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Edina’s Promenade gets a pond and a burbling brook

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    Walkers made their way along the Promenade bike and walking trail in Edina. A $1.8 million water feature would add a pond with an island that would drain into a brook that flows south, with a rapids and perhaps a waterfall.

    Photo: Photos by ELIZABETH FLORES • eflores@startribune.com,

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    Visitors to Edina’s Promenade, the sculpture-lined bike and pedestrian trail that winds from Centennial Lakes to the Galleria, may someday stroll along a gurgling stream and pond.

    The water features were approved in concept last week by the Edina City Council. It’s part of a two-part plan to improve handling of stormwater in the area as well as to add beauty and complete the Promenade.

    The scenic part of the $1.8 million project is a pond and stream to the east of the Byerly’s site, which is being redeveloped. The pond would have an island and drain into a brook that flows south, with a rapids and perhaps a waterfall.

    “The stream is more of a parks feature and is supposed to be appealing to the eye,” said Ross Bintner, city environmental engineer.

    Swinging benches and places to sit would be installed along the rock- or concrete-lined stream, with three or four spots to add public art. Walkways would cross the water. Because the elevation drops about 10 feet from the pond area to the spot where the stream will disappear into the earth, waterfalls or rapids could be installed, planners said.

    The pond would draw its water from Centennial Lakes. The “lakes” are actually stormwater ponds. When the water level is high enough, Bintner said, the pond and stream would be filled, with the stream eventually sending water down into the ground and back to Centennial Lakes. The pond and stream may aerate the water and allow some pollutants to settle, but their main purpose is to add a water feature to the Promenade, Bintner said.

    The other part of the project, an underground stormwater treatment structure, would do the real work in treating stormwater before it flows into Centennial Lakes and goes on to Nine Mile Creek. Bintner said the area around Centennial Lakes is more than 60 percent impermeable surfaces such as concrete and asphalt.

    Those hard surfaces send polluted water pouring through stormwater pipes toward Nine Mile Creek, which is why the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District is interested in helping to pay for the project.

    Just under the Promenade path and lawns, drain tile would spread water from Centennial Lakes underground, where it would be available to tree and grass roots. Shallow rock trenches edged with plants also could suck up some of the water. Water that isn’t taken up by plants would infiltrate into the ground.

    Kevin Bigalke, the watershed district manager, told City Council members that the district is interested in the project because it could educate people as well as treat stormwater. Signs or kiosks explaining the purpose of the project could be erected on site or put on the city website, he said.

    “We have a real prominent opportunity to showcase how stormwater management can be done in an innovative yet aesthetically pleasing way,” he said. “If it strictly goes underground, it becomes out of sight, out of mind.”

    Council members asked Bintner why a series of rain gardens, the cheapest of the four measures that were considered to treat water on the site, weren’t recommended. The rain gardens would have cost an estimated $307,000, compared with $395,000 for the underground treatment with shallow gardens and a rock channel.

    Bintner said officials concluded that the rain gardens would have looked out of character with the more formal landscaping of the Promenade.

    With one council member absent, the vote to approve the design process and partner with the watershed district was 3 to 1, with member Joni Bennett voting no. Bennett said she was concerned about spending a lot of money on a small area when the city is still developing a priority plan for parks and there might be more pressing needs elsewhere.

    The pond part of the project would cost about $1.2 million, including the water feature, areas for public art, lighting, controls, pedestrian walkways, stream crossings, design and half the cost of a pump station. That would be paid for with $600,000 in park dedication fees that came from development in the area and tax-increment-financing money.

    The remaining $667,000 for the underground stormwater system, shallow gardens, rock channel and the remaining cost of the pump station would be paid for with city stormwater utility money and funding from the watershed district.

    The project will come back to the City Council in the spring when contracts for construction are awarded.

     

    Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380



    • related content

    • Several sculptures, including “Jack” by Heidi Hoy, line the Promenade trail. The new plan envisions three or four spots to add more public art.

