Woodbury Will Rank Its Park Projects Before It Prices Them, and the Ranking Starts Nov. 7
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
The first floor of Central Park now has an event space that holds up to 300 people. It splits into three rooms, Woodland Rooms A, B and C, and it was part of a $42 million renovation that added close to 24,000 square feet to the building, according to the Pioneer Press coverage of the November 2025 reopening. A year later, the city is bringing residents back to that building to work on the next set of parks decisions.
On Saturday, Nov. 7, from 9 to 10:30 a.m., and Monday, Nov. 9, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Woodbury is holding community engagement sessions at Central Park for its Parks and Facilities Long-Range Plan, according to Woodbury News Net's Oct. 19 events listing. The timing of these sessions within the plan is what makes them worth showing up for. They come after the city has gathered broad input and before it talks about money. They're where residents help sort projects into an order.
The city describes the plan as a comprehensive guide to planning, improving and managing its parks and recreation spaces. It's meant to steer investment decisions for roughly the next 10 to 15 years. Parks and Recreation Director Michelle Okada laid out the sequence for the Parks and Natural Resources Commission, according to the minutes included in the commission's Oct. 6 meeting packet:
The November sessions mark the start of the second step. By the time cost estimates and funding options come up, the city will already have a ranked list to apply them to.
The longer timeline matters too. The city's May 2026 City Update newsletter said facility analysis and community engagement would continue into 2027, with final recommendations going to the City Council in summer or fall 2027. The finished plan is meant to shape the Parks, Recreation and Open Space chapters of Woodbury's 2050 Comprehensive Plan. The city says that plan must be adopted no later than Dec. 31, 2028. Priorities set this fall have about two years to make their way into the city's main long-term planning document.
The May newsletter puts the scope this way:
The plan covers all of it: parkland, trails, open space, athletic fields, play structures, courts, recreation buildings and programs. The project questionnaire listed dozens of sites for respondents to choose from. They ranged from Central Park, Carver Lake and Colby Lake to Eagle Valley and Eagle Valley Golf Course, Edgewater, La Lake North and South, the M Health Fairview Sports Center, Marsh Creek, Ojibway, Powers Lake and Powers Lake East, Shawnee, Tamarack Nature Preserve and Valley Creek.
City staff's planning brief lists what the plan is supposed to assess:
These are topics for study. The city hasn't published a list of shortcomings.
Maintenance has also come up in a related setting. In the same set of minutes, Commissioner Freese, who represents the commission on the 2050 Comprehensive Plan Task Force, reported that the task force had discussed "the importance of supporting continued maintenance of existing resources within the city." For a system this size, ranking new amenities and keeping up existing ones pull on the same budget. That trade-off is a big part of what the listening sessions will have to sort out.
Park work hasn't paused while the plan comes together. The commission minutes in the Oct. 6 packet include a project-by-project update from city staff:
| Status in the update | Projects |
|---|---|
| Completed | Interlachen Parkway, Ojibway Park, Nature Path, and the trail and parking lot at La Lake South |
| In progress | Edgewater Park, M Health Fairview Sports Center |
| Set to begin at the end of September 2026 | Colby Lake Park building remodel |
| In design | Shawnee Park, Colby Lake Park parking lot |
| Public engagement meeting set for October | La Lake North |
Some of these are big investments on their own. A La Lake Park project carries a reported total cost of $4 million, split between $2 million in state funding and a $2 million city commitment, Woodbury News Net reported in May 2026. Its design came out of a 2022 planning study. The sports center, formerly the Bielenberg Sports Center, already went through an expansion. Its architect, Pope Design Group, describes that work as including a 90,000-square-foot field house, two indoor rinks and one outdoor rink, along with indoor space for several other sports.
The work underway now is mostly specific upgrades at specific parks: a remodeled building, a new parking lot, a stretch of trail. The long-range plan works at a different scale. It decides which of those kinds of projects the next decade should favor and where they should go.
The best evidence of demand in the city's own records involves pickleball. A March 2026 Parks and Natural Resources Commission memo in the commission's March 3 meeting packet reported 771 registrations for the 2026 Pickleball Club across two sites, Colby Lake Park and Shawnee Park. The memo called the response evidence of "the continued desire for pickleball in our community." Both of those parks are on the current project list. Colby Lake's building remodel was set to begin at the end of September and its parking lot is in design, as is a project at Shawnee.
The questionnaire also showed where the city expects the conversation to go. It summarized recent survey trends as rising interest in:
It then asked respondents which of these were missing or falling short in Woodbury. Expect that list to come up again in November, since those are the categories the plan will be ranking.
The city hired I & S Group, known as ISG, a Bloomington firm, after taking proposals and interviewing four firms. ISG works with city staff, the Parks and Natural Resources Commission and a 27-member Focus Group. That group includes representatives from local athletic associations, the Woodbury Heritage Society, civic clubs, the Cricket Club and the Woodbury Community Foundation, plus at-large members appointed by the City Council.
Organized groups with a stake in specific facilities have been part of the process from the start. The online tools are now closed: ISG's project questionnaire and its Social Pinpoint feedback map are both marked closed to new comments. For a resident who doesn't belong to one of those groups and missed the questionnaire, the in-person sessions are the next chance to weigh in.
The 0.5% sales tax Woodbury voters approved in November 2024 doesn't pay for any of this. City minutes from February 2026 say that tax took effect in April 2025 and goes only to the Public Safety Campus. It ends once collections reach $50 million or after 20 years. The parks plan materials don't list a total cost or a dedicated funding source. They treat funding as a later phase of the work.
So when Woodbury starts putting prices on parks projects, they'll be the projects that came out of these sessions near the top of the list.
Both sessions are at Central Park, 8595 Central Park Place:
According to Woodbury News Net's listing, residents can give input on the plan for managing the city's parks and recreation facilities "for current and future needs." The city's project page is the place to check for updates between now and the Council's review in 2027.
I live and work in the south and east metro, and I follow plans like this one because they shape the parks and trails people use every week. If you're curious how Woodbury's park investments compare with nearby cities, or you just want to talk through what's changing around town, Thomas Bullington is glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.
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