It took more time and more money than expected, but McKinley Beach reopened Wednesday, just in time for Memorial Day weekend.
The reopening followed a $1.1 million reconstruction project, up more than $300,000 from the original budget for the work that had been scheduled for completion last summer.
That was the cost of making Milwaukee’s oldest beach safe for swimmers again.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
County parks officials shut down the 132-year-old beach in August 2020, after four people drowned there – twice as many as the rest of Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan beaches combined that year. Yet another person drowned nearby in 2022, not counting a sixth death that was ruled a suicide.
The accidental deaths were blamed on powerful rip currents that can suddenly pull swimmers out to sea. Consultants found the structure of the beach itself was contributing to the formation of those deadly currents.
That structure dates to the late 1980s, when rising lake levels sent waves flooding across Lincoln Memorial Drive. Using huge boulders unearthed during the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s Deep Tunnel project, the county rebuilt McKinley as a “pocket beach,” with a miniature bay sheltered by towering breakwaters on each side.
Lake Michigan had receded by the time the project was finished. But it peaked again in 2020, and a 2022 study by engineering firm SEH Inc. discovered that the rising waters had eroded the sand on the beach and under the bay, increasing the depth between the breakwaters from 2.5 feet to 6.2 feet.
Consultants ruled out a stoplight warning system like those used in Port Washington, and supervisors found several other options prohibitively expensive.
Instead, the County Board unanimously appropriated $712,190 to restore the pocket beach design. Supervisors used a fast-track procedure to bypass the regular budget process, with the goal of reopening in late summer 2023 instead of early summer 2025.
Work started on land last summer, but the underwater phase had to wait for permits from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineeers, says Sarah Toomsen, assistant director of planning for the parks system. Those state and federal agencies signed off on the project, with no changes, in September 2023, after the swimming season was over, Toomsen says.
Meanwhile, contractors’ bids came in higher than estimated, leading supervisors to approve another cash infusion of $319,371, Toomsen says. In addition to the $77,182 study, which was funded in the 2022 county budget, final costs came to $98,976 for design and $917,584 for construction.
But the reopening doesn’t mean the county’s work is done on the beach. Plans call for regular monitoring of its condition, with surveys at the beginning and end of each swimming season to check whether the sand levels are holding up or need to be bolstered, Toomsen says.
Nor should swimmers take their safety in the lake for granted, Toomsen says. Continuing staffing shortages have led the county to station lifeguards only at its water parks and swimming pools instead of beaches in recent years.
Beach ambassadors will continue to walk around the lakefront, talking to beachgoers about water safety. And new signs will provide messages in multiple languages about “the inherent dangers of swimming in a Great Lake,” Toomsen says.
“It does look like a smaller beach,” which may lead visitors to think they can wade in without risk, Toomsen says, “but there are things you can’t see under the surface.”
Swimmers need to be aware of currents, swim with someone else at all times, and not venture past the breakwaters, Toomsen says.
“You can’t just have a visual,” Toomsen says. “You’ve got to have your wits about you.”
