Park renovation honors its 9-year-old namesake
When Lisa Ettienne would drive by the Milwaukee playground where her 9-year-old son, Marcus, was fatally shot in 1995, she would leave feeling disappointed.
The cracks in the pavement, the weeds sprouting up, the foreboding chain-link fence – none of it would make Marcus proud.
"I was just like, 'I don't even want to go past there. I don't even want my child's name associated with that, because this is not a reflection of what he symbolized," Ettienne said.
Now, after more than a year of planning and renovating, the Marcus DeBack Park on the city's west side makes Ettienne beam. As part of the MKE Plays initiative, a city-run project that uses public and private funds to refurbish parks, the corner of N. 55th and W. Wright streets has undergone a transformation, which city leaders and neighbors unveiled Saturday.
Gone are the unsightly fence, the outdated playground equipment and the more than 20,000 square feet of dilapidated asphalt. In their place, city workers have installed two new basketball courts, an elaborate climbing structure, a grassy area and a 90-foot zip line, among other accents.
"It's something I'm more than happy to say has my child's name behind it," Ettienne said.
For decades, children have populated the playground.
Milwaukee Ald. Michael Murphy, who grew up a few houses down from the park and is spearheading MKE Plays, remembered long days spent there with friends in the 1970s. In the mid-1990s, Marcus and his friends would ride their bikes to the park, playing basketball for hours.
It's where Marcus watched as a heated basketball game boiled over in 1995, followed by a 21-year-old man grabbing a gun from his car and opening fire. Stray bullets struck Marcus in the leg and back of the head. The shooter was convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in prison.
City leaders renamed the park in Marcus' honor one year later. But over time, the grounds were neglected.
"Even though we lived super close, the kids were like, 'I don't want to go down there,'" said Jennifer Mattek, 32, who lives a block from the park and served on a redesign committee.
So when Murphy conceived the MKE Parks initiative, which has raised $2.5 million to revamp 14 city parks, the Marcus DeBack Park was a natural candidate. With about $125,000 in private funding and $115,000 in public funding, and with input from local residents, the work began.
"When you invest in public places, other people take pride in their neighborhoods," Murphy said. "They start investing in their homes and say, 'This is a place I want to raise a family.'"
Already, neighbors are taking advantage. Ettienne drove by earlier this month and saw boys on the basketball courts. On Saturday, children flew down the zip line – "I'm glad the lawyers don't know about it yet," Murphy quipped – and scaled the 10-foot-tall jungle gym.
Ettienne said Marcus, a spitfire who dreamed of besting Michael Jordan in a game of one-on-one, would approve.
"It's been a long time coming," Ettienne said. "And I love what we've come up with."