    • Doug and Mary Watson took their dog Willie for a stroll along the Promenade.

      ELIZABETH FLORES • eflores@startribune.com

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    Around Easthampton: Housing authority has new head; library fundraiser on tap

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    The Easthampton Housing Authority’s new executive director is fairly new to the world of subsidized housing, but authority board members say she has the skills and managerial style to do the job well.

    Jane Sakiewicz, 53, of South Hadley, started her new job supervising the city’s state-subsidized housing Oct. 15. The board chose her from 12 applicants because of her education, work experience and communication skills, said Housing Authority Board member Nancy Flavin.

    “She has a great skill set to be our director,” Flavin said. “Because we’re such a small housing authority, we don’t have a big staff, so the whole responsibility is on her. She’s very capable.”

    Sakiewicz has a master’s degree in business administration and worked as a paralegal before taking the job.

    “I wanted something that would tie both those things together and also have more public contact,” Sakiewicz said. “This position does that, and I get to make a difference to people.”

    So far, she has been learning the ropes, filling vacant apartments, going to court regarding evictions, and pursuing the many state-required certifications for the job. “She’s wasted no time in getting those certifications,” Flavin said.

    Sakiewicz said her goals are to work on updating the authority’s policies and to find additional funds to complete capital improvement projects at Easthampton housing.

    •••

    Library fundraiser on tap

    Supporters of Emily Williston Memorial Library’s plan to build a mobile laptop lab are hoping a raffle of 11 gift baskets will help reach their $15,000 goal.

    The library’s youth department supervisor and Emily’s Friends of the Library member Jonathan Schmidt said the group aims to raise $7,500 to earn a matching grant from Easthampton Savings Bank. Library Director Kristi Chadwick has said she hopes to buy 10 to 12 laptops and accessories for $15,000.

    “Having a laptop lab at the library will open up a world of new possibilities for us, including new outreach, programming, and educational opportunities,” Schmidt said in an email. It would allow library staff to offer computer tutorials at the Council on Aging Enrichment Center and elsewhere, Chadwick said.

    To that end, the friends organized the raffle of themed gift baskets. The 11 baskets, each with a theme, include items from wine to a ukelele and gift certificates to local stores and restaurants.

    Tickets, available at the library, are one for $2, three for $5, or seven for $10. Winners will be drawn Dec. 15, and one does not need to be present to win.

    •••

    Union Street redesign

    Now that a Boston design firm has recommended changes to make Union Street more attractive and more accessible to bicyclists and pedestrians, the city’s next step is to test out some of the suggestions.

    City Planner Jessica Allan said the city doesn’t have the money to make the improvements, which range from creating a bicycle lane to reconstructing an intersection. The design plan created by the Cecil Group was paid for by a $10,000 from the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

    “We need to see what we can do using limited money,” she said. The city could apply for MassWorks Infrastructure grants to implement the changes, but otherwise would have to rely on its limited state transportation funding.

    “A lot of work needs to happen to bring some of these ideas to reality,” she said. “Some we can start to test before we decide to spend money.”

    For instance, measures that could make crosswalks more visible could be tested by blocking off parking spaces near crosswalks, to see if removing them would improve visibility. To see if extending the curb into the roadway improves visibility at a crosswalk, the city could install a temporary “bump out” to simulate it.

    Other changes the Cecil Group presented include adding a “landscaping buffer” between parking areas and the sidewalk and adding a bike lane, which would likely involve removing parking on one or both sides of the road south of Liberty Street.

    The firm had several suggestions to make safer the Union Street area where Liberty and Railroad streets and the Manhan Rail Trail all meet. One option would reroute the rail trail approximately 20 feet south so it would cross Union Street at the Liberty Street intersection, while another option called for realigning the two side streets and the rail trail so they form a square, four-way intersection with Union Street.

    Rebecca Everett can be reached at reverett@gazettenet.com.

