Unwilling to raise taxes enough to start operating parkland it has held for years, the Scott County Board is heading instead for what could prove an awkward marriage with a private company.
Cedar Lake park may open soon, with some restrictions
An uneasy partnership is being developed between a cash-strapped county that owns land and a profit-making company.
Two firms are finalists to operate Cedar Lake Farm near New Prague, the board learned Tuesday. If the good news is that there was strong private-sector interest in helping open the park to public use within months, the bad news is that ticklish details remain. Among them:
• The county's reluctance to staff the park. It is proposing instead to ask a retired couple in an RV to take on a host of tasks as volunteers living on-site.
• The county's reluctance to allow alcohol to be served in a regional park. That could limit customer interest in things such as weddings, which a private company would rely on for its business.
• The difficulty of mingling public users of a public park with private customers of a private business, when it comes time, for instance, to sort out who's entitled to be in line for hot dogs or to grab an inflatable and head for the beach.
The likeliest choice of partner, officials said, is Lancer Hospitality, which helps manage facilities for the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul and Edinburgh Golf Course in Brooklyn Park. The other finalist, Mintahoe Hospitality, the product of a recent merger, runs the Nicollet Island pavilion for Minneapolis.
The board has been stockpiling parks acreage for decades without feeling it was ready to open the parks for full public use. Cedar Lake Farm is a candidate for early use because it boasts features such as a catering kitchen, having been operated by a private party as a day camp for many years.
The 230-acre site also includes ball fields, picnic tables, boats, docks and other infrastructure.
Little or no public cost
If all the conflicts can be worked out, officials say, the upside is the use of an amenity with little or no public cost. In fact, there could be revenue sharing, though little of that is expected this year. The process has taken so long that chances to market the property for this summer are slipping by.
Among the side benefits, said Mark Themig, the county's parks and trails manager: "As Prior Lake has gotten busier, boaters have gone off to Cedar Lake, and the opportunity exists for them to stop at the park to use restrooms and as potential customers for concessions."
At first, the public likely would be allowed onto the site only on weekends, at most, officials said.
Lancer's strong points include its willingness to provide concessions and to allow public users wide, unfenced access to the facilities any time it's using them, Themig told board members. Mintahoe is promising a higher return: 10 percent of the first $100,000, for instance, versus 3 to 8 percent depending on gross revenues.
Board members peppered Themig with questions, among them whether it's fair to the retired couple to give them nothing but utility hookups to their RV in exchange for what looks like a lot of work maintaining the property, checking admissions and watchdogging misconduct.
A question of fairness
"It sounds like they're getting little for what they're being asked to do," said board chairman Jon Ulrich.
Another source of awkwardness is the board's desire to have a vendor come in and fix things up and add amenities, but also be willing to surrender the property once the county comes up with the money to run it as a normal regional park.
"The Lancer people told us, if county decides after five years to do something different," Themig said, "they can sell kayaks -- but not a picnic shelter."
David Peterson • 952-882-9023