Over the past several weeks, the Stella’s Playground Community Engagement Committee embarked on an intensive outreach blitz — connecting with disability advocates, educators, therapists, adaptive sports athletes, and families whose lived experiences span mobility, vision, sensory processing, communication differences, and elopement behaviors. The goal: to make sure that every design decision for Milwaukee’s first universally inclusive playground reflects the real needs of the people who will use it.
From January through February 2026, the committee held more than a dozen conversations with community partners including the Wisconsin Adaptive Sports Alliance, Independence First, Vision Forward, ABLE, the Ability Center, Islands of Brilliance, Penfield Children’s Center, Journeys Lutheran School, Little Light Therapies, Friends of Reservoir Park, and neighbors from the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods. Sessions took place at community spaces across Milwaukee — from Luther Urban Mission Initiative on the north side to Lakefront Brewing in Riverwest — as well as virtually over Zoom.
That feedback is already shaping the site plan. Working with design partners RA Smith and Kahler Slater, the team is now focused on providing continuous accessible routes that connect all major play areas without requiring backtracking, integrating tactile path indicators and raised detectable edges for independent cane navigation, and ensuring high-contrast treatments at grade transitions to support visitors with depth perception differences. The design will also include dedicated space for mobility device and stroller parking near activity areas, and rest stops along longer paths so everyone can move through the park at their own pace.
Beyond accessibility, the engagement process surfaced important guidance on park identity — including aligning the pavilion and entrance architecture with the historic Tudor Revival character of Kilbourn Reservoir Park — and on resolving grading around the basketball court, creating accessible paths through the water and sand play areas, and preserving the beloved sledding hill for winter use.
The site plan review continues, and the team is carrying every piece of community input forward into the next phase of design.