    Roundabout landscaping on agenda

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    The Mossman Botanic Garden Group will facilitate a public meeting tonight, November 25, for residents to have their say on landscaping designs for the new Port Douglas roundabout.

    As The Newsport reported on November 14, construction of the $2m roundabout, at the intersection of the Captain Cook Highway and Port Douglas Road, is well underway and expected to meet its pre-Christmas completion deadline. 

    The Mossman Botanic Gardens group (MPG) was one of a number of local groups to join with Port Douglas residents in September to criticise plans for a concrete-filled roundabout.

    “Like others, we believe that this a rare opportunity to create an iconic landmark; something visitors will remember when going back home,” said MBG spokesman Frank Frikker.

    “So MBG Inc. contacted Member for Cook David Kempton, to offer assistance in designing and creating the roundabout.

    As The Newsport reported on September 26, Mr Kempton announced the concrete-centre plan had been scrapped, and that a decision on landscaping would be made in the coming weeks. 

    “I will continue to work with and listen to the community as this project develops,” Mr Kempton said at the time. 

    In response, Mr Frikker, MPG President Alan Carle, and Douglas landscaper John Sullivan, of Hortulus, met with Mr Kempton on Sunday, November 3, to discuss moving forward with a public consultation. 

    “David Kempton suggested a public meeting and the MBG team agreed to take on the facilitator role.”

    Mr Frikker said via the meeting, the MPG aims to encourage Douglas Shire residents to voice their ideas and opinions on landscaping designs for the roundabout.

    “We hope for many people with lots of ideas,” Mr Frikker said. “John Sullivan will bring along some old and new design drafts to kick off discussion. It is important that people come and use this opportunity to participate.

    “This is a great opportunity to create an iconic landmark for the entire Douglas Region that stands out and hence supports the region’s endeavours to shine as a top tourist destination.”

    The meeting will be held at 6pm on Monday, November 25, at The Clink Theatre, Mowbray Street, Port Douglas. 

    Can Mayor Garcetti Make LA’s Streets Great?

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    In 2009, then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made one of the biggest changes Manhattan had ever seen. It had nothing to do with Big Gulps. Bloomberg and his transportation czar Janette Sadik-Khan took a congested section of Times Square and closed it to traffic. They erected barriers, painted the asphalt, added beach chairs and — presto! — the street became a park.

    These and other instant plazas reduced injuries to pedestrians and motorists while they boosted retail receipts. Most importantly, they returned the public realm to the people.

    Can the same magic happen in L.A.? For his first act as new mayor, Eric Garcetti unveiled the “Great Streets Initiative.”

    Of course, L.A. already has great streets. A few, anyway: Ventura Boulevard is teeming with energy. First Street in Boyle Heights is a real community gathering spot. Abbot Kinney Boulevard — anti-gentrification protests — has become a hipster haven. But greatness doesn’t happen by accident: These places are like stages set with wide sidewalks, tamed traffic and authentic retail so that daily social dramas can happen.

    Then there are the duds. Lincoln Boulevard from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica should be great. Instead it’s a headache of auto-domination, cluttered signage and crummy landscaping. (My mother called it “Stinkin’ Lincoln.”)

    As L.A. Times reporter Michael Finnegan noted, Garcetti has created a Great Streets Working Group, in which eight city agencies will collaborate (imagine that!) to create new medians, sidewalk repairs, bus stops, police patrols, bike corrals, business improvement districts and, yes, pocket parks.

    “And while we’re at it, let’s add some sculptures and murals,” Garcetti announced at an October transportation conference by the Urban Land Institute, Los Angeles.

    2013-11-23-MayorGarcettiatULIsToLA.jpg

    “Their first priority will be to make sure street projects are coordinated. No more Bureau of Street Services paving a street on Monday, DWP digging it up on Tuesday,” said Garcetti. “Let’s also combine a DWP pipe project with some street furniture funds and with a sidewalk repair project all at the same time.” Here’s the video of his speech.

    But this “first priority” is a no-brainer. It doesn’t take an urban visionary to see that departments should work together.

