Visitors to the Mississippi River in northeast Minneapolis may one day be able to stroll two footbridges from a new riverside park to an island under Plymouth Avenue and along a boardwalk through habitat for migrating birds and other animals, if river boosters get their way.
But the island doesn't exist, and creating it by 2020 comes with a cost: almost $25 million to sculpt the island and adjoining park. That's including the price of buying the land and other costs to date, but not $14 million more for park buildings. About $10 million has been spent so far.
"It's expensive," one lobbyist for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board admitted to state senators who toured the site last week. The Park Board is asking for $12 million in state bonding for the project, one of its largest requests ever.
It's also complicated. The board hasn't yet applied for permits that will be reviewed by multiple agencies that regulate the river. One of them, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), warned in early 2013 that state rules prohibit filling waters to create upland areas like islands.
But area legislators got a law passed directing the DNR to issue a state permit, the second time that lawmakers have passed special legislation to help the project. However, lawmakers lack similar power to direct U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will decide on issuing permits after reviewing navigational and environmental impacts.
Proponents of the island, such as lobbyist Brian Rice, who will seek the bonding imply that the state owes the project a favor. That's because a predecessor to the DNR granted a permit in the 1960s that allowed the Scherer Bros. Lumber Co. to erase what was known as Hall's Island offshore from its yard. Portions of the island were dredged to fill a channel between the shore and island so that the firm could install a barge wharf.
"They were the ones that caused the problem. We're just undoing the desecration they did 50 years earlier," Rice said of the state.
Reshaping the riverfront
The project is a major bridgehead in the drive by the Park Board and the city to reshape the upper river over several decades. The Park Board bought the 10-acre Scherer Bros. site in 2010 for $7.7 million, largely obtained from the state, with plans to create a park.