A decade in the planning, the second-largest public reserve in St. Paul will move into the creation stage this week.
St. Paul Parks and Recreation officials will join city and county leaders Thursday in an official groundbreaking for Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary.
The 42-acre swath of woods, wetlands and walking trails will be west of Interstate 35E between Norpak Road and Cayuga Street, just east of Jackson Street. It will be an important link to the Gateway State Trail, a paved rail-trail path from St. Paul to Pine Point Regional Park north of Stillwater.
Much of the future Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary is now a mishmash of tangled bramble, neglected ponds and vacant industrial buildings acquired by the city and county over the past 12 years.
Cleanup will begin this summer.
Right now, “it’s almost impossible to get down to where the trail connections will be,” said Brad Meyer, a spokesman for St. Paul Parks and Rec.
Residents from the heavily residential North End and East Side of St. Paul see the sanctuary as part of the missing link between the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary — the city’s largest public reserve, along the Mississippi River — and McCarron’s Lake in Roseville.
Thursday’s groundbreaking will be at 4 p.m. at 1200 Jackson St., the former Jackson Auto site near Maryland Avenue. The District 6 Planning Council will host a reception following the groundbreaking, at 171 Front Ave.
Ramsey County began major planning for the area, previously called Trillium Nature Sanctuary, around 2001, but the city assumed a lead role in recent years, negotiating with the Minnesota Department of Transportation for some of the land acquisition.
The 42 acres will not be fully accessible to the public until 2015, but the groundbreaking alone represents some $10 million in planning and land acquisition to date.
“Obviously, there’s a significant amount of environmental cleanup that still needs to be done,” Meyer said. The work will coincide with a new highway interchange being constructed at Cayuga Street.
The Trout Brook Regional Trail is proposed to run through the site from Jackson Street to Cayuga, where it will connect to the Gateway Trail. The original Trout Brook ran from McCarron’s Lake in Roseville to the Mississippi River but was filled in during railroad development. The creek was pushed underground to become the Trout Brook storm sewer.
The city hopes to create a stream channel running the length of the park. The nature sanctuary would also include stormwater-filtration ponds and wetlands, local connector trails and pedestrian nature trails, among other park flourishes.
The Trout Brook trail, which currently runs from McCarron’s to Arlington Pond at Jackson Street, will continue from Jackson Street to Cayuga, where it will connect to the existing Gateway Trail. A future phase of the Trout Brook trail could continue south to the Union Depot in downtown St. Paul.
The St. Paul Parks and Recreation Commission approved the name change from Trillium to Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary on April 10. The city has partnered with the Capitol Region Watershed District and others on the sanctuary improvements.
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.
Copyright 2013 Pioneer Press.