    What would really transform the landscape is a Times Square-like project. Something big and bold. The ideas are already floating out there… some of which Garcetti endorsed as a City Councilman from Hollywood. He could cover L.A.’s sub-surface freeways, such as the 101, and turn them into parks. He could join forces with L.A.’s uber-popular Cyclavia events and revive the dormant bike-share program, such as those successful in Chicago in New York.

    And he could identify the streets at present designed only to flush traffic through town and instead give them a human dimension. These places constitute our meager public spaces. Let’s cede more of them to walkers, to runners, to bikers, to skaters, to moms with strollers. To us.

    When Bloomberg’s transportation chief Janette Sadik-Khan did this, there was opposition, naturally. But, according to Esquire magazine’s profile of “16 Geniuses Who Give Us Hope,” she created plazas in at Madison, Herald and Union Square. “A whole long stretch of Broadway — two hundred thousand square feet, the size of three and a half football fields — is a pedestrian parkland, tables and flowers and sweating tourists resting their eighty-pound Toys ‘R’ Us bags while billboards glint commercially above them.” In her inspiring TED talk, Sadik-Khan sums up these changes.

    Her changes were a huge success. Maybe the best move Garcetti could make is to hire her.



    Follow Jack Skelley on Twitter:

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    National Garden to be spruced up

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    By Dimitris Rigopoulos

    Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis and the founder of the NEON organization for contemporary art, Dimitris Daskalo-poulos, recently unveiled and ambitious but very realistic plan to spruce up the National Garden, one of the Greek capital’s most significant green spaces, which has seen better days. The program, which is designed by NEON and funded by Daskalopoulos with the cooperation of the City of Athens, foresees a few interventions such as landscaping and a series of art exhibitions that are intended to draw the public back to the park.

    The landscaping part of the program will be undertaken by French landscape designer Louis Benech, who plans to plant 24 trees and over 7,000 other shrubs as part of his beautification plan.

    The study for the National Garden revamp was commissioned in October 2012 and completed in April this year, with the cooperation of Greek architectural firm doxiadis+. Benech has vast experience in revamping gardens, and especially ones with historical significance, such as the famed garden of Versailles.

    No trees will be cut down, the French landscape designer has assured, though there will be extensive pruning and new plantings. The lay-out of the garden will also be maintained.

    Benech said that the task of revamping the National Garden, which has grown out of control in many parts, was daunting. “The question was how to allow the park to continue being what it is and doing what it has done for centuries without allowing it to destroy itself,” Benech said at the presentation of the revamp.

    The French landscape designer aims to cut back most of the vegetation that has grown out of control and to highlight the park’s biggest assets.

    The other part of the program consists of a plan for the National Garden to host an art exhibition every two years. The first is scheduled to take place in May and June next year and is being curated by Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. The works that will be presented will be by both Greek and foreign artists. Details of the first show are expected to be published in February.

    Daskalopoulos said that he has observed two types of reactions to the plan designed by NEON, which is separate from another program to revamp the National Garden that is being funded in part by European Union structural funds.

    “It shocked some people who consider the National Garden their own private property, their own privileged space for taking a walk, and who want nothing to rock the boat,” said Daskalopoulos. “It provoked some people who insist on looking at the world through the eyes of 19th-century Marxists and who believe that anything which arises from damned private capital is by definition evil and objectionable.

    “To the first group, I would like to say this: The National Garden belongs to all, without exception, the citizens of and visitors to Athens. To the latter I would say that in this day and age, social awareness is not the exclusive privilege of one class from which the wealthy are strictly excluded. There is good and bad capital just as there are good and bad workers. Nor are the public and private incompatible concepts, much less conflicting ones.

    “This is one big step in the effort to make the heart of Athens beat stronger,” Daskalopoulos said.

    Tree donation to Fairchild provides environmental lesson

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    Some people give potted plants as gifts.

    Janá Sigars-Malina gives towering trees – some that stretch majestically 50 feet into the air.

