Cottage Grove is growing. Between 2023 and 2025, the village issued building permits for 122 single-family homes and 195 multi-family units. The village has plans for new residents’ roads, utilities, and parks. The question of where they will gather indoors is less settled, and more pressing than it might appear.
The Village Knows the Gap Exists
In October 2025, the village submitted a letter to the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s Grants for Local Projects program in support of the police station project. The letter states that Cottage Grove, now nearing 10,000 residents, is one of the largest municipalities in Dane County without a community center, senior center, library, teen space, or dedicated third space. It acknowledges that the lack of accessible public spaces remains a significant barrier to achieving the village’s vision of a safe, connected, and vibrant community.
That is the village’s own characterization, in an official document submitted to the state. The village itself has acknowledged the gap.
What the Comprehensive Plan Says
The village’s comprehensive plan is the governing document that guides long-range growth and development. Chapter 7 revolves around Community Facilities and Utilities. Section E outlines goals, objectives, and policies. Goal 7 directs the village to work jointly with the Monona Grove School District to provide adequate recreational facilities. Goal 8 calls for using the Park and Open Space Plan to determine the location and size of future park facilities.
Indoor community gathering space does not appear anywhere in the document: no goal, no objective, no policy. Parks are a reasonable part of any community facilities plan, and they provide outdoor gathering space. Cottage Grove currently has no publicly operated indoor gathering space that residents can use year-round without reservation, rental fees, or program registration. Recreation programming through the village’s Parks and Recreation Department generally requires registration and associated fees.
What the CIP Says
The village’s 2026-2035 Capital Improvement Plan funds 12 projects over the next decade. Those projects cover a fire ladder truck replacement, a police station, road reconstructions, intersection improvements, bike path connections, a park shelter replacement, and a future EMS/Fire Station. There is no line item for a community center, a multipurpose gathering facility, or any publicly operated indoor space for residents. Fourteen additional projects are rated but unfunded. Community gathering space does not appear there either.
What Currently Fills the Gap
Cottage Grove has restaurants and bars. It has parks. Flynn Hall is available for rent. What the village does not have is a public library, a community center, a senior center, or a teen space.
The village’s Parks and Recreation Department found it necessary this summer to issue a public reminder that park shelters require advance reservations and are not available on a first-come, first-served basis. The incident that prompted the reminder, involving a group that refused to vacate a reserved shelter, was significant enough to generate a police response.
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church operates the village’s only food pantry, now serving nearly 600 people, as well as a community garden with some produce supplying the food pantry. These are not village services. They are provided by a private congregation whose continued presence depends on factors entirely outside the village’s control.
The Proposed Answer
The grant application points to the new police station as part of the village’s response to the community space gap. The proposed project includes a 150-person hybrid meeting room with access to outdoor green space and a kitchenette. The letter describes it as addressing a critical need.
Whether it fully addresses the need the village itself described (no community center, no library, no senior center, no teen space, in a community approaching 10,000 residents) is a question worth asking.
A Conversation the Community Has Already Had: Twice
This is not a new issue. Cottage Grove voters rejected a library referendum in the spring of 2025. A prior referendum on the same question also failed. In both cases, advocates made community space a central part of their argument. Those results reflect real community decisions, and this post is not an effort to re-litigate them.
The village’s 2024 Community Satisfaction Survey asked residents the maximum property tax increase they would support for services not currently provided. For a community center, 49% opposed any tax increase to fund one; for a library, 48%. Opposition was higher for a senior center (58%), an aquatics center (51%), and public transit (77%).
The Question
The village’s comprehensive plan makes no provision for indoor community gathering space beyond parks. The CIP has no line item for it. The village’s own grant application states that Cottage Grove is one of the largest municipalities in Dane County without a community center, senior center, library, teen space, or dedicated third space. The village’s Parks and Recreation Department recently reminded residents that shelters require reservations and are not first-come, first-served. A church provides services the village does not. A meeting room in a police station is the current answer on the table.
Cottage Grove is growing. How is this need going to be addressed?
“How is this need going to be addressed?”
First, who decided this is a need? It’s a want.
Second, why should taxpayers be responsible for funding it?
In this community, we already have plenty of market-driven options that can provide these spaces: three church buildings, a swim facility, a gymnastics facility, multiple restaurants with event space, and an incoming sports facility.
We also have four school buildings, all with gymnasiums, that sit largely unused for three months out of the year.
Why is the answer always another taxpayer-funded building?
The odds are good that the school district will need to ask taxpayers for more money in the future. The Village should sit tight on luxuries like this for the sake of both taxpayers and the long-term stability of the school district. I don’t want support for future school funding to be undermined because taxpayers were asked to fund a library or community center the year before.
Not every want is a need, and not every perceived need requires a government-funded solution.
Appreciate the comment.
On want vs. need, the post isn’t making the case that a community center or library must be built. It’s asking how the gap gets addressed. The village itself described Cottage Grove in a letter to the state as one of the largest municipalities in Dane County without a community center, senior center, library, teen space, or dedicated third space. Whether that constitutes a need is a judgment call. The village’s own language suggests it thinks it does.
On market alternatives, the places you listed are privately owned and operated. Availability depends on the priorities of whoever owns them. The food pantry and community garden at Bryn Mawr are a good example of what that means in practice. They serve nearly 600 residents, and their continued operation depends entirely on a private congregation. That may be fine. But it is a different thing than a publicly operated space.
On school gymnasiums, the barriers are real. Joint use of school facilities requires intergovernmental agreements, liability frameworks, supervision arrangements, and scheduling coordination. Those agreements can be built, but they are not free and they are not simple. If that is the preferred path, it would be worth asking whether those conversations have happened and what the outcome was.
On the school district referendum timing, that is a legitimate consideration and one the post does not address. Sequencing public asks matters. That tension deserves to be part of the conversation.
On the broader question of taxpayer funding, the 2024 Community Satisfaction Survey results are in the post for exactly this reason. Two referendums have already failed. The post is not arguing for a tax increase. It is asking what the plan is, given that the gap exists and the current answer on the table is a meeting room in a police station.