City of Prior Lake begins work outlining future of parks

Prior Lake American

The city of Prior Lake is dusting off its crystal ball to look 20 years into the future.

Specifically, the city is starting work on its parks master plan to include with the 2040 Comprehensive Plan.

“What can we do for our parks system so it provides me or the greatest number of our populace with the opportunity to use the parks for their families and their kids and all those things that pull us together as a community? That’s kind of what this is about,” City Manager Frank Boyles said.

A comprehensive plan — which is a requirement for cities from the Metropolitan Council — is a major planning document outlining a city’s goals and priorities for the following 20 years.

The last parks master plan was done more than 10 years ago as part of the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. At the time, a consultant was not used, Boyles said.

“It was very difficult to ever get done and then to be completed in a fashion where, ‘hey, yeah, that’s a good plan — that’s comprehensive,’” Boyles said. “I think this time around, it’s probably a more sophisticated effort, largely because we are trying to involve the public.”

The comprehensive plan has “chapters” including land use, water, sewer, stormwater, transportation and parks and trails.

“It’s one of the chapters of the comprehensive plan and it’s been an area of significant need for us,” Mayor Kirt Briggs said. “We have an unbelievable parks system but we have not had an update to our parks master plan for quite some time. The timing on this is perfect relative to finalizing our overall comprehensive plan for the city of Prior Lake, but more specifically focusing on the parks.”

The Prior Lake City Council approved a contract on July 16 with a consultant, WSB & Associates, for $89,509, with funding from the park dedication fund, to conduct a study of the current parks and trails system and prepare a parks master plan to include in the comprehensive plan.

The park dedication fund had $1.5 million at the end of March.

“Part of the contract with the consultant is that they’re going to provide the language we can insert into the comprehensive plan for park planning,” Assistant City Manager Lori Olson said.

The proposal submitted by WSB & Associates to the council includes 1,145 hours of consultant time from July 2018 to April 2019. The study will be split into three sections — planning, community engagement and plan preparation.

Most of the study will focus on what Prior Lake currently has in the parks and trails system and what residents would like to see in the future. The city has more than 54 neighborhood parks, five community parks and more than 100 miles of trails and sidewalks.

“We go there together in common spaces,” Boyles said. “We become more of a community there. ... Parks and trails, in my estimation, is every bit as important as every element of our system. They’re all integrated elements. Without one, the city is diminished.”

The city — as residents have pointed out a few times at city council meetings — does not have dedicated pickleball courts. Nor a dog park, leashed or otherwise. The city has one community garden in Lakefront Park that is full.

“One of the things in this analysis is what does our community want to have in our parks?” Briggs said. “It is not simply to maintain and or keep our parks as is, but what are the different experiences that we need to create for our community today and on into the future?”

Pickleball

The people who play pickleball in Prior Lake currently use the tennis courts at Lakefront Park.

“We play on six courts,” Prior Lake resident Dennis Russler said during the council meeting on July 16. “That becomes an issue with getting people trained on pickleball. ... I’d like to be able to teach young people to play pickleball.”

Boyles said dedicated pickleball courts could cost as much as $500,000 and that would be one piece of the overall plan, which could include building or renovating parks and constructing or reconstructing trails.

“The amount of money involved is significant,” Boyles said.

Though staff tucks away $100,000 in the annual budget for trails each year, that funding — which covers redoing a mile of trail each year — is one of the first to get cut in an attempt to keep property taxes level for city residents.

“It has been something from a budgetary perspective that has been most challenging for us,” Briggs said. “When we are faced with tight budget years, oftentimes it’s the park area that comes up short.”

“I’m pretty excited we are incorporating the discussion of trails ... into this parks master plan,” Briggs said. “Trails are simply ribbons of park land that tie our community together. ... As part of our community survey, trails and pedestrian access is an area that the citizens in the community have said, ‘we’d like to see more.’”

Briggs said city staff will likely film a virtual town hall in the parks to promote resident engagement surrounding the study. After the study is done, Briggs said they’ll share the results to social media in order to garner more input.

“We look forward to hearing from our citizens that are using our parks and those that have maybe not used our parks because of something that’s lacking that they would like to see,” Briggs said.

According to the proposal from WSB & Associates, community engagement, data collection, site evaluations, collecting base information and architectural assessments would be done in August and September 2018.

Olson said the consultant plans to have someone at Lakefront Days to start talking to residents about the plan and what they’d like to see in the parks system in the future.

“It’s really exciting,” Olson said. “Prior Lake is such a cool community with the lake and the people who love the outdoors. ... It’s an exciting opportunity to see maybe where the future is headed for Prior Lake.”

Community engagement, data collection, collecting base information and architectural assessments would be done in August and September 2018, according to the proposal submitted to the council by WSB & Associate.

Drafting the plan would be done in February through April of 2019, with a plan approval date of August 2019. In that time, there are four planned city meetings, three open house meetings, two steering committee meetings, a planning commission meeting and a city council meeting regarding the master plan.

Briggs said the parks and trails system in Prior Lake makes an impact on both residents and visitors to the city.

“Our parks are one of the ways that we create first impressions for folks that are not from Prior Lake that come here for our parks,” Briggs said. “Parks are community spaces. Having a vibrant park system and sweeping trails systems in there is how we get to know our neighbors and our friends. Those are things that occur in our park lands.”