Here's the question du jour: Will the Pedro family soon reclaim the land that it donated to the city five years ago at 10th and Robert Streets, or does the "urban flower field" that sits there today at least temporarily satisfy the city's obligation to pursue a park at that location?
A terse phone call with the grandson of family patriarch Carl Pedro reveals... the latter.
"We'll take the second one," said Carl Pedro (Pedro III), before abruptly ending the conversation. "That's all you need to know, so we're good to go."
Pedro Park as it looked in early 2014. The plantings have since grown in, creating an 'urban flower field.'
That said, the future of Pedro Park remains a touch unclear. In 2009, the city of St. Paul promised the Pedro family that the downtown plot at 10th and Robert streets, where the old Pedro Luggage store stood at the time, would become a park within five years.
The Pedro family -- led by brothers Eugene and Carl Jr. -- accepted the city's offer and donated about a third of an acre or so to St. Paul, on the condition that the new park be named after their father, family patriarch Carl Pedro Sr.
Five years have come and gone, and the deadline to turn the plot of land into an official city park passed about two weeks ago. So far, there's no park -- but there is an "urban flower field," which looks a bit more like a grassy temporary art installation than an official green space.
(The giant mural and plantings, which are actually part of a college science project, represent a Fibonacci sequence -- a series of measurements that, if laid out like tiles that touch at the borders, would form a spiral as they increase at a certain rate -- namely, by adding the two measurements before them. Think 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...)
Brad Meyer, a spokesman for the St. Paul Parks and Rec Department, said the urban flower field has been a "big success in our minds, and brought a lot of people to that site." But it's not a permanent installation, he said.
City officials this year estimated that it would cost something in the ballpark of $10 million to turn Pedro Park into an actual city park, and that's cash the city does not appear to have on hand.
"That was acquisition and some design costs, and that was a really, really rough estimate," Meyer said.
In addition to money, the city faces another obstacle. It owns some but not all the land neighboring the park. There's a childcare center associated with the Union Gospel Mission, and a police annex building on the block is currently home to an indoor shooting range, which would also have to be relocated if the city does indeed plan to convert the majority of the block into parkland.
So the decade-long cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream of Pedro Park still ain't dead. In 2006, the Fitzgerald Park Precinct Plan envisioned adding more greenery to the neighborhood, which is separated from the open Statehouse grounds by a busy highway entrance.
Since then, downtown's population has only grown, and it's grown more upscale. Ringed by the Pointe (290 units) on the west, Rossmor (129 units) on the east, and City Walk (228 units) on the south, the old furniture store land now has yet another neighbor -- the 254-unit Penfield apartment complex opened about a year ago, followed by a new Lunds grocery.
The store itself -- which closed in 2008 after 94 years in operation -- was demolished in 2011.
The post It's been 5 years. Will the Pedro family reclaim Pedro Park land? (Spoiler: No.) appeared first on City Hall Scoop.