May 16: Gold Medal Park opensAfter a lovely dinner in the Riverfront district of Minneapolis on Friday night, I strolled past Gold Medal Park with my dinner companions. The orange fence surrounding this soon-to-open park, which is located next to the Guthrie Theatre, prohibited me from enjoying the neon blue benches and great view of the river. Designed by Oslund and Associates, the design has already won a American Society of Landscape Architects, Minnesota chapter award. A sign on the fence announced that an opening ceremony is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 16. William McGuire, former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, donated the land and will pay for its upkeep for 10 years.
According to Minnesota Monthly, "The design for Gold Medal Park includes four winding concrete paths that mirror the way water flows down into the Mississippi River. One will spiral from a lighted perch on a 32-foot hill. Linden trees will line a boulevard along Second Street, and maples will dot the park. An invitation to luxuriate on park benches won’t be necessary, but a bell to remind you it’s curtain time [at the Guthrie] may be."
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2 comments:
Gold Medal Park...sterile, unimaginative, so rigidly well groomed, it might as well be plastic grass!
Topped with a big green blob that
blocks the river view and looks like it plopped from a Dairy Queen machine out of control. ACK!
No benches for the G patrons? WHAT
could they be thinking? Fancy folk
getting grass stains on their couture?
It's okay that they removed an asphalt parking lot, but really awful that they removed all the archeological remants of past mills
that belong there and drained was a mini wetland with tall reeds and cat tails, frogs, ducks, bunnies, bugs of all kinds that was in the shadow of that power triad thingy.
An opportunity missed to create a show stopping mix of archaeological remains and a dramatic garden of plants
native to the Riverfront and Minnesota Prairie!
But...such is the arrogance of nature hating corporate criminals and the people they
pay to ruin what could have been
enhanced rather than destroyed.
Someone pointed out to me that the
big green blob (which is the centerpiece of the "park")
looks like it came from the business end of the geese that hang out there.
So it does!
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