The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors will vote Thursday, July 24 on whether to fund construction of the reimagined Mitchell Park Domes.
The plan will use $30 million in county funds — $5 million a year for the next six years — to fix and renovate the iconic Domes facility and Mitchell Park, along with more than $80 million in federal and private funds.
12th District County Supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez has championed the project, joining the decades-long effort to save the Domes. He says architect Donald Grebe offered an important piece of advice when the Domes were built.
"[Grebe] said, when he built them in 1964, 'These things have to either be torn down or completely replaced in 20 years,'" Martinez explains. "And that was 1984, the year I was born."
Although the plan requires major capital resources and may be prohibitive for other projects in town, he says it's worth it to invest in a point of pride for the under-resourced Mitchell Park neighborhood and the city as a whole.
"I do sympathize with everybody who would have to forego projects for the next six years, but trust me when I say that I will fight for things in the budget for their parks as well," he says. "But the thing is, it's been 35 years that we've been kicking this can down the road on fixing the Domes."
Under the new funding plan, the Milwaukee Domes Alliance would take over operations at the Domes.
"We're asking our philanthropic community to contribute $35 million, and those are dollars that will be matched by the county," says Milwaukee Domes Alliance CEO Christa Beall Diefenbach.
Diefenbach says Milwaukee quickly fell in love with the Domes' beehive-shaped, glass bubbles when they opened in the 1960s.
"That's what they were actually described as at the time — these glorious glass bubbles, which were a willful act of hope," she says.
_
