From his office window overlooking Kellogg Boulevard and Robert Street in downtown St. Paul, John Anfinson’s vista includes cars, buses and a whole lot of concrete.
It’s an incongruous view for the superintendent of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, one of the youngest and least understood of the nation’s national parks. The 72-mile river corridor stretches from the Crow River in Dayton, Minn., to just below Hastings, and for Anfinson, it’s the stuff of blues music and Mark Twain.
“We’re the only national park whose focus and mission is the Mississippi River,” Anfinson said.
Anfinson said the National Park Service’s lease in the Kellogg Boulevard Apartments officially expired in 2016, though he’s kept it alive through temporary lease extensions. He prefers to be right on the river — maybe a site within Crosby Farm Regional Park, by the historic confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.
The prospect of an environmental learning center open to visiting schools groups, kayakers, everyday residents and important tenants such as the National Park Service has intrigued city officials for years.
MASTER PLAN
The city’s Great River Passage Master Plan, approved by the City Council in 2013, once envisioned a public center at the old Island Station power plant less than a mile up-river from downtown St. Paul, but the privately-owned site is being converted into apartments.
Instead, St. Paul Parks and Recreation officials envision transforming the weathered Watergate Marina into a community facility. Anfinson signed a general agreement with the city about a week ago, making it an official goal of both partners to get the project done.
“This would be the public’s facility. It would be where they would come and engage with the river,” said Parks and Rec Director Mike Hahm, in an interview. “At the Como Zoo, before we had a visitor’s center, there was no place to buy a diet Coke, or for school groups to meet up. We’re in the same place with the river.”
“We know school groups are saying we want to see the Mississippi River, we want to learn, we want to engage, we want to access,” Hahm added. “And this is a place where that can all happen.”
WALZ SMILES ON $3 MILLION BONDING REQUEST
The city, as one of its top bonding requests to the state Legislature and governor’s office, has asked for $3 million to fund site evaluation, schematics, soil testing and environmental clean-up. Gov. Tim Walz included the $3 million in his bonding recommendations a few days ago.
Hahm estimated that a future nature center would cost $10 million to $20 million to construct.
Some of that money could be derived from tenant rents paid by the National Park Service and other government or nonprofit offices.
In St. Paul, funds are also being raised by the Great River Passage Conservancy, a relatively new river advocacy organization, and the Mississippi Park Connection, the official nonprofit partner of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.
Anfinson said there’s recent precedent for the National Park Service to team with local government jurisdictions on public-facing facilities. Cooperative management agreements have created such partnerships at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park in Maryland, as well as the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument in Idaho City.
There’s also historical precedent.
The Minnesota Historical Society notes that the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers was known to the Dakota people as Bdote, a place where waters and people have been converging for at least 10,000 years.
“It’s at the navigational head of the Mississippi River, and it’s a very important site and a sacred site to the indigenous people that were here before us,” Hahm said.
