Eagan Parks Commission Reviews Plans for New City Park

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A playground, a basketball half-court, an open-air picnic shelter.

Those are just a few of the amenities planned for a new, 3.5-acre park just south of the Paragon outlet mall development in Eagan's Cedar Grove neighborhood.

Eagan Advisory Parks Commission members got their first look at the preliminary plans for the newly-christened Nicols Ridge Park on Monday night. The plans were designed by Minneapolis-based architectural firm WSB and Associates.

The preliminary plans for the proposed park include an eight-stall parking lot, four square and horseshoe courts, outdoor seating, a small paved performance space and a playground structure—all located on the northern end of the park. The park plans also call for a trail connecting the playground and park amenities with residential streets to the southeast of the park. Under the preliminary plans unveiled Monday, much of the southern half of the park will likely remain undeveloped.

Ideas for the conceptual plan were largely drawn from feedback collected from local residents, WSB representative Candace Amberg told the parks commission on Monday.

The park, which is being developed in tandem with the 440,000-square-foot outlet mall directly to the north, will give young families in the area an easily-accessible green space to offset the increasingly dense development in the area, Eagan city officials have said.

"It is not a true neighborhood park in that it doesn’t have a full list of amenities, but we feel like we can pack in a few smaller ones to augment what’s available in the rest of the park system," Eagan Parks and Recreation Director Juli Seydell Johnson said on Monday.

The park, Seydell Johnson said, is intended to be a satellite park for the larger Woodhaven Park to the northeast.

"There are some unique additions here that I think we haven’t seen in other parks," Eagan Advisory Parks Commission Chair Laurie Halverson said.

Tell us what you think of the preliminary plans for Nicols Ridge Park by posting in the comment section below.