Do your plans this weekend include a walk or picnic or concert at the Upper Mississippi Riverfront? If you’re like most Northsiders, they don’t. Let’s face it, the upper riverfront these days isn’t the nicest place to take in fall color with your family, what with the lack of park space, good lighting and nice pathways, or even places to eat.
But just last month, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board took a big step towards changing that for the better. On September 21 MPRB Commissioners accepted the draft RiverFIRST: A Park Design Proposal and Implementation Framework for the Minneapolis Upper Riverfront. With completion of this encompassing vision for an Upper Riverfront revival, all of Minneapolis will again reconnect with one of the three great rivers of the world and “America’s fourth coast.”
“The Draft RiverFIRST proposal has the potential to create the largest expanse of new public and green space since the Minneapolis Parks system was first created over 100 years ago,” said Mary deLaittre, project manager of the Minneapolis Riverfront Development Initiative (MRDI), through which the RiverFIRST proposal create. “The RiverFIRST vision provides connections to, and restoration of, the upper river – the only part of the City currently without the natural and water amenities for which Minneapolis is famous.”
The Park Board plans to complete five of the interconnecting park and trail systems within five years:
Riverfront Trail System with Farview Park phase one greenways – which integrate with existing city and regional parks and trails to create a cohesive, user-friendly network of commuter and recreational connections, most notably across the Interstate 94 trench cutting off Northsiders and the West Metro from the Mississippi.
Scherer Park – an existing Minneapolis Parks property along the Northeast side of the riverfront, and located in a burgeoning neighborhood and adjacent to compatible properties, including existing parks and bridges.
Northside Wetlands Park – which transforms significant acreage from the existing Port of Minneapolis from asphalt to amenity, without adding industry, and becomes a destination point for Farview Park and other envisioned Northside greenways;
Gateway–restoration of a historic park at the front door of downtown.
BioHaven® Islands – offering water quality rehabilitation while providing scenic views and habitat for native plants and animals, including migrating birds.
What’s next: 45-day public comment period, then staff recommendations
Following the acceptance of the Draft RiverFIRST Proposal, Park Board Commissioners passed a resolution to extend its community engagement process for the MRDI to include a formal 45-day public comment period, September 22–November 6. “The proposed Upper Riverfront parks have a lot to offer all people of Minneapolis and our region, but especially residents and businesses in North and Northeast Minneapolis,” says Bruce Chamberlain, Park Board Assistant Superintendent of Planning Services, who proposed the public comment period on September 21.
You can download the Draft RiverFIRST proposal from http://MinneapolisRiverfrontDevelopmentInitiative.com, where you can also submit comments. In person, you can read a reference copy of the proposal (it’s a whopping 48 pages, two-sided, on 8.5 x 17 tabloid-size paper); pick up your own copy of the executive summary and submit your comments at any Minneapolis Park Board recreation center, including Folwell and Farview and Park Board headquarters, 2117 West River Road.
After the public comment period, Park Board staff plan to put forward a series of next-step recommendations, including the adoption of the RiverFIRST proposal, schematic designs for a phase-1 construction project and a joint effort with the City of Minneapolis to meld the RiverFIRST plan with revisions to the Above the Falls zoning policies currently under review.
All of which means that on a red and gold splashed October weekend in 2014 you and your family might find your-selves hopping on your bikes and cruising new tree-lined greenways to the Upper Riverfront for a colorful fall picnic.
Once there, you might stop by a new local restaurant (know anybody who makes great ribs?) that you take to stadium seats built into a repurposed barge. From these packed seats floating in the Mississippi, you’ll catch a concert in a new amphitheater carved into the west bank hillside.
And it’s at that moment, dusk falling in the city and downtown lights glowing in the distance, that it might dawn on you: this place, our place, really is the best place to be on the river.