South Shore Park Beer Garden, Playground, & Parking Lot

With many changes coming to the lakefront in front of South Shore Park, including the relocation of the beach from its current location to the north to south of the beer garden, Milwaukee County Parks is taking a comprehensive look at the future state of the park. While the playground has funding to get replaced, please note that other amenities in the conceptual designs below are not funded. Since South Shore Park is one of the most popular parks in the system due to the beer garden and farmer's market, through these designs, Parks staff is putting a special focus on increasing pedestrian safety and adding capacity while adding some attractive amenities to the space. As part of this effort the well-used playground will be replaced ahead of schedule and was being considered for relocation to the other side of the beer garden.

Community Engagement: In Summer and Fall of 2022 Parks staff surveyed park-goers and adjacent neighbors to South Shore Park about the beer garden and parking lot layouts. Staff displayed the boards you see below at the beer garden 5 different times, at the Farmers Market, and hosted an open house where Parks staff presented the options and asked for more input. Here are the results from the beer garden designs from over 400 responses.

The majority preferred that the playground stay where it is regardless of additional amenities. This was a near unanimous desire at the open house. People supported the physical separation of the Oak Leaf Trail and the addition of landscaping.

Community Engagement: The local Alderperson as well as community members have expressed a desire for traffic calming in the area. Some park goers have suggested a lack of parking, so Park staff set out to gather more info. The parking layouts below take different approaches to addressing parking capacity while increasing pedestrian safety.

The conceptual designs for parking were more contentious between the average park goer and adjacent neighbors, but ultimately more people preferred less parking and more green space as opposed to more parking capacity.

Please note that the survey for preferred conceptual designs has closed. The survey and the public meeting held on October 18th, 2022, made it clear that neighbors and park goers would prefer to keep the playground in its current location and not increase parking capacity and prefer to see more greenspace added.

The playground design outreach is anticipated to begin in summer of 2023.