Star Tribune
Funding woes force Park Board to tone down ambitious redesign of north Minneapolis park
After many years of drumming up excitement around a grand reconstruction of a flagship neighborhood park in north Minneapolis, Park Board commissioners on Wednesday approved a $35 million concept that would renovate and expand North Commons’ 1970s-era community center and water park.
The project has been billed as a once-in-a-generation effort to build the youth of north Minneapolis a “visionary and prominent activity hub that can compete with major recreation facilities in the suburbs,” according to park guiding documents.
But not everyone will be satisfied with the direction of the North Commons project. Many residents who attended last month’s board meeting had urged commissioners to embrace a more opulent reconstruction requiring demolition of the existing recreation center and rebuilding entirely anew for an even bigger price tag of $49 million.
Nevertheless, the approved North Commons makeover will be the largest neighborhood park project in the city’s history. It is scheduled for completion in 2027.
“This is a significant moment in the history of our park system,” Park Superintendent Al Bangoura said Wednesday. “We’re just excited to get moving on this project, put that shovel in the ground, cut that ribbon and really do an amazing thing for this community.”
With a preferred concept in hand, the Park Board and its partners can now launch a critical private fundraising campaign required to supplement $12 million in public money already committed to the project.
The community around the park, which sits just south of the struggling West Broadway business corridor between the YMCA and North Community High School, has been simmering with tension over the size of the project since before 2019, when the Park Board’s guiding plan for North Commons called for “big moves” including a massive, tournament-sized athletic center, a new water park with a lap pool and a field with a seasonal dome for winter use.
While some residents pushed the Park Board to dream as big as possible, other neighbors balked at turning their neighborhood park into a regional attraction. A petition urged officials to protect the park’s old trees and secluded corners.
North Minneapolis Commissioner Becka Thompson was sympathetic to those concerns, saying in board meetings that those who had quietly advocated for a smaller, less expensive project had been unfairly accused of undermining equity.
The $35 million project that park commissioners ultimately chose had been a compromise between a more modest $22 million renovation that could be finished as soon as 2026, and the $49 million, all-new construction vision with no end date in sight.
After eliminating the smallest option out of concern that it would disappoint the community, the majority of commissioners also opted against the most expensive — and therefore uncertain — path. A minefield of funding challenges have already complicated North Commons’ future.
Despite Minnesota’s historic surplus and spending this year, the Minneapolis Park Board received nothing for its No. 1 legislative request of another $12 million for North Commons.
State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, who represents the area and helped the Park Board obtain $5.4 million in state bonding in 2020, declined to sponsor additional funds for the project this year. Instead, Champion carried a bill for V3, a private athletic complex under construction at North Plymouth and Lyndale Avenues, not far from North Commons.
At a town hall Tuesday night, Champion told the Star Tribune that legislators expected park officials to settle on a preferred concept before pouring more money into North Commons, and that the ballooning budget of the project — a result of inflation and supply chain issues — posed a question of fiscal responsibility.
Champion advised park officials to do “the very best you can with what you have available to you,” with a focus on youth programming rather than the size of buildings. “You can’t just say you will build it and they will come,” he said.
“It’s always helpful in legislation to have a clear idea, and I know that they are building out the best idea that meets the needs of the community,” agreed State Rep. Esther Agbaje, noting that other projects that received support this year hadn’t gotten state bonding before, as North Commons had.
Late in the legislative session when it became apparent there would not be additional funding for North Commons, park staff informed the community they would likely have to rein in expectations.
The limitations on public funding has ramifications for private fundraising.
Tom Evers of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, a nonprofit that helps the board collect private donations for its most ambitious projects, has called public funding a “barometer” for community support — the reason why philanthropy often offers to match it. He said he was confident the foundation could bring roughly the same amount that the public contributes to the project.
At a community meeting at North Commons earlier this year, 25-year-old La’Taijah Powell chastised the older people in the room as they argued over how many millions to spend on multiplying the size of the recreation center.
“Where’s this money now to keep kids engaged in different activities so we don’t have to wake up and hear that somebody crashed a car or it’s a kid that got shot down the street?” Powell asked. “Before we think about renovating the whole park, where’s the money to invest in what’s already here so that we don’t have these problems?”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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