It's a rare opportunity for the Brown's Creek Watershed District: 28 acres of woods, ponds and wetlands for sale in Stillwater.
The Brown's Creek folks want to buy the state-held land, north of Long Lake, for $10,000.
That's considerably less than the minimum bid of $177,950 set by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), but Craig Leiser said the watershed district sees a public benefit to the land.
"Nobody has a significant interest to develop it as a park, but we see it as a nature study area," he said last week.
Leiser, who is the watershed district's president, said a new state law allows a government agency to sell land to another public body at a price lower than the appraised value. The district will make a bid on the land, known in the Stillwater area as Jackson Wildlife Management Area, before the Oct. 21 public auction, he said.
The parcel is just south of County Road 12, known in Stillwater as Myrtle Avenue, and about a mile east of County Road 15, also known as Manning Road. It's on the south reach of Brown's Creek, a sparkling trout stream that tumbles through the bluffs on Stillwater's north side to the St. Croix River.
Neither the city of Stillwater nor Washington County has any interest in the parcel, Leiser said, because it's unsuitable for a public park and isn't close enough to county trails.
The watershed district, however, sees the land as a critical link to Brown's Creek. The ponds and wetlands "purify" water that feeds into the creek from the Long Lake area, Leiser said.
