The Folwell Park Implementation project, led by Mend Collaborative as the prime consultant for the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board (MPRB), is a transformative venture within one of the largest parks in North Minneapolis. Scheduled for construction completion in fall 2024, the updated park spaces will include an all-wheel park alongside welcoming community gathering spaces, new landscaping, new pathways, and innovative stormwater features.

Alongside the MPRB, Mend has offered a myriad of services on the project including landscape architecture, community engagement, ecological planting, and coordinating a subconsultant group that provided skate park design, civil engineering, cost consulting, and electrical engineering services. The project boasts a comprehensive Community Engagement process led by the MPRB and supported by Mend, with many public open houses and workshops allowing the park users and surrounding community to drive the design decisions.

Leveraging the MPRB’s partnership with Juxtaposition Arts’ Environmental Lab, the MPRB, Mend, and Juxtaposition Arts held a theming workshop where an artistic theme for the overall park, “The Wetland Returns”, was developed to drive future art installations within the park and influence artistic gestures within the all-wheel park.

Among the many beneficial environmentally-focused design elements, the project features a robust biofiltration system that has been sized to consider future expansion of the all-wheel park. Thoughtful tree preservation and relocation allowed the project to maintain tree canopy cover, reduce project costs, and limit embodied carbon emissions. Finally, the design team was able to find re-use of site materials that would have otherwise been disposed of, including repurposing concrete slabs as pavers in the picnic area and utilizing large logs on site as fun design features in the plant beds.

The park improvements will be constructed in the summer and fall of 2024. Mend led the construction document process, providing a complex dual-bid landscape design package that included the skatepark, civil engineering, and electrical engineering as specialty sub-consultants.