Twin City Parks Conservancy Summit
The Cultural Landscape Foundation and ASLA Minnesota present a one-day summit on Minneapolis parks at the Guthrie Theater.

A one-day “summit” will be held at the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where national leaders from New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Louisville, along with local constituents, will be convened with the expressed goal of raising public awareness for public–private partnerships that could build public support for the city's extraordinary legacy of parks and boulevards. With support from the SOAR Foundation, the summit is cosponsored by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, the Minnesota Chapter of the ASLA, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and others. The day of lectures is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the Twin Cities, are blessed with one of the most unique and robust legacies of parks, parkways, and boulevards in the United States. Begun in 1883 when an independent park commission was established, the system of now-beloved parks and boulevards was well on its way to being realized when citizens overwhelmingly approved a bill to the state legislature.

Concurrent with their formation, the newly elected board hired H. W. S. Cleveland and Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. to advise on parkland acquisitions. Later that year, Loring Park was purchased, and many new parks quickly followed suit. As noted in Pioneers of American Landscape Design (McGraw-Hill, 2000) in 1883, “Cleveland began working on the Minneapolis Park System, the crowning achievement of his long career. He laid out a system of connected lakes, parks, and parkways that were integral to the city's development over the next several decades.”

Following Cleveland, from 1905 to 1935, Theodore Wirth was responsible for the expansion and development of this system. Here Wirth dredged and regraded water features such as Harriet, Calhoun, and the Lake of the Isles. Today, the legacies of these visionary designers can be evidenced by the 6,400 acres of park, a system that was built out so that every home in Minneapolis is within six blocks of green space.

The need and the opportunity
Minneapolis parkland represents 16.2 percent of the city's dedicated open space, yet today there is no clear holistic stewardship vision to guide its inherent natural, scenic, historic, and cultural values into the future. Peter Harnick of the Trust for Public Land recently noted, “Revitalized cities need revitalized park systems. They help clean the air, reduce stress, improve health, diminish crime, increase tourism and property value, and provide an alternative to sprawl. Parks are the urban land issue of the 21st century.”

Yet, to deal with these broad and diverse issues, where thoughtful change and continuity are central tenets, a stewardship organization that will balance present-day use and management concerns while nurturing and safeguarding these broad and at times conflicting values is essential.

What is needed is an umbrella organization, perhaps known as the Twin Cities Parks Conservancy. Here, such an organization may put forth a mission that aims to restore, enhance, and preserve Minneapolis's and Saint Paul's historically significant and highly valued treasures—their historic parks, parkways, and boulevards. Nationally recognized, this network of green spaces today serves more than 650,000 residents and is a testament to one of the best-preserved and most fully realized park systems in America. For the Twin Cities citizenry, these parks, parkways, and boulevards are sources of reference and community pride. At a time when people are moving back to the city, historic open spaces can serve as engines for neighborhood revitalization as seen in the recent developments in cities like Brooklyn, New York; Chicago; Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle.

Articulating a mission for a conservancy
Beginning in the late 1970s, communities across the nation mobilized to bring back their urban parks after decades of neglect. Groups of progressive citizens came together to raise awareness for their historic parks and park systems while advocating for their ongoing care and wise stewardship. What is remarkable is that an organization with a similar focus does not exist in the Twin Cities. Here are just a few examples of how such an organization could benefit the city, its parks, and its residents. Presentations by summit will further elucidate these examples:

• Public–private partnerships build better parks and stronger communities and nurture interested stakeholders. Today, as municipal funds shrink, there is clearly a benefit to the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been raised with private funds that have served as matches and leverage to federal, state, and city funds in our city parks. For example, the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy (LOPC) has raised more than $18 million to provide planning and funding for park improvements. These funds have been invested in projects that would not be possible with current tax dollars. Supplementing public dollars with private donations from corporations, individuals, and foundations, LOPC leads the movement to enhance and restore more than 2,000 parkland acres and 15 miles of parkways that comprise their historic system.
  
• Membership-based organizations increase perceptions of park safety and visitation. For example, the Prospect Park Alliance's efforts, combined with the support of many business partners, private donors, and Alliance members, have increased park usership by 300 percent, while making critical improvements to the park's fragile ecosystem and preserving its historical and architectural treasures.
  
• Park revitalization, spurred by conservancies and partnerships, increases the value of adjacent properties and contributes to the city's tax base. For example, recent research from the Trust for Public Land notes that “studies in a wide range of urban areas have documented increases in real estate value for residences located near parks, with increments in real estate value attributed to individual parks ranging into millions of dollars.”
  
• Park conservancies need not only be active in the restoration of a park or park system's physical well-being, but they can also transform parks into important cultural centers. For example, during the two-week period when Christo's The Gates was at Central Park, records indicate that an estimated four million people visited the park. According to the Central Park Conservancy, this is more than five times the number that usually visits the park. In addition, the Mayor's office estimates that Gates visitors generated more than $250 million in economic activity during a time that is traditionally slow and lackluster. In another New York City example, at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the Prospect Park Alliance transformed the Lefferts Historic House into the first children's historic house museum in the United States, renovated park playgrounds, and led the capital campaign to save Brooklyn's only forest—a restoration of 150 acres of ailing woodlands in the park's ravine. The Alliance also formed a trailblazing partnership with the National Audubon Society that resulted in the nation's first urban Audubon Center, which opened in 2002 at the park's historic boathouse.

Drew Becher, director, Bette Midler Restoration Project, New York City, former chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley, Chicago

Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, coordinator, Historic Landscape Initiative, National Park Service and founder, the Cultural Landscape Foundation

Meg Cheever, director, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Karen Daubert, president, Seattle Parks Foundation

Christian DiPalermo, executive director, New Yorkers for Parks, New York City

Thomas Oslund, FAAR, FASLA, Oslund and Associates, Minneapolis

Susan Rademacher, president, Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy

Tupper Thomas, director, Prospect Park Alliance, Brooklyn, New York

This article is reprinted with permission from The Cultural Landscape Foundation.