South metro briefs: Repair of Jordan hillside comes with cheaper price tag

The brewery, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, was damaged after a June 2014 mudslide sent dirt down the hillside, uprooting several trees and breaking through the back wall.

The state Legislature provided a $100,000 grant for preliminary design efforts, $53,000 of which has already been spent. Officials are hoping to receive additional grant funding. This project doesn't include the cost of any interior repairs, officials said.

ERIN ADLER

A committee is seeking an outdoor recreation grant from the Department of Natural Resources to help fund a roughly $400,000 renovation at Lions Park. The maximum grant award of $100,000 comes at a 50 percent match rate.

The City Council authorized installation and fundraising efforts last month for an inclusive playground at Lions Park on Adams Street. The playground, the first of its kind in Shakopee, would better serve children or adults with disabilities. The city currently has 26 traditional accessible parks, which are "all the same," according to Parks and Recreation Director Jamie Polley.

"There is a push in our field to have play spaces where the parents and children can play side-by-side, and where children of all abilities can play side-by-side," Polley said. Other models of playgrounds that better serve visitors' sensory and motor needs, Polley said, include Miller Park in Eden Prairie and King Park in Lakeville.

The park's planning committee has already secured about half the money through pledges and city allocations and would ideally begin construction in the fall, Polley said. The DNR will announce grant recipients this summer.

Senior Adults Learning Together (SALT), a nonprofit collaboration between 12 south metro churches, is offering four spring dates for seniors to attend educational enrichment presentations.

Topics are wide-ranging and include container gardening, hummingbirds, the creativity of Irish immigrants and suicide among the millennial generation. Seniors can choose two presentations each Monday at cost of $5 per day.

An optional, multicourse lunch with entertainment is offered for $9 per person each day. Presentations will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on April 18, April 25, May 2 and May 9 at Church of the Risen Savior (1501 E. County Road 42, Burnsville). To register, go to risensavior.org/salt or call Marianne at 952-698-1714.

Erin Adler

Burnsville needs help monitoring wetlands this summer, and it is putting together a team of volunteers to collect insects, identify plants and take measurements at local ponds.

The data volunteers collect is used by entities including cities, counties and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Burnsville's registration deadline is May 1. To register, visit mnwhep.org or call the Dakota County Water Resources Department at 952-891-7000.

Emma Nelson

The Prior Lake City Council has amended its peddler and solicitor ordinance after police fielded 62 complaint calls about peddler activities in 2015, more than triple the previous year.

The complaints didn't focus on any one issue, said Police Chief Mark Elliott, but a variety of concerns.

The outcome of a recent lawsuit involving the city of Bloomington requires all cities to revise their ordinances to be constitutional, she added.

There were three main changes as a result of the lawsuit: Solicitors and peddlers can now go door-to-door until 9 p.m., the stipulation that solicitor permits can be denied on moral grounds must be changed, and there can be no permit restrictions based on the content of what solicitors are selling or promoting.

Another change is that solicitors must wear a city-issued permit.

The city of Savage also amended its solicitor ordinance in February.