Neighborhood Park Survey

West Maka Ska is the only neighborhood in Minneapolis that does not have its own neighborhood park. It is true that the Chain of Lakes Regional Park runs through our neighborhood and that this park provides greenspace for volleyball and other activities as well as a playground on the north shore of Bde Maka Ska. However, children living in the northwest portion of our neighborhood are cut off from these facilities by the railroad tracks. For that reason, the Park Board proposed a small neighborhood park/playground near the bus stop at Lake and France as part of its Southwest Area Neighborhood Park Master Plan. To ascertain whether there is neighborhood interest in creating a park at that site, we sent out a survey to the 476 households north of the tracks (30% of all West Maka Ska households). In addition, the CIDNA neighborhood to the north of Lake Street publicized the survey on their website. As would be expected from a mail survey we got a low response rate of 42, but from the responses we estimate that there are up to 100 children living in the section of West Maka Ska north of the tracks. As for what residents want in a neighborhood park, a picnic table was the more popular response, followed by a swing set. We will follow up this survey with discussions with our new Park Board representative Cathy Abene to see what the next steps might be to make a neighborhood park a reality.