Brookfield has taken another step forward in its project to renovate the southwest corner of Ehlert Park.
At the village board’s May 28 committee of the whole meeting, Parks & Recreation Director Luke Gundersen presented trustees with an update on the timeline and final design for the renovations.
Under the new timeline, construction on Ehlert Park should start around July 22 assuming a contract is awarded at the board’s July 8 meeting, Gundersen said. Construction should reach “substantial completion” by Oct. 30 before being finished by Nov. 15 as long as there are no delays.
The project has remained mostly on track since the board last heard about the renovations in March, when the village partnered with architectural firm Wight & Company to design them.
At that time, a village memo said staff planned for the project to go out to bid for construction in May before the board would approve the contractor in June and ground would break in July. While the project is now set to go out to bid on June 2, construction is still set to begin in July following board approval. The same memo said the village’s goal then was to complete the project by March 2025.
New playground features
Alongside the timeline for the project, one of the biggest updates Gundersen gave trustees was about the final layout for the renovated playground, which is designed to be fully accessible with pour-in-place rubber surfacing, like the kind at Candy Cane Park.
The new playground at Ehlert Park will feature inclusive and accessible elements like the 360 loop, sensory rail, universal swing, and a raised ramp. Daniel Wilson, a landscape architect at Wight & Company, said the color choices for the playground are not final. | Courtesy of the Village of Brookfield 
Only 11 Brookfield residents out of 50 who attended an open house May 9 voted for this potential playground layout over the final version. | Courtesy of the Village of Brookfield
Outside of the classic swing set and slide, the playground will feature accessible elements like a universal swing, an inclusive orbit, a sensory rail and more. One such element is called the 360 loop; it’s a slide with a wide platform attached to the bottom that leads to an incline kids can walk, crawl or pull themselves up, allowing them to get back on the slide.
“It’s fully accessible and provides independent play for somebody who’s in a wheelchair,” Gundersen said at the meeting. “They would go down the slide and then scoot across, and then they can crawl back up that area.”
The playground will feature a raised ramp path that wraps around the southern half of the area to allow children to enter the main portion of the structure, about 32 inches off the ground, without climbing or using stairs. There will also be a wheelchair-accessible entrance to the playground structure at ground level.
Kids in town will be excited to learn about the addition of a gaga ball pit. For those unfamiliar, gaga ball is similar to dodgeball. Players within the octagonal pit must use their hands to hit a ball around the area; any player who is touched by the ball below the knee is out. The last player standing wins that round.
Gundersen said a group of Brookfield students wrote to the village with suggestions for what they’d like to see in the new playground.
“It was Hollywood School. The second-grade elementary students wrote letters to us. They had a lot of creative ideas in there. Some weren’t practical for the space, but the gaga pit was one that we could” include, he said.
“A gaga ball pit was one of the big things they wanted to see in the park,” said Daniel Wilson, a landscape architect at Wight, at the meeting. “They are kind of inexpensive to add, and we have the budget to be able to add that in there to show the kids that we actually listened to them, to include it in the park for them.”
Residents were able to give their feedback on the playground layout at an open house held May 9. Attendees voted on two potential plans for the playground with different inclusive features; the version Gundersen ultimately presented to trustees received 39 votes out of 50, he said.
Other changes
Aside from the redone playground, changes coming to Ehlert Park will affect the park’s memorial garden plaza, soccer field and baseball diamond.
The memorial plaza will be shifted over “maybe five or 10 feet west and a little bit south” from its current location, Wilson said. The planter in the middle of the memorial will be removed, though there will be two benches as well as new landscaping and plants in the area around it.
“We are taking out that center area, just because, in our experience at Wight & Company, we’ve done memorial gardens. Having that center island, the plant vegetation never really thrives well, so we’re just going to have that all as brick pavers,” Wilson said.
Trustee Kit Ketchmark raised concerns about replacing the memorial bricks at the plaza, many of which have names inscribed on them, but Wilson clarified that those bricks will be reused after the renovations.
“Our plan is to have the contractor clean those up and reseal them, and then they’ll go right back into that memorial garden,” he said.
The soccer field is getting spectator seating and new portable goals, which will be left out seasonally and stored in sheds nearby during winter. The field will also be regraded to improve drainage.
Like the soccer field, the baseball infield is getting redone to improve drainage.
“It’s not just going to be the clay infield,” Wilson said. “It’s a sandy clay mix that allows water to move through that really easily.”
The infield will be marked with bases and base paths both 60 and 70 feet away from each other so adolescents and teenagers alike can play on the diamond.
The baseball field is also getting a “concrete walk” put in behind home base, which will enable accessible spectator seating in the form of benches and bleachers. The concrete will also act as a base for two dugouts, each with a pair of accessible entrances and exits. New eight-foot-tall fencing will be installed in front of the dugout and spectator area alongside a new backstop. The fencing will extend about 20 feet past the dugouts, but it won’t envelop the outfield so that space can continue to be used for football and other sports.
