The order of the business items. Big Willow will go ahead of Cullen for a scheduling reason. And then um also there's an addendum to the packet which maybe not everyone's had a chance to see but if you go online now... the addendum starts at page 188 which is uh includes comments received since the packet went out primarily relating I think all relating to big willow plan.

I'm going to nominate these two fine people to reup.

Park master planning is really about inventorying and assessing the conditions of our major parks throughout the city. identifying unique user trends, new trends in park users um and to prioritize park improvements invest and investments if necessary.

We ask residents how do they use the park. We're not pushing change for change sake. So we ask people what shouldn't change and if so if anything should change what needs improvement in these particular parks.

Overall kind of what we're trying to do with this project is, um, distribute some more, you know, parking, easier access around the scale of this park, right? Kind of spread things out just a little bit.

I'm finding it challenging to give feedback without any cost estimates yet because they all seem like great ideas when they're free.

I think you really have to look at this little center part here as an investment around picnicking. You know what I mean? because you're doing four season garage, four season park uh restroom plus the additional parking for to support the picnic structure. So, you just want to make sure you we should be looking at the bundle investment if you will.

I felt that there were just a lot of changes. If everything was done, that was just going to be way too much paving and development of uh Big Willow Park, which I my understanding is is a um Big Willow is a natural preserve. It's a community park and natural preserve. Most of our community parks are natural also preserves.

I think one of the things that people really value about Big Willow is that it is open. Um, you can walk around people. We walk our dogs in there all the time. We love it. Uh, you get to see wildlife. And the more structures that are built and put in place, the less you can sort of navigate in the open space of the park.

I don't know if there's been any discussions with the watershed about concerns about um, not just, you know, even the residents nearby, but with runoff into the creek. And I know that part of the plans were to have maybe more access for kids downstream to be in the creek. And as somebody who has kids that play in the creek, I'm not super thrilled about like a dog park being directly above where my kids might be playing in the creek.

The proposed dog park is undersized relative to comparable facilities in the area and is located immediately adjacent to Mitaka Boulevard, a hightraic arterial roadway. This sighting creates a foreseeable and elevated safety risk that is inconsistent with generally accepted park design and risk mitigation.

I lived this out um I don't know if it was 101 15 years ago. I was coming back on the trail right along Minnetonka Boulevard about to go on Bridge Street to go down Burwell Drive. [snorts] And uh before I turned on to Bridge Street, a guy had his little Westy in his arms. It escaped, ran out into the street, got mowed over by a car, dog died.

I think signs will probably there are already signs. I [clears throat] it's pretty easy to look away. So I think that the answer is to make it user friendly to do something else than walk across the tracks. So I

I don't know that we want to, you know, try to fit a square peg in a round hole because there may be other places, other parks that we're going to go through master planning that really do have great they have terrible space and but they're nowhere near neighbors.

I thought you did a fantastic job soliciting community input. Um, I think the recommendations do a good job of addressing the challenge, the highest priority challenges and dreaming up new cool things that could be added to the park.

This is a 30 acre historic homestead site. Um, it was sold to the city a number of years ago and it's under conservation easement with the Minnesota Land Trust. Um, we identified it early on on as an ideal site for natural resources restoration and restoration really began in earnest in 2022.

It is under conservation easement. So that means it requires the land to remain undeveloped and to be available to the public for nature observation, study, and reflection. We can't install um any buildings or any active recreational ball fields or anything on a parcel like this. So, parking, trails, benches, signage, and small gathering spaces constructed are permitted to provide access and comfort on the site.

Really the goal here is to develop stewards for the future. So new document available again up on Minnotonka Matters. This is considered the final version at this point.

We did go out to um the community for input on this. So, we we offered these image boards to try to get a sense of what sort of amenities the the folks were generally interested in, and you'll see that summarized in the in the master plan document.

Unfortunately, the burn failed for some reason. It appeared to be great conditions, but we just could not get that thing to start. um despite the contractor running around and dropping flaming oil all over the place, it just wouldn't get going. So, we're going to try it again this spring in hopes that the grasses out there have been matted down and thoroughly dried out more.

Um, I was interested to hear that you were willing to consider some wetland restoration. In other plan documents, we've said we're not going to do wetland restoration because it's a big mess. It's hard to it's hard to start a restoration in a wetland that doesn't have some sort of discrete boundary to it.