PRECM 01-11-1978 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

-3- all over Ramsey and Hennepin County as well. We are building a park primarily for people in New Brighton. We have had a park which will accomodate large company picnics, it has ball fields. I'm not sure we need to provide the large picnic facilities in Long Lake Park which display a few ......... In addition I think we, we're talking about a couple of really incompatible uses~,here. We have a canoe rental and we have a boat launch. I don't think we can have both of those. I would have trouble approving a concept plan that even had the word 'boat launch' on it. If people want to come and put their canoes on the South side of the lake fine, they don't need a boat launch. If they was to put a small fishing boat in , fine, they don't need a boat launch. I think that that should be removed from our concept plan. - Applause - Mr. Mayor BB: Ah would Maurie explain for us in the audience what parameters we have to work within in as much as we are in effect looking at a joint New Brighton and Ramsey County Park? What limitations and restrictions does the County place upon us in this joint venture, ah what criteria do we have to follow to participate in the state and federal funding if any, ah for development and/or operation of the park. That is, what are the external controls that we have to agree to on the assumption that this is a public place, that we cannot restrict public access to it. We can regulate access but can we restrict it? MA: Well, as I understand it we have at this point at least no restrictions placed on us by Ramsey County as to what we can do on the lake. I would strongly suspect that Ramsey County has some restrictions on what they can do and some things that they have to accomplish, probably as ordered by their Board. If we want to get into that, Ken Simons from the County is here to- night and I'm sure can respond to it better than I can. Metro Council, however, and again Ken would probably be a little bit better to respond to this, but I'll give you my best shot'at it. Metro Council does have some limits as to what kinds of projects they will fund. The,;-City does, in conj~.ction with Ramsey County, have a request into Metro Council for, I think the figure is about $3 million plus for development money for this site. One thing that the Metro Council looks at very strongly is water sur- face access. They would like to see some kindc:of public access to the lake. Now they haven't, for instance, dictated, and are not attempting to dictate what kind of access that would be at this point in time. We're talking swimming access, we're talking some kind of boating access which might be as I said before canning, fishing, whatever, or conceivably power boating also. But I think the point remains that if Metro Council is going to fund it, that there has to be some kind of access to the lake. Not necessarily both or all kinds of accesses but there has to be use of the lake. The water surface use is critical to the Regional Park which it's envisioned to become and without Metro Council's funding of this the City is looking at picking up a pretty good sized bill for development here.