Public Invited to Help Forge County Grounds Trail Plan

It has been well over a decade since thousands of Wauwatosa lawns sprouted signs saying "Save the County Grounds," in furious opposition to the proposed sale of the largest remaining tract of public open space in Milwaukee County.

On Monday, citizens who value the sweeping views of the County Grounds' Northeast Quadrant will finally get a chance to help knit up the pieces of this still largely public space.

In a public meeting titled "Planning Connections: Milwaukee County Grounds Trail Plan," stakeholders want to hear how people get to the Grounds, how they use them and how they would like to use them.

The object of the meeting is to forge a solid plan for connecting land owned or controlled by half-a-dozen different entities into a cohesive whole, at least insofar as public recreation is concerned. The meeting is from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at Wil-O-Way Underwood Recreation Center, 10602 Underwood Parkway.

"We want to identify the key points of how people access the Grounds, and identify the trail connections so we can get people to and from places," said Wauwatosa Community Development Director Nancy Welch. "We don't want to bog down the process with 'This is where this trail should wind.' It's more about the bigger picture of where and how to connect all the dots.

"I think the perception is that there are lines you can't cross and that there will be fences going up everywhere.

"Parks says there will be trails on their property, the DNR says there will be trails on their property, UWM says there will be trails on their property, MMSD says there will be trails on their property," Welch said. "What we have is verbal statements. This is a way to formalize that. It assures the public that yes, you can feel free to move about the Grounds."

The coordination of Monday's meeting and the more technical work of then actually formulating a coherent trail plan that can be built between so many players is the result of a staff assistance grant from the National Park Service through its Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program.

Angie Tornes of the NPS' Wisconsin Field Office in Milwaukee has been assigned to lead the effort.

"The landscape has changed a lot" since the long-ago campaign to stop overdevelopment of the Grounds, Tornes said, "with the detention basins and the infilling, but there's still a lot of space and it could be really exciting with all the linkages to all the facilities to this green treasure in the center – our Central Park!

"It's the touchstone. You take what you have and make the best of it."

Among those Tornes has recruited to help out are graduate students of Community Design Solutions from UWM's School of Architecture and Urban Planning, who are making the maps for the meeting and for planning purposes. The DNR is printing those maps.

The Northeast Quadrant lies between Watertown Plank Road on the south and Highway 45 on the west, and is bounded by the Canadian Pacific rail line on the north and east. It is bisected from east to west by Swan Boulevard.

Those who remember the campaign to keep most of the land from being sold for development will recall that once there was a plan, approved by the state and the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, to create a 235-acre County Grounds State Forest.

But that plan was vetoed by then-County Executive Thomas Ament and never came to pass even after he resigned from office. In the years since, the quadrant was divided up between the Department of Natural Resources (Forestry Center), the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (Detention Basins), the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Innovation Park) and the Milwaukee County Parks Department.

Other players include the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which holds an easement on the western fringe of the quadrant for future highway expansion (the Zoo Interchange Project) and the Mandel Group, which is on the cusp of buying the historic Eschweiler Campus from UWM.

One last small but feisty stakeholder is the Friends of the Monarch Trail, which successfully lobbied Milwaukee County and UWM to agree to a no-build, protected habitat zone surrounding the Eschweiler Campus to preserve groves of trees and meadows where migrating monarch butterflies come to roost each September as they wing their way to Mexico.

Barb Agnew, the founder of the group, and Welch, of the city, have both asked the DOT to consider what may be the most critical connection in the whole trail plan: the creation of a pedestrian and wildlife passageway beneath the raised roadbed of Swan Boulevard.

Without such a connection, Swan presents a significant safety barrier to bikers, hikers and animals trying to move from the northern segment of the Grounds to the southern portion.

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Monday's meeting

What: Planning Connections: Milwaukee County Grounds Trail Plan

Where: Wil-O-Way Underwood Recreation Center, 10602 Underwood Parkway

When: 4:30 to 7 p.m. Monday, with brief presentations at 5 and 6 p.m.