The lake belongs
to everyone.
A municipal pool. A genuinely public shoreline. Held in trust, not sold off.
The pool
Sheboygan residents want a municipal pool. Not another tourism concept, not a retail pavilion — a pool. A place where kids learn to swim, where seniors do laps, where a working family spends a Saturday without paying resort prices.
The lake is right there, and the city keeps designing the shoreline for visitors instead of residents. The vision flips that: the first question for every lakefront dollar is what it does for the people who live here.
The shoreline, in trust
A public Harbor Trust holds the lakefront. The marina land is lake bed — the city can't sell it, only lease it. That legal fact is the foundation: the shoreline stays public because the law already says it must.
The trust's job is simple — keep the waterfront open, keep the views unblocked, and make sure no deal quietly converts public shoreline into private amenity. Open space, public access, public books.
What this isn't
Not another round of filling waterfront views with buildings and cafés. Not a $77 million master plan drawn for someone else's press release. The marina lost $5.9 million between 2013 and 2023 — the vision starts from fixing what's broken, not rendering what's shiny.
Baseline first: working docks, honest books, staffed offices, security that works. Then the pool. Then the shoreline people actually use.
The baseline
See where Sheboygan actually stands today — committed money, active construction, approved-but-stalled: the Sheboygan baseline →
More of the vision: the park → · marina to downtown →