A pedestrian bridge and amphitheater among potential Greenway updates in downtown Grand Forks
Feb. 16—GRAND FORKS — For more than 25 years, the Greenway has been the heart of Grand Forks — which also means 25 years of Grand Forks' winter, summers and flooding.
Now, the city is looking into updating the Community Green for the next 25 years of use. The Community Green is the area surrounding the Sorlie Bridge between University Avenue in the north and Kittson Avenue in the south. Since the Flood of 1997, besides the original buildout of the flood protection system and the Greenway itself, there hasn't been that much work done to the area.
On Feb. 12, the Grand Forks City Council discussed
and received the new master plan for this area of the Greenway. Last year,
the city along with local event planners and the Downtown Development Association
began work to create the plan with help from RDG Planning and Design.
The steering committee
held public input meetings, an open house, and an online survey to get information
about what people wanted from the Greenway and what they didn't like about it. The main goal is to improve the DeMers Avenue entrance to the Greenway and improve the Community Green.
According to survey results, respondents enjoyed the walkability and impressions of the area as they are now, but also said overwhelmingly that the area was dated and bland. But many respondents — as well as the council — expressed concerns about the wear and tear from the yearly flooding.
"I'm really concerned about how much money and infrastructure we actually put on that side," council member Rebecca Osowski said. "The more we build, (the more) we're going to have to clean it up every spring."
The master plan lays out several potential options and ideas for how the area could change. Proposals include the creation of an amphitheater surrounding the flood obelisk, improving the parking area to potentially allow the farmer's market to move there, and connecting both sides of the river with a pedestrian bridge using the old railway alignment.
"This is a big item that would forever change this zone," said Bruce Niedermyer with RDG Planning and Design, referring to the pedestrian bridge. Obviously, all of (these ideas) take a lot of coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers; we've had preliminary conversations about all those things and there's really nothing out of the realm of possibility (at this time)."
Additionally, many of the proposed improvements would help increase connectivity in the area by creating more ways for pedestrians to access the Greenway. Many of the ideas would interact with the floods in the same way the area's paths and landscaping do currently.
The city has some potential funding opportunities to pay for some of these improvements through the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program administered by the National Park Service. Grand Forks is one of three cities in North Dakota eligible for the program. The deadline to apply is in April.
Funding from that program could help fund some of the improvements that may not have a funding source currently or would have to be pulled from other sources.
"(The steering committee) had this grandiose vision with no funding — lots of good ideas but really no way to implement," said Grand Forks Water Works Director Melanie Parvey. "This is an opportunity that we could look at in order to be able to phase in some of these portions of the plan."
The grant is a one-for-one match and the city would have to work with the state to get the grant. There haven't been any funding requests for any projects as of yet, but the approval of the grant application could come before the City Council somtime in the spring after the council directs staff to continue to move forward with the ideas.
