Star Tribune
Velodrome eyed for Richfield
Almost four years after the wooden cycling track in Blaine closed, pieces could be coming together for a racetrack in Richfield.
Richfield is working with the nonprofit Minnesota Cycling Center to figure out if a largely vacant area near Interstate 494 and Hwy. 77 might be the right place for a bicycle track, or velodrome. If the plan comes together — and that’s a big ‘if,’ since a portion of the land is privately owned, and the project will cost tens of millions of dollars — the Richfield track would be one of just four indoor cycling tracks in the United States and could draw regional, national and international competitions.
Minnesota Cycling Center President Jason Lardy said finding the site feels like a strong start, even if the road ahead will be tough.
“It’s really gratifying to have community support like we’ve seen in Richfield,” Lardy said.
Lardy’s group rose as the Blaine track, which was part of the National Sports Center, fell into disrepair about a decade ago. The track closed at the end of summer 2019, and was torn down in 2020.
Barclay Kruse, former spokesman for the National Sports Center who administered the Blaine track when it opened, said the velodrome was a copy of the one used during the 1992 Olympics — a 250-meter wood track with steeply banked turns.
It was a fast, high-performance outdoor track that hosted Olympic trials that year, Kruse said, but there were challenges. The track was difficult for beginners to ride, while major competitions have come to favor indoor tracks. And after almost three decades of Minnesota winters, the wooden track was worn out.
Former racer Anna Schwinn mourned the loss of the community that grew up around the track. She remembered it as a place where people gathered to “get strong together.”
“That wasn’t just physical speed or strength, or that athletic quality of strength,” she said. “You’re watching people grow up in front of you.”
Making a match
The search for a new velodrome site has taken years, Lardy said. A possible site in northeast Minneapolis fell through before the pandemic, even after the Minnesota Cycling Center received $250,000 from the 2015 state bonding bill to cover preliminary design work.
“We’ve been looking for a location with varying degrees of success, but haven’t found the right location, with the right community support,” Lardy said.
Enter Richfield. The city has been working to become more bike-friendly, steadily building up bike lanes for the last 10 years. The city and the Three Rivers Park District are also working on a “bike playground” for off-road biking, set to open this fall.
And Richfield has been scouting for a major development for city-owned land at the junction of I-494 and Hwy. 77, left over from building a tunnel under the highway. City leaders wanted to see something big that would draw people from outside Richfield while also serving the city, Richfield Housing and Redevelopment Authority Director Melissa Poehlman said. The velodrome proposal seems like it could fit the bill.
The center is going to need support, Lardy said. Building the cycling complex could cost somewhere between $40 million and $50 million, with some funds potentially coming from the Legislature or other public sources.
Richfield may consider some funding for the track, Poehlman said, especially if the complex includes amenities useful to people who aren’t that interested in bikes.
High-level cycling would be part of the program, but Lardy said he also hopes the track will accommodate beginners and children learning to ride and race. The science-of-bikes program the cycling center runs with Minneapolis schools — and is expanding to St. Paul this fall — could also grow with a permanent home. Lardy said he hopes the velodrome will fit courts for other sports, like basketball or pickleball, and space for concerts or other performances.
Richfield owns two of three parcels that could become the velodrome site, with the third owned privately. The next step will be for the council and redevelopment authority to approve resolutions of support for selling the land, and asking for support from the Legislature.
The cycling center will have to start negotiating with the family trust that owns the middle of the three parcels, Lardy said. If unable to secure the site, the Minnesota Cycling Center would have to embark on a major fundraising campaign for design work and construction.
Schwinn, the former racer, is excited about the idea of a track that would be easier to get to than the one in Blaine — and about a place dedicated to bike racing, rather than something that felt barely tolerated by a larger sports complex.
“We can make it what we want it to be, not what we can kind of get away with,” she said.
It’s early, but Lardy said he’s optimistic to have gotten a good reception from Richfield leaders after years of setbacks and uncertainty.
“Now we’ve got to roll up our sleeves,” he said, “and do some really hard work.”
The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.
The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”
Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Virginia, via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.
Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.
The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.
For a handful of school board candidates across the state, the final weeks of campaigning have included an effort to lose support — or at least distance themselves ― from an organization known for backing conservative candidates and wading into local culture wars.
At least four candidates have stated publicly that they had not connected with or sought support from the Minnesota Parents Alliance before seeing their name appear on the group’s online voters guide. Some candidates said they were not aware of such an endorsement until voters reached out to them with questions about it.
“Without my knowledge or consent, I was added to the Minnesota Parents Alliance recommended candidate list,” Todd Haugen, a candidate for the Bemidji school board, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. “I did not seek this endorsement, and I have now requested more than once to be taken off of the list.”
The Minnesota Parents Alliance bills its voters guide as a nonpartisan resource, though the group lists several conservative groups, including the think tank Center of the American Experiment, on its list of resources for candidates.
The organization’s executive director, Cristine Trooien, said the voter guide recommendations are based on an independent evaluation of candidates’ campaigns, public engagement, and input received from parents and community members. Trooien launched the group in 2022 as a response to equity efforts in schools. Its initial goal included recruiting and supporting school board candidates who would champion ‘parents’ rights’ in education.
The group, and several others like it — on both sides of the political spectrum — cropped up during the pandemic, when tensions flared in school board rooms across the country as parents fought over mask mandates, curriculum and policies involving gender and race. Increasingly, school board races are drawing more money than ever — largely a result of outside groups lobbying amid those ongoing culture wars.
In general, endorsements aren’t new to school board races. Political parties, teachers unions and other educational organizations have long declared their support for candidates that align with their missions.
Minnesota Parents Alliance, Trooien said, does not coordinate its voter guide recommendations with candidates or require them to pledge their allegiance to the organization. She sees that as the antidote to what she called a “quid pro quo endorsement process” by teachers unions and interest groups, which offer support in “exchange for prioritizing that organization’s agenda at the board table,” she said.
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was arrested in New York City on Tuesday for alleged parole violations that were set when he was sentenced several years ago to two years in prison in a racketeering case.
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