads, impassable parking lots, locked-up and leaking restrooms, empty swimming pools, historic pavilions that need new roofs and boilers. We’ll point the finger at the people who have let the capital budget for these needed repairs stand at unsustainable levels for far too many years.

We want you to know what we’ve got out there and why it’s worth saving. We want you to share our pride in the foresight that led Milwaukee to create a park system that has been the envy of other cities across the country. And we want you to share our concern that this heirloom is threatened and that public officials have been so slow to move to protect it.

We want you to become a Friend of the Parks. Stay tuned.


If you have a question about the parks that you would like answered or have an issue you would like us to address, please use the Park People link above to send us an email. This address can also be used for information on how to start or join a friends group or become a member of The Park People.