Great River Passage continues its forward flow

After Planning Commission approval and several months of refinement, the St. Paul Department of Parks & Recreation has released the Great River Passage Master Plan for a final hearing and adoption at the City Council. That hearing will be at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 3rd, at the St. Paul City Hall.

St. Pauls identity is intertwined with that of the river; no city along the Mississippi has more river frontage than St. Paul. The hearing will mark the culmination of several years of intensive planning and effort around a more natural, more urban and more connected river valley, and help launch the first-of-its-kind comprehensive strategy for the parks and trails through the entire 17-mile long St. Paul river corridor.

The updated draft of the Master Plan was just released the day this was story was written, so FMR has not had an opportunity to review the document. We are broadly supportive of the plan, which does much to move forward a compelling long-term vision for St. Pauls iconic river valley. We have taken a particular interest in the plans direction in several areas, including:

• Strong support for a slower, calmer Shepard Road as shown in the plan, made more hospitable for multiple transportation modes.
• Concern that the plan calls out a need to address pollution at the Ford Motor Company site as part of parkland and private redevelopment. We are particularly concerned about an old waste disposal site directly next to the river, which poses a high risk for leakage of old buried waste directly into the river.
• Limiting the footprint of new development at Crosby Park to the area of facilities that already exist.
• Strong support for a major hub of recreational activity at a renewed Island Station facility on the riverfront. Island Station is a large 92-year-old power plant that has long been poised for redevelopment, near the eastern terminus of Randolph Street and the historic Schmidt Brewery.
• Encouragement for a robust public realm around the riverfront on the West Side Flats, between Wabasha Street and the Lafayette Highway, US 52. Such public realm ought to include significant green space and ensure private redevelopment such as restaurants and coffee shops that enhance the surrounding investments in the public realm.
• Strong support for proposed access improvements around Pigs Eye Regional Park and the Highwood area on the corridors eastern edge.

We encourage you to share constructive feedback and support as well - more information on sharing both written and spoken testimony can be found on the Great River Passage website.