Time running out for War Memorial project?
One county supervisor says times is running out to start work on a much-needed expansion to the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center’s parking lot – a proposal that’s drawn objections from parks groups that say the facility is attempting to infringe on public land. Meanwhile, the state DNR as weighed in to oppose the expansion.
“We’re up against a deadline,” says Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo, who sponsored a resolution along with four other supervisors (Joseph Rice, Michael Mayo, John Weishan and Mark Borkowski) asking the county board to extend the Center’s lease 2.6 acres to the north. The extension would include parking the Center has already built on county land that’s not included in its current lease – and space to add another 0.6 acres in parking. Plans had called for the Center to bid out the parking lot job by July.
the war memorial center
Sanfelippo argues the parking lot must be expanded because people attending events at the Center routinely park on the grass to the north of the existing lots. “We’re talking about events that attract a lot of elderly people,” Sanfelippo says. Plans also call for adding trees and rain gardens to beautify the Center’s parking areas, improvements Sanfelippo doesn’t expect to go forward unless the county board approves the parking lot expansion.
A suspension of county board rules by a two-thirds vote was required to consider the expansion of the Center’s lease, which was introduced directly to the full county board at its June 24 meeting. Standard board procedure called for the expansion to be considered first in one of the board’s committees. Supervisors voted 10-9 to suspend the rules, falling short of a super majority. Some, including Supervisor Gerry Broderick, chairman of the Parks Committee, accused Sanfelippo and the legislation’s other sponsors of trying to ram through the parking lot expansion.
Sanfelippo says Broderick, who opposes the expansion, refused to schedule the issue for consideration at a Parks Committee meeting. Broderick says he refused only because the Center hadn’t yet presented the expansion to the Lakefront Development Advisory Commission, an inter-governmental advisory panel composed of representatives from city, county and state government. Its opinions are non-binding. “It’s a guard against inappropriate development on the lakefront,” Broderick says.
The Center, a banquet facility and small museum located beside the Milwaukee Art Museum on Downtown Milwaukee’s lakefront, sits just south of Veteran’s Park. The Park People of Milwaukee County and Preserve our Parks, two citizen parks groups, filed a notice of claim with the county earlier this month threatening to sue the Center for improper use of public land.
Sanfelippo says these groups’ efforts to characterize the Center as a private enterprise are misplaced. “The War Memorial Center is a Milwaukee County enterprise,” he says. While the Center is technically a private nonprofit, its building is county-owned and serving a county function, he says.
Because the land in question is “filled lakebed” in the eyes of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency has said it opposes the expansion. “The department considers this project to be inconsistent with the public trust interest in navigable waters because it creates an additional 0.6 acres of impervious surface on the Lake Michigan lakefront for the purpose of generated increased parking revenue,” a letter from a DNR water specialist states.
State law requires that area of raised lakebed and areas to the north to be used only for “public parks, parkways, recreation and marina developments,” it says. The law is an application of the Public Trust Doctrine, a common law principle stating that navigable waters and the land lying underneath them should be open for public use.
The Center, at Broderick’s referral, presented its plan to lakefront advisory commission on June 7, but its members said they didn’t have enough information to issue a recommendation. They requested additional information on the lease between the county and the Center. William Lynch, the commission’s chairman, said last week the group hasn’t received the information yet.