Above, District 6 Commissioner Kathy Abene and District 4 Commissioner Jason Garcia, both of whom represent portions of the Hill & Lake Press coverage area, listening to public testimony on the proposed policy change that would end off-leash dog access. Community members from both sides of the issue attended the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board meeting on June 17. (Images: Taylor Dahlin)
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has voted 8-1 to end off-leash use at the Minnehaha Off-Leash Dog Park, a six-acre stretch of Mississippi River bottomland that has drawn dogs and their owners since 1992.
Lost in much of the social-media reaction is the most basic fact of the decision: the dogs are not being banished. They are still welcome on the land.
They will simply have to be on a leash, under the same rules that apply across the rest of the park system, by the end of the year.
And while the park lies well southeast of the Hill & Lake neighborhoods, down along the river near Minnehaha, the decision is in large part a local story.
“Really, all we’re asking people to do is not have dogs there off-leash. We’re not saying we’re closing the area to dogs completely, or that we’re not allowing people who aren’t from the Dakota nations to go.”
— Jason Garcia, District 4 Commissioner
The two commissioners whose districts cover this paper’s readers sat at the center of it, on opposite sides: District 4’s Jason Garcia wrote the resolution and led the effort to pass it, while District 6’s Cathy Abene cast the lone vote against.
A Sacred Site
The site sits beside Mni Owe Sni, or Coldwater Spring, a place the Dakota have held sacred for thousands of years.
The land was once part of the National Park Service holdings nearby and was handed to the Park Board in the 1990s, when, as District 4 Commissioner Jason Garcia put it, “it became a dog park without any real research done into that area.”
Coldwater Spring was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023, and an archaeological study the board commissioned found the area likely holds significant remains below the surface, with ruins already visible above it.
“The board’s decision is too hasty and too top down. That’s not how we historically have done things.”
— Cathy Abene, District 6 Commissioner
Garcia, who wrote the resolution and is widely credited with leading the effort, said the concern is far older than last year’s headlines. “The area has been sacred for thousands of years,” Garcia said. They traced the current push to an earlier dispute over fencing, when the National Park Service worried about dogs crossing into its savanna.
“Even going back before Highway 55 was run through that area, Dakota people were speaking out about how it was inappropriate to be developing there, because it is a sacred site.”
As the board studied the question, Garcia said, it heard from Dakota and Ojibwe elder Juanita Espinosa, from Maggie Lorenz, who spent years at the Minnesota Historical Society, and from Samantha Odegard, the Upper Sioux Community’s tribal historic preservation officer. “In receiving all of that information, the vast majority of us on the board decided it was necessary to prevent ongoing harm to Dakota people to initiate this process,” Garcia said.
A Compromise
Garcia cast the leash rule as a deliberate middle path. The opposition, Garcia said, is “around process. People are saying we’re moving too fast with this,” and asking whether dogs might still be allowed in some form.
Garcia said they looked to how other Indigenous sites are managed.
“None of them allow off-leash dogs, or some don’t allow dogs at all, but some like Pipestone down in southwestern Minnesota allow dogs if they’re on leashes. So that felt like the best compromise,” Garcia said.
“Really, all we’re asking people to do is not have dogs there off-leash. We’re not saying we’re closing the area to dogs completely, or that we’re not allowing people who aren’t from the Dakota nations to go.”
A Concern About Process
The lone vote against came from District 6 Commissioner Cathy Abene. Abene was at pains to say her objection was not to the outcome but to the way the board arrived at it.
“I don’t have an outcome in my mind,” she said, adding that she had no bone to pick.
What troubled her was speed. “The board’s decision is too hasty and too top down,” she said. “That’s not how we historically have done things.”
Abene tried to amend the resolution and, when that failed, could not support it.
“Whether or not I agree with the ultimate decision, I don’t even feel informed enough to make that type of determination. I don’t have any information to go on,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t vote for this resolution.”
Her larger worry was about whose voices the rushed timeline rewarded. “The dog park people mobilized pretty well,” Abene said, while “the indigenous community has not typically mobilized in the same way to address the park board.” She said she trusts the board’s Native American advisory council and wished it had been given room to work.
“If they would be given the time to work on this, the staff could actually report out recommendations,” she said. “Because this process was rushed, we heard from a more well-coordinated group, but we haven’t heard the full picture, and that’s part of the problem.”
Off-leash dogs are pictured along the Mississippi River at a site sacred to the Dakota
people. Under the proposed policy, dogs would still be welcome to visit the site, provided they remain on leash. (Images: Courtney Cushing Kiernat)
Shifting Districts
That two commissioners representing the same readers could land on opposite sides is partly a quirk of geography.
Most of the Hill & Lake Press coverage area sits in Garcia’s District 4, but the last census redrew the map.
Cedar-Isles-Dean and West Bde Maka Ska shifted into Abene’s District 6, while District 4 reached across the Mississippi to pick up part of northeast Minneapolis.
The effect has been to give District 4 a more downtown, riverfront character, while District 6 stays anchored in the southwest.
On some blocks, readers are now represented by the commissioner who wrote the resolution; a short walk away, by the one who voted no.
For now the practical change is narrow. The land stays open, dogs included, and the board has said it will look for a new off-leash site elsewhere in the city.
“People are still allowed to go there, and it’s not like it closed today,” Garcia said. “It will be closed as an off-leash dog park by the end of the year,” after which dogs “will be expected to use the same regulations as our regular parks in the area.”
Craig Wilson is the editor of the Hill & Lake Press. He lives in Lowry Hill.
