Courtesy of RSP Architects
Proposed Mississippi River Promenade
Mike Opat, Hennepin County Commissioner for District 1, proposed a flashy new promenade to the county board Tuesday, detailing the possibilities the walkway on the water could provide. After several speakers, a video, and visual renderings of the space, logistical questions were left unaddressed.
The project, referred to as Wishbone, would be a 4000-foot, V-like walking bridge on the Mississippi River, connecting to the Stone Arch Bridge and offering views of St. Anthony Falls. The preliminary cost is estimated to be $50-100 million.
“Should the board decide in some fashion to take any next step, public engagement will certainly have to be central to that work,” Opat says. “I’ve been working on this for nearly two years, and every time I see it, I have more questions. It’s a very complicated project, but a very exciting one too.”
The point of the meeting was to expose the idea publicly. Dave Norback, president of RSP Architects, presented the renderings, explaining how the project would use things like the discarded cement cylinders as support for the walkways, in an attempt to have a lighter environmental impact.
“Trying to make lemonade from lemons in terms of some of the leftover pieces that are strewn in the river that really aren’t used right now,” Norback says. “I think that goes at every level.”
To recognize the historic and cultural significance the falls and the river have to Indigenous people, Opat asked for input from Justice Anne McKeig, who serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court and comes from the Anishinaabe community on the Leech Lake reservation.
“The Anishinaabe, Ojibwe people, we are deferring to our Dakota brothers and sisters because this land has great meaning to them, and they have been mindful, and we know that they will be very good stewards,” she says, explaining that all 11 tribal nations were represented in some way at a prior meeting discussing the project. “We’re very excited about this opportunity. I think it’s a great chance for us to put our history before the state of Minnesota and those who come to this state to view the area, rather than having someone write that history for us, which has been done for many, many years.”
Courtesy of RSP Architects
Wishbone Rendering
Representing the Dakota people at the board meeting, Franky Jackson, the compliance officer for the Prairie Island Tribal Historic Preservation Office, says he’s hopeful and looking forward to helping ensure all tribal voices and stakeholders are taken into consideration.
“The Dakota tribes are very excited about the opportunity of fully defining why this area is historically and culturally significant to the Dakota people,” Jackson says. “And there’s a way we’d like to do that in partnership with everybody, and that’s nominating the falls as a traditional cultural property, and having it placed on a national registry as such.”
Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley of District 4 was the sole board member to make a comment in the project meeting, voicing concern about historical erasure and the environment.
“It completely erases what happened to the original inhabitants of this land,” Conley says of the video aspect of the presentation. “I’m worried about the erasure of this as we continue to move forward, so it pleases me to hear that tribal leadership have been involved and will be a part of the design team, and will be an integral part in however this moves forward.
She also explained that pollution is already a huge issue for the Mississippi River, and was worried what an influx in development and people would do.
“I keep noticing the further south you go, the more plastic there is in the river. The more garbage there is in the river,” Conley says. “With people brings garbage, brings pollution, brings trash, brings plastic. It’s what humans do sometimes. And so, I would be worried about how that would affect this area that we’re talking about right now.”
While the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board has not been officially asked to commit to anything, Michael Schroeder, the assistant superintendent at the city’s parks and rec office, says now that the information is public, the board has requested a discussion of the project. The proposed promenade is consistent with the park board’s master plan, which includes the goal of engaging people in the riverfront, he says. But Schroeder added that everything is in a very early stage.
“It is important that folks recognize that this is a concept,” he says. “The renderings make it look like it’s completely thought through, but it’s in the early stages.”
He notes that there are a lot of technical questions that need to be answered.
“It’s going to take years of additional study before people start waving shovels,” he says.
Other stakeholders also would like more information.
“All I know is really what was shared to the county board,” says Colleen O’Connor Toberman, the river corridor program director for Friends of the Mississippi River. “And I think that has left us with a lot of questions that still need to be answered. It seems evident that there’s a lot more community engagement that has to be done to explore what some of those questions and answers might be. It sounds like there’s probably also still some work to be done to explore the technical feasibility of the project.”
Other involved parties like Xcel Energy, the Minneapolis Downtown Council, and Friends of the Lock & Dam were represented in attendance at the meeting. Toberman commented that further engagement needs to be done with the other agencies and stakeholders connected to the project.
“The jurisdictional matters are very complicated,” Opat commented. “No one owns it. Everybody owns it.”
