Pumping up the Parks

New amenities coming soon to downtown parks

By Jake Spitzack | Staff Writer | May 2025

The winter melt has given way to green grass, warm breezes and soft sunshine, sparking new life in parks across the city. Green spaces are important to urban areas because they help absorb traffic noise, cool neighborhoods, increase property values, improve mental health and provide room for recreation. Several improvements are now underway at parks in the St. Paul Voice distribution area, and many are funded fully or in part by the Common Cent Sales Tax, which St. Paul voters approved in 2023 and took effect last year. Here are the projects underway.

Pedro Park
St. Paul’s newest downtown park is set to be complete by the end of summer, with a grand opening celebration tentatively slated for August. The park will feature an open lawn area, fenced-in pet zone with synthetic turf, 420-foot mural on a retaining wall, large pavilion with space for live music, and concrete sidewalks, including one arcing diagonally through the site from Robert to 10th Street. A playground, gardens and seating areas, drinking fountain, bike racks, irrigation and security cameras will also be added. Work has been underway since the Public Safety annex was demolished two years ago to make way for the new .87-acre oasis. The nonprofit St. Paul Parks Conservancy helped raise money for the project and recruited 22 volunteers to regularly maintain the gardens and other landscaping in the park.

“There’s a lot of folks downtown who are new to gardening and want to be involved,” said St. Paul Parks Conservancy executive director Michael-jon Pease. “We were able to build in these opportunities for annual plantings where we can get creative, and also then have wonderful [perennial] beds that can be maintained…. You’ve got people who retired downtown from their house and big gardens in the suburbs or other parts of the city, and then you’ve got folks in their very first apartment who have window pots and they want to learn how to do things in a garden. We’re really looking forward to the mentoring opportunities that will happen.”

Several master gardeners from the St. Paul Garden Club will assist with large scale spring and fall plantings and cleanup events, which will be open to all. They will also help the designated volunteers, five of whom previously worked plots on the land when it was a half-acre community flower garden from 2017-2022.

“It’s an extensive planting plan with many different varieties of species that will come in at different times of the year,” said Carlos Fernandez, president of Aune Fernandez Landscape Architects. “It [the design] was not about a community garden in the food or produce sense. It was very much about the activity of gardening – get your hands on the soil and the benefits that come from that – and it was embraced as the ethos of this park. It is a community garden by the community.”

Aune Fernandez Landscape Architects and Global Specialty Contractors are completing the buildout for the $7.5 million project. The playground was installed last fall, and the large pavilion is expected to wrap up soon.

Most of the plants in the park will be native to Minnesota but there are a few non-native perennials that are pollinator friendly. Overall, the site will have five distinct garden areas, each providing unique splashes of color. Annual beds will have seasonal displays, and an upper garden will have prairie-inspired plants such as narrow leaf coneflower, blazingstar and prairie smoke. Planters in the sidewalk arcing through the site will have mounding shrubs and perennials such as wild blue indigo and threadleaf bluestar. A woodland garden will support shade-tolerant perennials and ferns like foamflower, bloodroot and meadowrue, and a texture garden will have sedges and other low standing foliage like bowman’s root and trout lilies. Trees include honey locust, which have small leaves and provide a dappled light effect versus heavy shade, as well as birch and serviceberry.

The 420-foot painted mural will range from 10-20 feet in height at different areas of the retaining wall and is being created by Daniela Bianchini and Pablo Kalaka of Daka Studio. Dubbed, “Pedro Bloom,” it will depict images of flowers, plants and garden creatures, with a set of hands representing people coming together to plant gardens and care for them. Shiny mosaic tiles will be incorporated in the design.

When complete, the site will be fully accessible and is intended to blend into the commercial and residential space around it. Seating areas and other amenities have been added along the street sides and park edges to gently welcome people into the inner layers.

“This has been envisioned for well over a decade, and for our office…to be able to have the funding to do this is amazing,” said St. Paul Parks and Recreation Pedro Park Project Manager Bryan Murphy. “This area of downtown has been kind of a desert with park space and having Pedro Park open for all the residents in the area, from the Penfield to the Rossmore to the Pointe, is going to let them congregate and activate. It’s really exciting to be on the cusp of opening up a new park.”

Pease added that hundreds of people provided community feedback over the past decade regarding the park, and some have even put on garage sales to raise funds to help make the park a reality. A full block park in this neighborhood has been called for since 2006 when the city adopted the Fitzgerald Park Precinct Plan.

“Every park development project is so different, and the community has really hung in there all this time,” said Pease. “We always strive at the Conservancy to have some skin in the game, some funds from neighbors…. That means people are going to be in this park all the time and taking care of it and loving it.”

Helping to ensure funding for future work is Friends of Pedro Park, a nonprofit that operates under the umbrella of the Conservancy. Other downtown parks have similar support groups, including Rice and Mears parks. Parking at Pedro is available on the western side, and on nearby streets. For updates, visit stpaul.gov.

Sam Morgan Trail
Work is underway on the Sam Morgan Regional Trail between Lower Landing Park and Highway 61. It includes reconstructing the trail, erosion control, and tree removals and plantings. Trail nodes will also be made at Lower Landing Park, with benches, bike racks, lighting and trash cans. A temporary detour route has been posted, directing pedestrians and cyclists along Mounds Boulevard. Work is expected to be completed by the end of October and is being funded with federal and local match dollars.

Osborn Plaza
The small urban park nestled at the base of the Osborn370 building in downtown St. Paul is slated to be reconstructed this summer to encourage more people to use it and improve overall access and flow. Feedback was gathered on three concept plans, and a preferred plan is expected to be brought forward by the city at the end of May. Work calls for creating an oval-shaped plaza with seating, a pergola or other shade structure, street parking area for food trucks, a drinking fountain, trees and a pet relief area. The existing large sculpture onsite will be moved closer to the street, and another area may receive a new piece of public art. Construction is expected to begin in July and be completed in spring 2026. The site, formerly known as Ecolab Plaza and Capital Centre Plaza, has been owned by the City of St. Paul since 1979.

Chestnut Plaza
Located in Upper Landing Park along Shepard Road in downtown St. Paul, Chestnut Plaza will get some improvements this summer. First and foremost, a water pump will be moved to a higher elevation so the fountain feature can operate when the river is in flood stage. The lower fountain area may also be reconstructed to include more seating and an interpretive sign or artwork. Cost to fix the water feature is about $400,000 and plaza enhancements are estimated to be $250,000-$515,000.

Downtown Riverwalk
The City of St. Paul is working on an ambitious multi-year initiative to create the River Balcony, a 1.5-mile promenade along downtown’s river bluff, between the Union Depot and the Science Museum. It’s designed to connect public spaces, civic landmarks and river connections, and boost economic development while being an enjoyable amenity for residents and visitors. Several major developments have been proposed to be part of the project but are pending funding and final designs. This summer, the city is officially establishing the Downtown Riverwalk, a two-mile loop along the proposed site’s perimeter, with signage, interpretive graphics, artwork and places to rest. Staff said they’re still in the planning stages and expect it to open in August or September.

Mountain bike track
St. Paul recently applied for a $200,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to build a track for mountain biking at Lower Landing Park and improve the Lower Afton intersection along Point Douglas Regional Trail.

See this article for summer park improvement projects in the West Side, West St. Paul & Mendota Heights
See this article for summer park improvement projects in South St. Paul

• Facebook
• ShareCopied to clipboard

<<< Back to Home