    Sigars-Malina recently donated a number of mature native hardwood hammock trees ranging from 20 to 35 years old from her Coconut Grove home to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables.

    As she plans to downsize from the family home on Kiaora Street to a smaller house in the South Grove, she wants the trees, which she started collecting years ago, to have a safe space in which to grow when she’s gone.

    “They are like my babies,” she said. “I just value the trees and don’t want them to be hurt.”

    In addition, Sigars-Malina wants to honor the memory of her husband Jay Malina, an executive and leader of the One Community One Goal job-creation organization in Miami. Malina was posthumously honored with the Beacon Council’s creation of the Jay Malina Award for executives who successfully combine business and community involvement.

    The trees at Fairchild are dedicated to her husband and also will serve as an environmental preservation lesson to the couple’s twin daughters Brezlan and Makenna, who were not quite 2 when their dad died in 2002.

    “I’m trying to teach my children about the environment,” said Sigars-Malina, a member of Fairchild’s board of trustees since 2000. “It’s a passion, and a desire, to help my children learn how they have to protect the environment.”

    The process of preparing the trees for relocation to the 83-acre Fairchild Garden began with root pruning 18 months ago, said Keith Lane of Signature Trees and Palms, a local family-run landscaping business.

    The trees are then “cradled” during the rigging process to reduce stress on the trunk and avoid stripping away any bark as they are lifted with hydrocranes onto specialized trucks. Stripping the bark would kill the tree.

    “This project was not about tearing a garden apart; it was about carrying on a legacy for the Malina family,” Lane said. “This is a very significant donation. There is nothing ordinary about it. Most people selling their house will just sell the trees with the house and let the next owner worry about what to do with them. Few people think about donating trees to a botanical garden.”

    The first haul — three 25-foot redberry stoppers, three lignum vitaes that range from 13- to 18-feet and a 28-foot black ironwood — already are up and thriving in their lush new Fairchild home that surrounds the coming Adam R. Rose and Peter R. McQuillan Art Center.

    The one-story, multi-purpose building, named for two New York philanthropists with a passion for botanical gardens, will include an art gallery, an archive, and act as a cultural center that will feature chamber music concerts. The donated trees will make the building of stone and copper look as if it has been on the grounds since 1938, the year the garden opened to the public, said Bruce Greer, president of Fairchild’s board of trustees. The garden now has more than 50,000 members, a ten-fold increase in the last 20 years.

    Still other trees, including three Marquesas palms and the largest of the lignum vitae, await planting at the center that is scheduled to be completed in late March. The gift of native trees of this magnitude to the historical gardens is “unprecedented,” Greer said.

    “Some of these stoppers could not be acquired anywhere. There are lignum vitae native to the Keys and really mature specimens so it’s a wonderful coincidence, or luck, that she made these trees available at a time when this building was being finished. We wouldn’t want to put in small, immature specimens. This allows us to enhance with some magnificent specimens that really are about the same age as other plantings in the garden.”

    Sigars-Malina, an intellectual property attorney, said she’s excited the trees will be taken care of at Fairchild.

    “The kids will always be able to see them and remember their father,” she said. “Jay’s legacy will never be forgotten. Fairchild is a really special place.”

    Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.

    Gardeners prevail in Orlando turf war: Veggies OK in front yard, too

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    After a fight that made green-thumbed gardeners see red, Orlando is changing its rules to allow residents to plant tomatoes, carrots and other veggies in their front yards.

    The new rules — which for the first time state that vegetable gardens don’t have to be banished to the back yard — are part of a bigger package of landscaping standards that will affect what you plant on your property and how you take care of it.

    But the front-yard gardening regulations drew the most attention.

    It started nearly a year ago when the city threatened a College Park couple with fines if they didn’t uproot the lush vegetable garden covering their front yard and replace it with something like grass. That case was dropped after city officials acknowledged they didn’t have any rules about vegetable gardens, but not before it drew national attention.

