For more than two decades, a group of St. Paul’s most deeply rooted residents has argued against what was “allowable.”
“We kept hearing you can’t argue against this because it’s ‘allowable,’ ” said longtime North Ender Linda Jungwirth. “Well, just because it was allowable doesn’t mean it was appropriate.”
Now, after 23 years — fighting long and hard against a bus yard, a burn site, a construction business and other developments — they finally got what they wanted: a bit of green space, in a neighborhood that badly needs it.
The North End’s 42-acre Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary — which will hold a grand opening celebration Saturday — survived from a tiny spark of an idea 23 years ago.
“I’m great now; I wasn’t when I started,” said Jungwirth, a member of the Tri-Area Block Club that fought for the sanctuary, and, like others in the group, a fifth-generation North Ender whose grandparents worked on the railroads that once covered it.
“It took longer than it should’ve. To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of people thought we would get tired and just go away,” she said.
“Yes, we got tired and extremely frustrated, but we didn’t give up — even those who moved away came back for meetings. And that’s why it’s here.”
‘KIND OF A PUBLIC NUISANCE’
Plans for the space, a buffer between the dense, working-class residential area to the west and railroad yards and Interstate 35E to the east, have been many and varied over past decades. Various private companies bought and sold it before the city finally acquired it in 2001.
The battle for the property — the North End’s largest green space, aside from cemeteries — began in 1994, when the property was still in the hands of Trillium Corp., a railroad holding company’s real estate division.
Local residents still refer to the space as the “Trillium Sanctuary” to remind themselves how long they fought to get it.
Residents first worked for it when plans surfaced to put a private bus yard on the site.
After that, “it was just one road block after another. You think you got around something, and they’d throw something else there,” said Jeff Martin, a fourth-generation North End resident who chairs the district’s land use task force.
A mini-storage site. A private business that would “wash” (burn) contaminated soil. And most recently, a city maintenance facility.
“We kept saying green space also serves a purpose. But back then, the value of green space was not really recognized,” Jungwirth said.
In the meantime, “it was kind of a public nuisance, people dumping stuff after hours and doing things they shouldn’t,” noted former and longtime state Rep. Thomas Osthoff, who supported the group early on.
“They started dumping dirt on it. … It devalues the fact that what you have there is a hard-working residential area, and all (others) wanted to do was basically dump there,” said Ramsey County Commissioner Janice Rettman. Rettman was on the St. Paul City Council when the idea for the sanctuary first came up and has supported it since.
The prospect of additional noise and pollution was hardly welcome, particularly with a retirement home, the New Harmony Care Center, bordering the property.
The Tri-Area group haunted every meeting they could attend: planning commissions, zoning appeals boards, council meetings. Decades of attendance and petitions, phone calls and letters in the years before email.
“You just have to keep nudging,” Jungwirth said. “We just kept saying no, and no one ever asked us what our compromise point was.”
“It was a full-time, unpaid job for her,” John Jungwirth said of his wife.
As Linda Jungwirth points out repeatedly, it wasn’t just her.
In addition to the block group, which kept an eye on the property and showed up in force at the tiniest meetings, supporters started gaining allies once a city planning and economic development employee drew up a potential sketch of the property: something to shop around at all the meetings.
“We met with so many different groups, you tell me who we didn’t meet with,” Osthoff said.
“Initially it wasn’t on the city’s radar, and it took a lot of planning to get it where it is today,” acknowledged Kathleen Anglo, the city’s project developer for the site. “It takes patience capital, and it takes time to build up support, so it does rise on people’s priority list.”
At one point — after many years of fruitless fighting and the deaths of some of the sanctuary’s longtime supporters — Jungwirth considered quitting, until she literally saw a sign.
Driving past the site on the highway, she noticed what was plastered on the single billboard overlooking the park. A picture of Winston Churchill, giving a victory sign, and a quote.
“Never, never, never give up,” she remembers the sign saying. Though Churchill’s actual quote was a bit different — making an exception for “good sense” — it still affected her.
“Oh crap, we have to keep going,” Jungwirth muttered to herself, and kept driving.
DEER AND MONARCH BUTTERFLIES
The idea of a wild nature sanctuary, rather than a manicured park, took root when residents noticed deer and monarch butterflies migrating through the area along the highway.
Jungwirth recalls calling a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources administrator about the south end of the property, at a point when it was up for sale.
“Are you gonna need that part down there for the highway?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Will it cost you more to buy it once it gets developed?”
“Yes.”
“Would you be willing to buy it now, so we can get it before it gets developed?”
The answer eventually was also “yes.”
Finally, in 2001, the city acquired most of the land for $3.3 million, mostly through state bonding money. That same year, the block group brought in a Native American spiritual leader to bless the site.
“It’s done!” Jungwirth recalls exclaiming to Osthoff.
“No. It’s just beginning,” he replied.
Osthoff proved right. After much planning and cleanup, groundbreaking for the park didn’t take place until 2013, soon after the city acquired a trailhead parking spot from Met Council in 2012. The park also includes a paved bike trail through its center.
Thus far, development costs have totaled $5 million from a variety of city, state and federal sources. The city still needs to install a lift station to pump storm water into the site’s stream, at a cost of another $1.1 million.
‘OUR LITTLE BIT OF NATURE’
Some proponents are still hesitant to go so far as to say that — given enough effort — the little guy can win. But many say they’re looking forward to Saturday’s kickoff celebration.
“I saw them brokenhearted many times, because it took forever,” Rettman said. “They were so incredibly devoted, saying we care about our neighborhood and our neighborhood doesn’t get a hell of a lot.”
“They would come back like a wave of an ocean; they never totally ebbed away.”
Jungwirth now laughs — although a little ruefully — about the past 23 years. “If I thought it was gonna take the better part of my life, I would have thought twice about it.
“But if you look at what we have, it was worth it. … It’s our little bit of nature.”
City project manager Anglo adds, “This is amazing, what one little spark 20 years ago did. We need that kind of forethought and perseverance to really make St. Paul what it is.”
The kickoff celebration for the reserve will be held from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at one of the entrances to the reserve, at 169 Jenks Ave. near the corner of Agate Street. An opening day ceremony will commence at 1 p.m.
The next step for the group: addressing a gap in the trail from the Maryland Avenue trailhead parking lot to Arlington Avenue, and working with suburban groups to extend the regional trail even farther, from Lake McCarrons through Vadnais Heights and Minnesota 96, to connect with a regional trail there.
Tad Vezner can be reached at 651-228-5461 or follow him at twitter.com/SPnoir.
Copyright 2015 Pioneer Press.
