After being underutilized for decades, the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board (MBRB) is working to bring people back to one of West Bank’s oldest parks. 

The Bohemian Flats were a residential area during the 1860s before the city of Minneapolis began evicting residents a century later to make room for coal storage and shipping operations. The area was converted into a park in the 1980s, adding biking and walking paths, as well as a garden while maintaining its storage capabilities. 

Despite the park’s changes, limited accessibility and a lack of planning have left the park underused by the surrounding community, according to a master plan to renovate the park. 

Daniel Elias, a design project manager for the MPRB, said the plan aims to invite more people to the park by adding new amenities such as a new play area, wading pool, basketball courts and creating paths to make it easier for people to reach the park, which sits at the bottom of a steep slope near the Mississippi River. 

“All the work is very much in line with the overall overarching master plan for the area,” Elias said.

New amenities, in the roughly $1.7 million project, include a new play area, wading pool, volleyball and basketball courts, lighting, seating areas, paths, the clearing of overgrown vegetation and planting of new plants and trees, according to the plan.

Construction on the project is scheduled to finish in winter 2024. Elias said he expects more amenities to be added in the future. 

Although the Flats are visible for University of Minnesota students crossing the Washington Avenue Bridge, some said the park remains disconnected from campus below the bridge’s view. 

Kenneth Ejiofor, a second-year student at the University, said he frequently overlooks the Flats while crossing to West Bank for classes but has never visited them in person.

“I like looking over the edge to see the river and have noticed the Flats numerous times,” Ejiofor said. “I wouldn’t mind going down there to see what it’s about, I’d just need a few friends who would want to check it out with me.” 

The lack of student interaction with the area is something MPRB hopes to change to revitalize the area, according to Tyler Pederson, another design project manager with MPRB.

Pederson, who is the project manager overseeing the Flats project, said MPRB is emphasizing reintroducing nature into the park to reverse the industrialization that has affected the area for decades.  

“It’s really just kind of turning about five acres of parkland back over to what it might have been, you know, 200 years ago.” Pederson said. 

With the plan of restoring the original nature of the Flats, several oak trees, wildflowers and grasses will be added back to the landscape, Pederson said.

Once the board gets more funding, outdoor entertainment areas are a future inclusion to the Flats, according to Pederson.

“Eventually, when we do have more funding, then we would kind of turn that into more of a kind of performance-based amphitheater type thing,” Pederson said.

Although students said their personal attendance is low, Pederson said new amenities that have already been installed are already making an impact on park attendance. 

“We’ve seen a huge uptick and usage of the park just with the volleyball courts and the picnic shelters,” Pederson said. 

Pederson acknowledged low attendance has turned the Flats into a “dead spot” in recent years, and said with the renovation project and future improvements, the park has the potential to regain its charm for students. 

“It’s going to attract more people just to kind of hang out,” Pederson said. “It’ll feel a little bit more like you’re in nature rather than just kind of sitting on a big green lawn.”