Permits may be typical for users of stadiums. They are not typical for people who visit riverfront open space parkland like Nicollet Island. And it is certainly not typical for a private religious organization to have a say in issuing permits for facilities on public land.

As for the number of visitors, take any fraction of one million visitors you want. More of the public uses public roads and public land, open to all throughout every day, week and year, than a stadium open to select people at select times during select seasons, as selected and permitted by a private school.

And aren’t you being a little disingenuous when you quote the MC’s million park visitors statistic? Central Riverfront Regional Park is 150 acres of parks, trails, picnic areas, landmarks and monuments, and even if Nicollet Island is “the heart” of this conglomeration, it seems unlikey that a majority of those million visitors took a stroll around NI.

People use the streets and paths of Nicollet Island like they do the streets and paths around the city’s lakes or parkways. They walk, jog, ride bikes, push strollers. The Met Council says more than a million people visit the park that Nicollet Island is at the heart of: Central Riverfront Regional Park. What is the number one activity of those park users? Walking. Downtown now has 30,000 residents and growing. You don’t need a permit to take a walk on a public street or a park path.

The tennis courts on the parkland DeLaSalle wants were built less than 10 years ago at taxpayer expense of more than $100,000 for DeLaSalle’s use. They take up about half the parcel of parkland, not leaving much for the park board to work with. The remainder seems to fall under the park board’s policies about not mowing grass for environmental/habitat reasons. So for school representatives to denigrate the current use of that parkland is strange, since it is of their own making (just not of their own spending).

In the same vein, On the Edge, a mini-paper for walkers and joggers that was distributed on Nicollet Island from July 23 to August 12, 2006, published comments from the public on the athletic facility proposal that were incorporated into the second edition of the paper. The following opinion about the stadium was received during the three week project but not published in the newspaper:

“Frederick Law Olmsted – Central Park NYC developer and Theodore
Wirth, Mpls Park Board developer said this, Above all else, parks must
attract people to enjoy them! Its a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and there is nary a soul at (this) so-called regional park. As an ex-Park Board employee, 34 years and retired, I can never recall this area being even lightly used as a park. Allowing DeLaSalle a portion of this weed bed for an athletic facility which can be shared and utilized by island residents and other neighborhoods is a great idea and will result in better utilization of the space.”

Jake Werner

Here’s the link to all the unpublished comments:

http://www.forecastart.org/ONtheEDGE_feedback.pdf.

This is kind of the exact opposite of the park board telling the whiney people who live on diamond lake to stuff it and tear down their fences built on public parkland so they can put in a trail. Those people are especially jagoffs because they’re enroaching on parkland for private lakeshore that they don’t own IN THE CITY. If you want lakeshore move to the boonies, jerks!

I just love the way ignorant fuckwads make these kinds of judgements. They don’t have a fucking clue about history, or the history of a particular place, or about the importance of historical context and fabric for informing and defining our culture, but they feel they can just glance at something and pronounce “nothing historic about it.”

I vote we bulldoze MB of SWMpls’s house because there’s nothing “important” about it. Idiot.