Drexel Town Square Wetland Park

Drexel Town Square is a new mixed-use town center on the 85-acre site of the former Delphi automotive parts factory in Oak Creek. Oak Creek is an auto-dependent suburb of Milwaukee that currently lacks a ‘downtown’ area. Drexel Town Square will house civic, retail, office, open space, and residential use, a variety of green infrastructure best management practices (BMPs), and restoration of natural wetlands and prairies.

The wetland park is 17 total acres, eight of which are restored wetlands including hardwood swamp, shrub-scrub, wet meadow, shallow marsh, deep marsh, and shallow open water. The remaining nine acres are an upland natural area including deciduous hardwood forest as well as tall grass and short grass prairies. Asphalt-paved paths and wetland boardwalks will provide public access to the various natural areas serving as an amenity to the community.

GRAEF’s services included the planning, civil engineering, and landscape architecture design of most of the overall site and all consulting and design services for the wetland park. The wetland park design began by conducting an ecological assessment of the degraded wetland and upland areas including a wetland delineation, hydrologic evaluation, wildlife survey, plant community mapping, topographic survey, and invasive species mapping.

The assessment served as a basis to develop a conceptual design that eventually led to final design through multiple stake holder input and coordination with the WDNR and USACOE and partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.