Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park Domes are on track to break ground on redevelopment next year, according to the latest update on fundraising efforts.
The timeline outlined in the project’s development agreement estimated breaking ground between April 2027 and December 2028, but depended heavily on whether the friends group Milwaukee Domes Alliance reached a fundraising goal of $51.6 million. The organization’s leader told county supervisors that fundraising is on track for construction to start in 2027.
“We’ve made really great progress in all aspects of the campaign, and so we are certainly going to be able to hit our deadline of starting,” Domes Alliance CEO Christa Beall Diefenbach told supervisors on June 18.
The $133 million plan, called the Domes Reimagined campaign, will renovate and expand the site, with the county footing $30 million of the bill over a six-year period. Funding would lead to the restoration of the Show, Desert and Tropical Domes as well as creating educational and community spaces on the Domes campus.
As of the end of March, the Milwaukee Domes Alliance has received $8.6 million in pledges and gifts for the campaign.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Beall Diefenbach, who is a self-described “career fundraiser,” said of donor support. “The confidence we’ve experienced certainly has been tremendous. … There’s been just an outpouring of community support, and the number of people who have stepped up and want to be a part of this solution is just incredible.”
Beall Diefenbach said that they have received six and seven-figure donations as donors want to be a “part of the solution.”
Funding sources for the first phase of the project will come in the form of: $35 million from private philanthropy; $30 million from the county over six years; $14.8 million from federal historic tax credits; $11.8 million from federal and state grants; $11.6 million from state historic tax credits; and $4.2 million from new market tax credits.
The second phase is expected to cost $26 million.
The precarious fate of the Domes has been a hot-button issue for years, with questions about how best to preserve the site despite growing safety concerns, a decline in visitors, ongoing deferred maintenance, staffing issues, a drop in donations and uncertain fiscal stability.
Before a final solution was found, supervisors and officials floated ideas to demolish, repair, restore or restore only one dome and build a new conservatory over the years.
However, in July 2025, the county approved $30 million in county funds for the plan to revitalize the south side gem nestled in a county-owned park and transfer operations to the Domes Alliance.
The Alliance took over operations at the Domes through a long-term lease agreement that will last up to 99 years, but the county continues to own Mitchell Park. That shift in operations is expected to save the county $700,000 per year.
This year, the Domes secured additional financial wins, including the Domes Alliance receiving a $2 million infusion in state funding through a proposal by Gov. Tony Evers that the State Building Commission approved in May.
At the start of June, the Wisconsin Historical Society also announced that the Domes achieved a long-sought historic status, placing the site on the State Register of Historic Places and allowing the project to tap into game-changing historic tax credits.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mitchell Park Domes redevelopment on pace to break ground in 2027
Reporting by Vanessa Swales, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Vanessa Swales, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
