After months of intense work between the public and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board on the Cedar-Isles Plan, it was shocking to see that at the last minute Park Board staff added Cedar Lake South Beach as a new “focus area” with new proposed amenities.
The site had not been identified as a focus area in the “preferred design concept” that park board staff presented last June at the Kenwood Community Center. Neither were changes in this new staff draft publicly discussed — much less endorsed — by the Cedar-Isles Community Advisory Committee (CAC).
In fact, a Park Board-approved plan for South Cedar Beach already exists. It is the product of an extensive Park Board-led 2014-2017 planning process that involved significant community engagement and financial investment, including by the Cedar-Isles-Dean Neighborhood Association (CIDNA).
That plan is responsible for the terrace, benches, “comfort station” with restrooms and nature-inspired mural, the improved lawn and sandy beach that now delight so many visitors.
Due to budget constraints, however, some elements of the plan were not carried out. Understandably, the community thought that communication and collaboration with the Park Board would continue toward completing those elements. But that is not the case. The staff’s new draft doesn’t fulfill the promise of that existing plan, and actually adds elements that were never publicly discussed. For example:
- The existing plan for Cedar Lake South Beach does not include a dock on its the east side. Yet staff plan proposes one. This ignores a guiding priority of the existing plan to preserve sight lines to the lake. It is also inconsistent with the plan’s goal to maintain the adjacent lawn area as a shaded respite of quietude.
- The existing plan calls for replacing invasive buckthorn with native plantings. This would visually separate parkland from private property and maintain habitat and the natural character of that border area. The new plan simply removes vegetation on the east side.
- The staff draft adds a (never-discussed) concrete pad for bike racks between the beach and lawn areas. Again, this doesn’t align with the priority to keep open sight lines and would add a third area for bikes, even though existing bike racks are rarely full. The central location of the pad would also impede the function of the lawn as an area of quiet respite and make it more of a corridor. Because CAC members and the public were unaware that Park Board staff were considering South Cedar Beach as a focus area, they did not have the opportunity to review either the existing plan or possible modifications.
- Per the existing plan, the terrace relieves congestion at the intersection of the bike trail, pedestrian path, and street crossing. But the staff-proposed canoe/kayak cart ramp would contribute to congestion, impeding those very circulation and access improvements. This proposal also raises safety issues; Park Board staff previously indicated that for safety reasons they prefer to separate boat launch areas from beaches.
Public engagement has been a vaunted feature of the Cedar-Isles planning process. In keeping with that process, any change to the existing plan needs public notification and community engagement. The goal is to ensure congruence with the existing Park Board-approved plan for Cedar Lake South Beach, and alignment with the guiding priorities that shaped the Cedar-Isles plan. It would also help maintain public trust in the agency.
As CIDNA recommended early in the Cedar-Isles planning process, the best plan is to include the existing design for South Cedar Beach in the Cedar-Isles plan rather than usurp the community-embraced and Park Board-approved plan with surprise eleventh-hour changes.
Send your comments on the draft Cedar-Isles Plan by March 10 to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/cedar-isles-public-comment
