Preserve war plant remains, but not as a park

In "Neglected local history must be preserved" (Opinion Exchange, Nov. 6), Dan Maruska got it half right. The almost 100 T-shaped cement foundations left behind by Gopher Ordnance Works on two sites of about 40 acres each in Rosemount should be preserved. But not as a new state park. They should be redeveloped into housing.

The structures cover a tiny part of the World War II-vintage, 11,000-acre, Gopher Ordnance Works site, most of which the University of Minnesota now owns.

The 2,880 acres to the south is being developed into the Vermillion Highlands, a research, wildlife management and recreation area.

The university had planned to sell the 5,000 acres to the north for redevelopment into a new sustainable community for up to 30,000 residents and a mix of commercial, eco-industrial and recreational uses, though, according to a letter to the editor ("More than just history here," Nov. 13), those plans have been quietly dropped.

There are a few good reasons for not developing it as a new state park.

One is that it is right next door to Dakota County's superb new 456-acre Whitetail Woods Regional Park, with lakes, trails, recreation facilities and camper cabins that rival those in any state park. The Ordnance Works has little of interest to compare to Whitetail Woods (let alone to the Stone Arch Bridge or Canal Park as Maruska suggests), and nothing that would call for a return visit.

Another reason is that there is no capital funding for a new state park, and little political appetite. The last new state park, Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire 3,000 acres and 10 miles of shoreline on a beautiful lake, and that took 20 years and about $50 million.

About the only thing to recommend the site as a park, other than historical curiosity, is that it would not take property off the tax rolls, since it is already tax exempt.

But for me, the most convincing argument against creating a new state park is the failure of imagination it would represent. As a city planner for a quarter of a century, I've attended many community planning exercises where new parks and recreation facilities always rise to the top of the list, almost by default, when envisioning something new is too hard or controversial. Coloring maps with green is like the early mapmakers who wrote "here are dragons" on areas of the map that hadn't been explored yet.

Perhaps instead we should explore the market for an imaginative residential reuse of these blighted but interesting and historically important structures. Instead of spending a small fortune to demolish them, they could be used to support some combination of cantilevered steel beams and cables from which roofs, walls and floors could be suspended.

And given their southern orientation, and the ability of reinforced concrete to store a lot of heat, significant passive solar gain could be designed into the structures, which could be marketed under a catchy name like "The Gopher Arms," or "Gunpowder Flats."

The first step toward imagining a residential reuse would be to see how the cement foundations could be repurposed as the central structural support for new housing. If some combination of organizations representing architects, historic preservationists and the University of Minnesota could raise a $20,000 prize, a design competition could be held to determine whether an imaginative residential reuse of the structures was even possible.