The Central Mississippi Riverfront Regional Park plays a highly visible role in showcasing the City of Minneapolis’ past, present, and future as a healthy, vibrant river city. As a regional park facility, it offers recreational activities within an interconnected park, open space, and trail system that serves a wide range of user groups and programming needs. The SRF team was engaged by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to lead this master planning effort for nine riverfront focus areas. The team is addressing several objectives that are pivotal to guiding the regional park’s future, including:
- Meeting Metropolitan Council master plan requirements and becoming eligible for funding, while meshing with past and current adopted plans.
- Resolving key design and technical challenges that empower and support riverfront investments.
- Establishing incremental and prioritized improvement plans based on needs and available resources.
Along with engaging Park Board Staff and members of the Community and Technical Advisory Committees, outreach with the general public assisted with determining programming and site improvement needs.
Focus areas addressing park and riverfront programming included evaluating adjoining land uses, access and circulation, as well as natural historical, and cultural resources. Issues and opportunities for each focus area were defined and summarized into goals and objectives to guide design recommendations.
A series of design charrettes were also completed by the design team for individual study areas to determine site and programming needs and opportunities.
