Lindsay Krevs and Damaion Whitaker, from Cudahy, stand outside the closed desert dome at the Mitchell Park Conservator. Credit: Rick Wood

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Milwaukee County officials said Friday the Mitchell Park Domes will be closed this weekend to protect the public and employees from potentially falling debris.

County Executive Chris Abele announced the decision early Friday evening after being briefed by a consultant on the condition of one of Milwaukee's most visible but tarnished landmarks.

One of the glass domes at 524 S. Layton Blvd. was closed in the past week after a chunk of concrete toppled from the roof.

Now all three will be closed.

In a statement, Abele spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff said an engineering firm "confirmed that, while aging and in need of repairs, the Domes are structurally sound."

But the consultant and county officials still have concerns more debris could break off. Baldauff said the county expects to get more detailed information on the condition of the Domes from engineers early next week and will share it with the County Board and the public.

County Board Chairman Theodore Lipscomb Sr. said he had not been briefed on the closing and said Friday's news was an example of Abele's poor communications with the board.

"I am concerned that they may be hiding the full assessment," Lipscomb said.

The beehive-shaped structures have suffered from years of neglect.

On Jan. 28, one of the domes, the desert dome, was closed after a chunk of concrete toppled from the roof.

Supervisors had been unaware of the closing. That prompted the Finance, Personnel and Audit Committee to ask Parks Director John Dargle to provide a briefing on Thursday, Lipscomb said.

"We needed to find out what was going on," Lipscomb said

Dargle said one interim option would be to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put up netting to catch the falling concrete. "That just seems like the definition of Band-Aid," Lipscomb said.

The board allocated $500,000 for repairs in January 2014.

The Domes were built in stages between 1959 and 1967. Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon Johnson, was on hand for the ribbon-cutting in 1965.

The architect, Donald Grieb, took inspiration from Buckminster Fuller, popularizer of the geodesic dome, by creating what was then considered an adventurous design for a botanical garden.

"Whatever magic was there is gone," local architect Charles Engberg told former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel architecture critic Whitney Gould in 2005.

Engberg had been involved in a $32 million master plan in 2000 to renovate the Domes that did not move forward.