    Over the past year, Orlando leaders have worked to develop standards that balance residents’ rights to grow their own food with the desire to have neat, aesthetically pleasing landscaping.

    For Jason and Jennifer Helvenston, the College Park couple who was at the center of the veggie war, it’s been bittersweet. They’re happy that the city is now officially allowing edible plants in front yards, but they don’t like that there are strings attached.

    “Our garden is not only our food source, but our way of life,” Jennifer Helvenston said.

    On Monday, the City Council gave preliminary approval to rules that would allow veggie gardens to cover as much as 60 percent of a home’s front yard. But they could not be planted in the public right-of-way along the street, and would have to be screened with fencing or shrubs, and set back at least three feet from the property line.

    It’s more garden-friendly than city planners’ first attempt, which restricted gardens to no more than 25 percent of the front yard, required 10-foot setbacks and sought height limits on tomatoes and other plantings.

    Orlando isn’t alone in its green struggle. A Miami Shores couple sued last week after being ordered to remove the front-yard garden they’ve cultivated for the past 17 years. Their lawyer, Ari Bargil of the libertarian, public-interest firm Institute for Justice, also has taken an interest in Orlando’s landscaping rules.

    “The Helvenstons and all Americans have a constitutional right to put their property to peaceful and productive use without being harassed by the government,” Bargil told Orlando city commissioners Monday.

    Under the new rules, vegetables are put on the same footing as grass.

    “The idea is to treat turf and edible gardens equally, since they’re both water-intensive uses,” chief planner Jason Burton said.

    In fact, the revamped landscaping code says no more than 60 percent of a home’s front yard can be covered with grass. It’s part of an effort to reduce the strain on the area’s dwindling water resources.

    “The essence of the ordinance is really less turf and more trees for water conservation, aesthetics and a whole host of other issues so that we get better landscaping within the city of Orlando,” Burton said.

    In addition to the restrictions on thirsty turf, the code seeks to increase Orlando’s tree canopy by requiring at least one shade tree for every lot, and the addition of trees along the right-of-way, as well. The requirements apply only to new construction and homeowners who add to their property.

    The new rules also encourage the use of native landscaping that’s adapted to Central Florida’s rainfall. The code lays out a lengthy list of approved plants, shrubs and trees, including red maple, laurel oak, sycamore and sand pine.

    The new code doesn’t require homeowners to have irrigation systems, but those who do will have to install sensors to shut the system down when it rains. It also encourages the use of low-volume irrigation, soil-moisture sensors and non-potable irrigation sources.

    mschlueb@tribune.com or 407-420-5417

    How to choose trees for a small garden

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    Another excellent evergreen is the magnolia tree Magnolia grandiflora, which is known for its fragrant waxy cream flowers and large dark green glossy leaves.

    It is good for growing against a border because it spreads itself out wide, but you would need to keep it in check: Magnolia grandifloras can grow to 40ft (12m) high.

    Deciduous trees are better if you want autumn colour. Almost any Japanese maple will provide you with fiery reds and oranges, but the Acer griseum goes one better and has bronze-brown bark that looks like it is peeling off – hence its common name the paperbark maple.

    Silver birch trees are used by garden designers specifically because of their white trunks, which stand out particularly well in winter.

    Betula jacquemontii is one of the most popular varieties, because of its extra-white bark, but it can grow to more than 40ft.

    If that is going to cause problems, it is possible to buy silver birches that have had their main leader cut out so that other branches grow to produce smaller multi-stemmed trees.

    And for those of you who love spring blossom you can’t get much better than the flowering cherry tree Prunus serrulata ‘Mount Fuji’.

    It is a frothy pale pink bouquet in spring but also has a shiny bronze trunk for winter interest and its leaves turn yellow and red in autumn – so it works all year round.

    But if you are a practical type your best bet is to plant a fruit tree. Apple, pear, plum, cherry – they all have lovely spring blossom as well as autumn colour and you have the added bonus of free fruit.