Three Rivers Park District board discusses offloading or moving Silverwood Park programming

Silverwood Park, on the shores of Silver Lake in St. Anthony, features trails, an art gallery, sculpture installations and roughly 600 programs and events a year.

Most of the people who bask in its beauty are from Ramsey and Anoka Counties, data shows.

So why should suburban Hennepin County residents continue to pay for it?

The Three Rivers Park Board, which owns and manages the park — and gets its tax funding largely from suburban Hennepin County communities — is debating the question.

Superintendent Boe Carlson said that as a regional park agency, Three Rivers owns properties throughout the seven-county metro area. But the board has debated where to spend park money over the last decade or so, as tax dollars have gotten harder to come by.

"It has been a challenge that the board has brought to us as staff to say you know, we want to look at how we're allocating resources and really have a better idea of where we want to program," Carlson said.

Silverwood, located in Ramsey County near the border of Hennepin, gets 45% of visits from Ramsey County residents, 22% from Anoka, 15% from Minneapolis and 12% from suburban Hennepin County, according to a Three Rivers visitor study. The study did not break down program participation by county of residence.

Three Rivers Park District, established by the Legislature in 1957, is supposed to "acquire, develop and maintain large park reserves and regional parks and trails for the citizens of suburban Hennepin County, the metro area and the State," according to the park website. Three Rivers purchased a former Salvation Army summer camp and opened Silverwood in 2009.

At an Oct. 19 meeting, several park board members pointed out that Hennepin County taxpayers are largely footing the bill for a park that few of them use.

Erin Kolb, elected to the Three Rivers board in 2022 to represent the area including St. Anthony, said that when she was on the city of Crystal parks board, she often heard Three Rivers didn't do enough in Hennepin County's first-ring suburbs. With French Park in Plymouth and Elm Creek in Maple Grove, some suburban Hennepin County residents have the impression, she said, that Three Rivers caters to wealthier, white residents of the county.

Silverwood is "a lovely park that has fantastic, art-centered programming, and it should exist in the world," Kolb said in an interview. "Really, the hyper-focused question is, 'Should suburban Hennepin County residents pay for it?' "

Other commissioners agreed.

"It really is outside our mission. As you look at the visitation that comes from our district, which is our primary area, it's the lowest-visitation park we have from within our area," Commissioner Marge Beard said.

But the agreement wasn't unanimous. "Silverwood is the seventh-most-visited park in 2022, and to consider a ramp-down is tough for me," Commissioner Jesse Winkler said. He argued that people don't choose which park to visit based on which county it's in but rather based on parks' features.

The board decided to ask staff to prepare a report that explores options, and listed a range they'd like to see included, from doing nothing, a gradual redistribution of programs to other Three Rivers parks, getting Ramsey County or another party to subsidize the programs, and potentially trying to get Ramsey County to buy the park. The board will discuss the options at a future meeting.

Ramsey County spokesperson Eve Onduru said in an email that Ramsey County hasn't been approached about Silverwood Park and didn't have additional information to provide.

Anna Sharratt said she is concerned that moving programming away from Silverwood would remove an access point to nature for many people who depend on it. Sharratt is the founder of the Free Forest School, which used to meet weekly at Silverwood Park.

She said she has long admired the range of programs that staff have put on or been involved with, including Hiking Hijabie, which is a group of Muslim women and their kids getting outdoors, as well as programs for people with developmental disabilities.

"It's not only a wonderful physical space, but they're doing the work to connect members of our community who might otherwise face barriers to access," Sharratt said.

Carlson said no decisions have been made.

"I realize Silverwood is a little unique because it is such a unique programming component [with] the artistic bend of it or twist of is different than what we do in other locations," he said. "But this is one of those ongoing conversations we have with the board on how we're going to go about providing programmatic services."