One reason cities and park boards adopt long range plans: if the unexpected opportunity to rebuild a park comes up, you’re ready to go. A plan is already on the shelf waiting.
When it comes to the Mall in Uptown, the opportunity is now. The Met Council is doing sewer work. They’re digging up the ground and will put it back together however the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board wants. They pay, we get a new park. It’s effectively free money, from MPRB’s perspective.
But that’s not happening. The MPRB voted last night to abandon their long range plan and have the Met Council rebuild the park as is. How could this happen?
It’s a tale as old as time: parking anxiety masquerading as concerns about emergency vehicles.
PARKING CONCERNS
The Mall currently functions as a parking lot for nearby apartment buildings. But a parking study recently commissioned by MPRB found that there is plenty of parking. Converting some of the parking to planted green space, as called for in their long range plan, would not be a problem.
Some findings from the parking study:
- Within the overall study area, the observed peak parking demand was approximately 294 spaces (i.e., 78% utilization), which occurred during the overnight period; there is an overall surplus of approximately 83 parking spaces within the study area.
- Vehicles remain parked after midnight, which conflicts with Park Board Ordinance regulations that prohibits parking along the parkway between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 6:00 a.m.
Note that it’s currently not legal to park on the Mall overnight. This applies to parkways across the city. The fight to preserve this as a parking lot is a fight to preserve a use that is illegal. Will MPRB change their parking ordinance to allow overnight parking? No they will not.
FIRE SAFETY CONCERNS
Here’s where things get stupid. It wouldn’t be reasonable to derail a long range plan over mere parking concerns. As a result, opponents have manufactured public safety concerns related to emergency vehicle access. They have appealed to Minneapolis Fire Chief Bryan Tyner, who says he would prefer 20 feet of driving space.
But this argument quickly falls apart. If you believe the long-range plan calls for lanes that are too narrow — so does your last minute replacement plan to rebuild it to existing conditions. The Mall currently has 12 foot drive lanes.
To briefly explain what this is about: Fire trucks have outrigger legs that are sometimes extended out from the side of the vehicle for stability. If you’re thinking, “but I don’t live on a street that meets this standard” — you’re not alone. But you don’t have to build all your streets with 20 feet of continuous unobstructed clearance for the full length of a roadway. This issue was solved during the Bryant Avenue reconstruction by building cement platforms in the boulevard at regular intervals.
In response to these concerns, Commissioner Alper attempted to amend last night’s action. She wanted any plan to reconstruct the Mall as-is to designate the 8 foot parking lane as a no parking zone to ensure fire access: 12 + 8 = the magic 20 feet.
Commissioner Rucker, who minutes earlier had talked about his experience as a firefighter and the need for extra space, reversed course rhetorically: “There’s not enough parking for the residents that are there. So that needs to stay in place.”
After Alper’s amendment failed, she called out the “hypocrisy” and told her colleagues, if they believe in fire safety then “we should have no safety impediments here.”
MPRB staff informed commissioners in January that rebuilding the Mall according to the fire chief’s 20 foot standard would require widening the roadway, either by eliminating trees or eliminating parking. But we know these commissioners will do neither of those things. So the Mall will be rebuilt with 12 foot lanes, ignoring the standard they used to kill the long range plan.
None of this makes sense. Why are they doing this? Because they don’t have fire safety concerns. They have parking concerns.
“STELLAR” COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
At the end of last night’s discussion, Commissioner Shaffer (currently running for City Council) said the way to uphold the MPRB reputation for “stellar” community engagement is to disregard the long range plan — informed by years of engagement. “If we ignore the community’s voice, it’s throwing some question on our public engagement in this process because the community within which this park sits does not see this as a priority.”
This is such a warped “up is down” argument. More than 20 public meetings were held between 2018 and 2019 as part of the Southwest Community Advisory Committee to inform the plan. It was vetted by staff and approved by MPRB commissioners in 2020.
In 2024, prompted by the Met Council’s impending sewer project, a small group of well-connected residents, led by former state DFL chair Mike Erlandson were able to re-open the issue of the Mall. They re-ran a public engagement process in private, so they could make sure only the haters were included. It’s a joke.
Shaffer’s comments about ensuring “stellar” community engagement by scrapping a long range plan informed by years of public engagement are insulting. Especially for people who spent hours of their lives attending these meetings in hot rooms, surrounded by hotter tempers.
The result is the Met Council will not give us a new park. It’s a wasted opportunity. It’s wasted money that could have been spent on community priorities. It’s a message to residents that the engagement process is a waste of your time. Planning decisions won’t get made according to our regular public process. MPRB will throw a long range plan in the trash if someone richer and better connected than you has the district commissioner’s ear. If you showed up to those planning meetings, sent an email, filled out a survey, called your commissioner during that process — the joke is on you.