Planned makeover of North Commons Park in Minneapolis aims for a 'youth sanctuary'

Standing on the basketball court at North Commons Park, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Superintendent Al Bangoura asked a group of visitors to put themselves in the shoes of a player squaring for a three-pointer. Fans are pressing in from every inch of the sidelines and the arena is bursting with energy.

These days, the courts are quieter because of the pandemic. But as Bangoura led a tour for members of the governor's budget staff that day in November, he asked them to imagine how important it would be for north Minneapolis to revitalize North Commons Park.

The NCAA refurbished the North Commons basketball court in 2019 as a Final Four gift. But Bangoura has ambitions of redesigning the entire park as a destination facility where north Minneapolis athletes can be proud to host tournaments instead of having to travel to suburban sports complexes grander than anything that exists in their neighborhood. In light of the pandemic years' surge in crime, park staff also hope that such a project could create a youth haven connecting positive influences from North High School just south of the park to the YMCA a block north.

"When we talk about the uptick in youth violence and what that means for our children ... this will be transformative," he said. "If we're talking about intervention ... this is where we start."

North Commons received $5 million in state bonding in the last legislative session. Gov. Tim Walz proposed awarding it $6 million more this year to complete funding for the first phase of construction.

Plans are far from formed, with design consultants yet to be announced and public engagement still to come. But the North Area Service Master Plan offers a vision: a new recreation center with upgraded gym space, a running track, community rooms and art spaces. An expanded outdoor waterpark with a lazy river, lap pool, splash pad and picnic area. A synthetic turf field for football and soccer surrounded by a synthetic walking track and enclosed by an inflatable dome in winter.

But not everyone is eager for big change.

Residents who live adjacent to the park voiced concerns during the master-planning process that upscaling North Commons into a regional hub for youth sports would make it less accessible for older people.

"It's got one of the best tree canopies of an inner-city park, so if you're into nature and the solitude that urban forests can provide, it's a pretty wonderful thing," said David Opp, who lives on James Avenue and walks in North Commons nearly every day. "We need to have facilities that are designed for a variety of age groups."

Park Board Commissioner Becka Thompson, who represents north Minneapolis and worked as a North Commons lifeguard in the 1990s, hopes that designs will go through a rigorous community evaluation. The Metrodome's collapse in recent memory makes her question how the Park Board would maintain the inflatable dome, while research has found that knee ligament injuries are more common with artificial turf than natural grass.

"Let's not just build a big building, pat ourselves on the back and walk away," she said. "It's about financing future costs, projecting five to 10 years down the road and genuinely investing in the North Side in the long term, not just for a one-off in a photo op."

Park staff plan to concentrate most of the activity on the northern half of North Commons, while reserving the forested southern half as a meditative area for seniors and others wanting a quiet retreat from the city. Repairs should be made quickly to avoid the "vicious cycle of neglect," and efforts should be made in conjunction with the city to forestall gentrification, according to the master plan. "The solution, however, is not to limit park development, thereby keeping neighborhoods underserved."

The staff believes there isn't enough public funding now to fulfill the vision. Tom Evers, executive director of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, says that once the community vets the design, the foundation will help the Park Board pay for it.

In 2021 North Commons offered roughly 70 programs serving 2,700 registered participants. About 4,500 more dropped in for open gym. Violence Prevention Street Reach teams staff the park every day after school to talk with students.

At nine city blocks, North Commons is one of the safest neighborhood parks for its size, said park Police Chief Jason Ohotto. There have been just five violent crimes there over the last three years, with 44% fewer 911 calls than Powderhorn Park in south Minneapolis.

"North Commons is a place that's much safer than the neighborhood that surrounds it," he said.

Ohotto believes that's due in part to caring adults like Coach Mike "Talley" Tate, a youth-sports fixture who volunteers at North Commons and convenes a neighborhood cleanup crew there each Saturday. Still, there have been times when football practice in the park has been interrupted by gunfire just outside.

Against adverse forces beyond his control, Tate's philosophy boils down to consistency.

"Kids in our community need to know you're going to be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ... and then you're going to be back because that's a structure they can believe in," he said. "They need coach to be there at 5:30. He'll be set up, he'll have me run, we're going to do exercises. Guess what that builds? Trust."

Tate has coached in north Minneapolis some 40 years. When George Floyd was murdered toward the start of the pandemic and civil unrest swept the city, he and other North Side youth coaches predicted that food insecurity and lack of teen jobs would be major challenges that summer.

Along with Brett Buckner, activist and former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, they created the Seeds to Harvest Coalition to revitalize the North Side through sports and recreation. Last summer, they hosted the Summer Games in North Commons Park — three weeks of free programming in more than a dozen activities from football to chess.

A renovated North Commons is where Seeds to Harvest hopes to play out its theory that sports have much to teach a generation disrupted by unprecedented hardships.

"You have a health pandemic, economic turbulence, a lack of coordination and actually a dismantling of your institutions in the grand scheme of things, and now all of a sudden we're asking the question of why is there so much violence," he said. "When these kids start to come back with each other, what are we going to have? We have got to work together."