Metcalfe Playfield Opens in Milwaukee

Metcalfe Park community members gathered on October 1 to celebrate the playfield’s opening, with remarks from neighborhood and city leaders, a drum circle, and a first look at the renovated park. The playfield marks the 15th completed renovation in Milwaukee Recreation’s effort to revitalize all 52 of the city’s playfields.

Milwaukee Recreation prioritized the playfield for renovation through its equity-based planning process, which ranks projects by need and impact, weighing racial disparities, population density, and playfield conditions. SWA’s Houston studio led the design team in collaboration with Milwaukee Recreation, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, Ralph H. Metcalfe School, and the Fitzsimonds Boys & Girls Club.

Understanding the significance of this project for Metcalfe Park residents, SWA crafted the design process around extensive community engagement facilitated with Civic Projects Architecture. Close collaboration with Metcalfe Park Community Bridges enabled the team to meet the community where they were at, recording over 1,300 unique responses. The process aligned with Community Bridges’ ethos of putting residents in the lead.

“What sparks joy?” was a guiding question posed to residents, informed by Community Bridges leaders Danell Cross and Melody McCurtis, who emphasized the significance of bringing joy into the daily lives of residents. The playfield design responds directly to residents in function, form, and impact. The site integrates diverse uses for all generations and climate resilience features within a unified design vocabulary that is unique to Metcalfe Park.

On the east side of the site, a splash pad, cooling plaza, play garden, bodyweight exercise equipment, basketball courts, and a community pavilion are connected along the “Comfort and Care” circuit, a shaded walking loop lined by naturalized perimeter bioswales and seating. A renovated field house adds improved restrooms, storage, and a community room. The passive west side of the project features a football field and shaded asphalt walking loop.

The project also planted over 100 trees and integrates significant green infrastructure. On a site formerly dominated by mowed turf and asphalt, these improvements add habitat value, mitigate urban heat island effect, and help reduce combined sewer overflows and localized flooding. The site manages over 240,000 gallons of stormwater through a network of integrated bioswales funded by the MMSD Fresh Coast Greening Communities Program.

“Collaboration is not easy. But this project was, I would say, the gold star of collaboration,” shared Danell Cross, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges Executive Director, “Because this team that came together, we all had the same values: that residents need to be in the lead. They need to design their community, and we need to listen to them. This project team spent two years talking to the community, getting ideas from the youngest to the oldest, and our community responded by making sure that they were heard — they drew pictures if they couldn’t talk yet, to say: this is what I want. One of the things that they kept saying is that they want to experience joy. They want to see it. And those trees back there, with those beautiful colors, that’s joy right there. I believe that they captured what this community asked for.”

Milwaukee Recreation Senior Director Annie Kubes spoke more about the project in an interview on Fox 6. Listen here.

Team:
Client: Milwaukee Recreation
Landscape Architect/Project Lead: SWA
Engagement & Architecture: Civic Projects Architecture
Local Landscape Architect & MEP Site + Building Engineer: MSA Professional Services
Civil Engineer: Aqualis
Structural Engineer: CSF Consulting LP
Green Infrastructure Partnership: Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, Greenprint Partners