Friends of the Riverfront

Hopkins map of Nicollet Island, 1885: Grove Street is part of the original 1865 plat of Nicollet Island. This map shows the residential neighborhood extending from the north tip (at left) to Hennepin Avenue (then called Bridge Street).The Minneapolis Heritage Preservation voted unanimously Aug. 8 to reject a private developer's plan to build a football stadium on public parkland and over a public street on Nicollet Island. At the end of a 4-1/2 hour meeting, commissioners voted 7-0 that DeLaSalle High School's plan would damage the St. Anthony Falls Historic District.

The commission also made significant changes to the proposed Findings (or facts) on which it based its rejection of the stadium plan

The Minneapolis City Council will vote Friday, Sept. 22, 2006 on whether to overrule the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission's unanimous rejection of DeLaSalle High School's proposed stadium development as unfit for the St. Anthony Falls Historic District. City Council President Barbara Johnson is expected to vote to overrule the HPC to advance a project for which she is represents the developer.

Barbara Johnson is both president of the Minneapolis City Council and a trustee of DeLaSalle High SchoolOn Dec. 23, 2005, Minneapolis City Council Member Barb Johnson refused to recuse herself from voting on the adequacy of the DeLaSalle stadium Environmental Awareness Worksheet (EAW). 

In a January 3, 2002 memorandum, City Attorney Jay Heffern (himself also a DeLaSalle trustee) said city council members with close ties to a party in any "quasi-judicial" matter such as DeLaSalle's HPC appeal should recuse themselves from voting. At stake, the city attorney wrote, is the public's "confidence in the City's decision-making process."

City Council President Johnson is just one of several elected and appointed officials with ties to DeLaSalle High School who have or soon will be in a position to cast votes or take official actions on the school's proposal to build a football stadium over a public street and on public parkland

See Minneapolis Park Superintendent Jon Gurban tell park commissioners about the new Parade Stadium (at an Aug. 2, 2006 meeting never before shown on TV ... not even the Minneapolis government cable channel!). Parade Stadium is an alternative to a proposed Nicollet Island stadium to be built on public parkland by DeLaSalle High School.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has begun work to build a new athletic stadium at its Parade site. Park board staff revealed the plans for the stadium as well as practice fields and an event center at Parade in a March 24, 2006 memo to park commissioners and at an Aug. 2, 2006 park board meeting. Superintendent Jon Gurban said with $1.5 million in hand, including a $200,000 grant from the National Football League for the football stadium, the park board "is doing site preparation on some of that work right now." With its location near downtown, Gurban said, "This whole area of course is central to Minneapolis, where any kid can get to it easily and most kids can get there by pathway." The new Parade Stadium the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is now building.: This 1,500-seat stadium is the centerpiece of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board plans for Parade.

In a new report, the Trust for Public Land found that Minneapolis, among all of America's highest density cities, has the most soccer fields per capita, with 1.5 soccer fields for every 10,000 residents.

That contradicts claims that Minneapolis is so lacking in soccer fields that it should allow a private institution, DeLaSalle High School, to build a football stadium on open space parkland so park board teams could play soccer on Nicollet Island.

Fourth of July, 2006The thousands who gather every year around St. Anthony Falls on the Fourth of July are keeping up a long tradition of celebrating Independence Day at the falls that dates back to 1849, the earliest days of Minneapolis (actually five or six years before the city was incoporated). Within their first ten years these gatherings grew from a small town celebration of about 200—for which an American flag had to be sewn because no one had one—to a huge assembly of more than 12,000 people from around the region.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Stone Arch Bridge to take part in "One River Mississippi," a site specific dance marking the summer solstice, which this year spread from Central Riverfront Regional Park in Minneapolis to seven other river locations, from Itasca, Minn. to New Orleans.