2:43The city of Minneapolis has the design for its $18 million Downtown East Commons park in hand. Now it needs to find the money to build it, an effort that — because of contractual restrictions — won't have the luxury of tapping into a lucrative naming-rights deal.
Landscape architect Hargreaves Associates, based in San Francisco, presented the first images of the direction the park will take at a public meeting Wednesday night at the Minneapolis Central Library. Featuring a large grassy oval that can accommodate thousands of people, a cafe, a playful water feature and tree-lined walks, the park is a central component of the redevelopment of the area around the new Vikings stadium.
Armed with colorful images, a fundraising committee organized by the Minneapolis Downtown Council will now try to raise $22 million to cover construction plus related costs like design and engineering as well as operating expenses for the park's first year. The park's design may be refined, but likely won't change dramatically.
"The more the plans for the Commons become clear, the more people begin to embrace those plans," said Steve Cramer, president of the Downtown Council, a coalition of business leaders. "Then people start seeing it more as a publicly owned community asset and a little less as the front door to the Vikings stadium. It never was that, but that's been the perception."
Hargreaves relied on more than 2,700 survey results and two public meetings to shape its design. Among the more noticeable features is the large, grassy oval with terraced edges — being called the Great Lawn — that sits nearest the Vikings stadium and can accommodate 4,000 to 6,000 people. Across Portland Avenue is a smaller lawn, a wooded area and a water plaza. Large pedestrian promenades rim the north and south sides with tree-lined canopies.
Minnesotans seem satisfied with their current stock of lakes and rivers. Hargreaves senior principal Mary Margaret Jones said the public feedback largely opposed a more natural lake or pond, preferring a more artistic water feature. And so Hargreaves is proposing a cloudlike experience. On the western half of the park, small stone blocks will be laid out in an asymmetrical shape and covered with a thin layer of water. There will also be mist- and fog-producing spouts inviting human interaction, all of which can be turned off in winter and possibly replaced by a skating rink.
The north side would feature a cafe and patio as well as active program areas for things like art installations, bocce, curling, children's play equipment and adult fitness classes.
These elements will be leveraged by Washington, D.C.-based New Partners, the third-party consulting firm hired by the Downtown Council to lead the fundraising efforts. That contract was paid using seed money from Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos., the developer of the adjacent office and residential properties.
