“No money could purchase what nature has here provided.”
Those are the words of Horace W.S. Cleveland, the nationally known landscape architect who designed Como Park in the 1880s.
Our unique setting on the Mississippi River and the natural spaces in our city and county are among our distinctions. The Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt provided a reminder last week, when the winners praised our parks and the fun of discovering them in winter, “getting out there with all the flashlights and all that energy and the beautiful new snowfall.”
Sense of place? That sums it up nicely, as St. Paul and the east metro consider their distinct identity.
Our parks are points of pride, with St. Paul and Minneapolis tying for first place in 2015 in the annual ranking of the nation’s best parks systems from the Trust for Public Land. Among factors contributing to the capital city’s strong showing: 96 percent of St. Paul residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park.
“What we have is the envy of the rest of the country,” St. Paul Parks and Recreation Director Mike Hahm told us.
“Our residents and visitors love our parks. Because of that, our parks get used in all four seasons and they get used at a high volume. That’s a great problem to have,” he told us, but the system must work both to care for what it has and continue to invest in its future.
Recent developments include the Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary, a 42-acre site near I-35E with a vision to create a preserve in the heart of a heavily urbanized area; the innovative Frogtown Park and Farm, with natural and recreation areas and an urban demonstration farm on a former Wilder Foundation parcel; and Victoria Park, planned for the West Seventh Street Neighborhood.
The Treasure Hunt brought crowds to the deep snow of Ramsey County’s Bald Eagle-Otter Lakes Regional Park north of White Bear Lake. They were out around midnight, following the 12th and final clue to uncover the medallion.
The hunt “gets people out into the park system,” County Parks and Recreation Director Jon Oyanagi told us. “They learn about places maybe they didn’t know about.”
Throughout the year, families’ happy “finds” include places like the Discovery Hollow nature play area, where kids can “dig, plant, learn, create and explore” at Tamarack Nature Center in White Bear Township.
Our park systems also are striving to connect to traditions of the region’s diverse cultures, with work, for example, on adding courts for “top-spin” or tuj lub (pronounced two-loo), a game that came to Minnesota with Hmong immigrants.
Both city and county parks leaders acknowledge the reinvestment that has resulted from passage of the Legacy Amendment, when Minnesotans voted themselves a tax increase to support clean water, parks and trails, outdoor heritage and arts and culture.
Recent Legacy-funded projects have included a new early-childhood learning facility that opened last year at Tamarack, Oyanagi said.
“The County Board has been proactive in preserving parks and open space, building trails and creating amenities,” Oyanagi said. Residents agree on the parks’ value, supporting with their taxes “a top-notch parks and recreation system.”
But while our parks “are really a key part of our identity,” Mayor Chris Coleman told us, it’s also important to realize that they are “free amenities that aren’t free to keep up.”
When it comes to caring for this precious resource, “hopefully, people will look back at our stewardship years from now and say the community invested in the right things,” Hahm said.
Copyright 2016 Pioneer Press.
