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2007 Winter Newsletter
POP’s President writes:
On behalf of the POP Board of Directors, I thank you for your support and pledge our continued efforts to preserve our parks. We’re a volunteer group with no staff. We keep expenses to a minimum to ensure funds are available when needed to stave off threats to our parks.
2008 promises to be a critical year as issues of governance and funding are debated. Senate Bill 248, a bill allowing the public to decide park governance, is in committee and won’t get a public hearing unless our state senators hear from us. I urge you to tell your elected officials how important adequately funded parks are to you and your family. We’d like to hear your thoughts, too. Please call or email me, or reach us from our website, www.preserveourparks.org.
–John Lunz
414-702-7288
lunz65@wi.rr.com |
Johnsons Park fundraising underway — your help needed
In early 2008, POP will be sending you a brochure asking your help for the $5.5M rebuilding of Johnsons park at 20th St. and Fond du Lac Ave. Please give if you can. The park is in dire shape. Originally a remnant of freeway land, it was never fully landscaped or maintained, and its near- treeless acres are awash with trash, graffitti, battered equipment, standing stormwater. Milwaukee County hasn’t funds to fix the park. Private and foundation dollars must do it. This park proves a finding made by a 2002 park study: Our neediest neighborhoods have the fewest and worst parks.
Madison’s Center for Resilient Cities (formerly Urban Open Space Foundation) leads the restoration effort. The group has been greening up the Fondy-North area since 2004, to national acclaim. Renovation plans will beautify not only the park but a nearby schoolyard and community garden. Please be part of the effort to bring a vibrant park to a neighborhood that needs one.
An ounce of prevention for the lakefront
A condo-developer’s recent reckless clearcutting of the riverbank in Glendale confirms POP’s effort to press for City guidelines to control development on Milwaukee’s lakefront bluff.
Prospect Ave., which runs along the top of the bluff above Lincoln Memorial Drive, is seeing a burst of high-rise development. Building lots on Prospect extend down the bluff to within ten feet of the former railroad right-of-way, now home to a bike trail. POP’s goal is to get the City to set guidelines requiring developers to: 1) respect their property boundaries; 2) preserve the trees at the base of the lake bluff; 3) keep eyesores like open garages and utility units off the bluff; 4) refrain from overlighting the bluff; 5) refrain from creating showy facades on Lincoln Memorial Drive. Glendale’s developer scalped the river bank without regard for the beauty and nature destroyed. We don’t want this to happen to our signature “green corridor” lakefront.
Space considerations
Should a private group with an admirable mission be able to create a special space for itself in a park? The question arose this fall when the Wisconsin Donor Network proposed placing a “Milwaukee Organ Donor Plaza” on McKinley Beach. The plaza would consist of benches and a low wall surrounding a floor of name-bricks honoring organ donors (100 bricks to be added annually). POP board members appeared at a hearing of the Lakefront Development Advisory Commission to state our objections to the project: It would set a dangerous precedent; in its theme and promotional intent is inconsistent with public park purposes. The Donor Network has withdrawn its request for lakefront land. It is not known whether it will reinstate its request.
New proposal for County Grounds
The northeast quadrant of the County Grounds is filling up, with UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago boosting an engineering school and research center on the 65 acres alloted for economic development. The project has the backing of prominent Milwaukee businesses and fundraising has started. POP and others had hoped that the whole area would be devoted to a state forest with enough wetland to sponge up floodwaters, but the County degreed mixed use. Plans for the rest of the 270 acres include flood-control basins, a state forestry demonstration area, freeway interchange expansion and 50 acres designated for recreation.
Our man Randy at the 4th Street Forum
Board member Randy Bryant recently represented POP on a Turner Hall “4th Street Forum” panel on park problems and possible solutions. Other panelists were Parks Director Sue Black, Supervisor Lynne DeBruin and the Park People Executive Director Jim Goulee.
Our parks in 2007 — some bravos
The parks, despite their tattered budgets, reduced staffs and weed problems, are still beautiful places that inspire creative investment by many people. Bravo to these park initiatives of 2007:
• The Morgridge family donated $4M for a new Hoyt Park pool.
• Preservationists determined to protect the river corridor as “Milwaukee’s Central Park.”
• Jay Massart’s program taught tennis to 3700 kids in five parks—free rackets and balls for all.
• Urban Ecology Center opened a center in Washington Park.
• County government established a seven-member Parks Advisory Commission.
• The Park People weeded 19 parks and raised the number of its park friends groups to 50.
And the Coast Guard Station?
It sometimes seems generations of Milwaukeeans have grown up watching the Coast Guard Station crumble on the lakefront and wondering which reuse plan would succeed (condos, museum, motel, restaurant, Native American center, clown museum?). The County budgeted funds to tear down the station in 2008. We hope, whatever happens, the site will be devoted to a park use.
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2007 Summer Newsletter
