Lac La Belle spans 1,154 acres in the City of Oconomowoc — approximately 30 miles west of Milwaukee — a popular destination for anglers, recreational boaters, and kayakers/canoeists who all access the lake from a singular public boat landing: the Lac La Belle Boat Launch.

Yet the boat launch site and adjacent City Beach Park were feeling more and more constrained by the increased visitor count and overall lack of safe, accessible operating space. The property had a myriad of other issues as well including organic soils, location within a FEMA-designated floodplain, poor and unsafe traffic flow, underutilized space on the site, lack of stormwater management practices, lack of ADA-compliant spaces, and a launch that was underwater part of the year — literally sinking into the lake.

The community and area stakeholders — including the Village of Lac La Belle, Town of Oconomowoc and Lac La Belle Lake Management District — had been rallying for an updated boat launch for some time, with the goal of incorporating upgrades to the launch with neighboring City Beach Park to improve site flow, safety, accessibility, and stormwater management. They knew it was time to act in order to preserve the launch for sustained use and selected MSA as the design engineer for the major boat launch renovation project.

High-water conditions at the former boat launch site left docks largely inaccessible.

MSA met the project challenges with unique solutions, ultimately delivering a project all stakeholders can be proud of. Site improvements include a complete reconfiguration of the site by moving the main access driveway, cutting down and regrading the site to safe slopes, expanding a new parking lot for vehicles and boats, providing boater prep and tie-down areas, adding ADA parking and access, separating uses on the site for safety, providing an underground stormwater system for floodwaters, adding bio-retention gardens for stormwater treatment, implementing retaining walls and railing to maximize site space, improving the marina piers and access, providing new launch piers for better boater queueing, improving the site soils for better stabilization, removing dredged material from the lake to improve boater access, removing old contaminated site material/soils from past uses, conducting general site grading and demolition, expanding and improving the boat launch itself, introducing a new launch-free camera payment and electronic system, upgrading site lighting, incorporating ADA-compliant restrooms, and making restorations to electrical and site amenities.

To address flooding at the launch and mitigate the poor, sinking soil issue, MSA engineers installed a sheet pile wall along the western L-shaped boat slip area that receives the greatest wind and wave impacts to help hold back the poor soils, contain them, and support the proposed infrastructure. Once the upper layer of poor soils were removed, MSA placed quality fill on the site where the poor soils once were. To address the shallow nature of the marina basin due to organic infill, MSA recommended dredging the lakebed surrounding the marina and launch. This select dredging allows marina slip owners and guest boaters to confidently dock and launch with all boat types.

The boat launch site also had stormwater runoff issues, with a floodplain that directly bisected the parking lot. This made the launch inaccessible during high-water events and required new stormwater collection and storage practices to achieve stormwater BMP compliance. The former also sloped toward the lake, meaning that all runoff and associated Total Suspended Solids (TSS) were funneled directly into Lac La Belle. MSA designed a variety of boat launch upgrades to address these challenges and more, including utilizing fill to raise the elevation of the shoreline area, constructing three new wetland/sediment basin areas, and re-grading the site to drain into those new collection systems rather than into the lake.

The site needed a new system to collect, store and treat stormwater and lake water during high-water events, so MSA stormwater engineers and hydraulic modelers determined the right size and elevation for a new underground storage system. Constructed of large-diameter corrugated metal piping that is welded together, the 8,750 cubic feet of underground storage will be placed so that when the lake level rises, water backs up into the drainage system where it is stored until the lake recedes — after which, it is slowly released over hours of time — allowing sediments to settle out and reducing any adverse impacts of a quick release (shoreline erosion that would have occurred due to site modifications) without mitigation practices in place.

The MSA team was also able to vastly improve site ergonomics, traffic flow, and ADA accessibility by focusing their attention on site grading and layout alternatives. The boat launch site is positioned on a moderate slope, extending down toward the lake shoreline. MSA tempered the steeper slopes with overall site grading. MSA also reduced the access road to a single one-way drive and relocated it to the milder-sloped portion of the property.

Parking within the parking lot is now more intuitive to use as well, and includes 18 new vehicle and trailer spaces, a new dedicated boat prep area, and new tie-down area, which provides boaters with a safe space in which to work, out of the line of traffic. MSA also converted the former one-lane boat launch to a two-lane launch, also reducing boat/trailer/vehicle conflicts and maximizing safety.

To boost ADA functionality and citizen safety, dedicated ADA stalls were added in the parking lot for vehicle/boats. The concessions facility houses new ADA restrooms as well as a lifeguard shack and space for kayak rentals. A new ADA-compliant ramp has also been added, connecting the parking spaces to the restrooms, and down to the docks and piers. A new ADA-accessible canoe/kayak launch has also been added to the site which has been directed more towards the City Beach area to separate the users for safety purposes.

The Lac La Belle Boat Launch also utilizes a new digitized, automated launch fee system — the very first automated payment system of its kind in the state of Wisconsin based on its designed use and setup. Cameras installed at the boat launch site now read and record vehicle license plate numbers. The system is digitally linked to the Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) database, so once a license plate number is collected, a fee invoice is automatically sent to the address of the vehicle owner. These invoices can then be paid online and tracked for non-payment, if necessary. The system works similarly to those installed within tollways or parking structures — an ingenious new approach for boat launches and a way to streamline and fairly manage the city owned property.

The much-anticipated renovation of the Lac La Belle Boat Launch commenced construction on August 5, 2024, and was completed on May 2, 2025, with minimal disruption to the fishing and recreational boating season. MSA also helped the community receive key project funding in the form of a $1.2-million Recreational Boating Facilities Grant (RBF) from the Wisconsin DNR to help offset the overall project costs.