02-06-2023 Park Commission Meeting Minutes

Home Browse Search

MINUTES OF THE ORONO PARK COMMISSION February 6, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 8 of 14 you're going to turn that into a place where you're going to concentrate on food and beverages, you may have to start doing quarterly minimums like they do at the private clubs to support it. Focus on your core business, get the golf course working again -- the watering system, the tees, teach the maintenance people how to cut the grass and the greens, and take care of the drainage problems and a couple of the dangerous walking paths, like number one coming down off of number nine when it's wet. David Klema, 40 Old Orchard Road, said living in the neighborhood he’s a city block or less from one of the club houses and the noise is definitely a concern. But that's not my biggest concern. Everyone's addressed that and I get it, but my focus is a little different. I'm more interested in the hockey rink side of it. We're here in Orono in the first week of February and it's raining outside. Outdoor rinks are not really viable anymore for youth hockey. If you want to team up with the Youth Hockey Association, the City of Orono and Youth Hockey Association are going to need to put some money into figuring out a different remedy than an outdoor rink. It's just not going to work so I guess that's my two cents. The City owns a lot of different real estate where there's more than enough room for it. I have no understanding of what's in the works or what could potentially be in the works that the Youth Hockey Association is working on but I've definitely noticed a few different lots in the city where something could be done because it seems like pickleball would mesh well with hockey, considering it's winter and summer sports. You can play pickleball in the winter, too, but it seems like it'd be great to have an outdoor rink with a roof over it where you can play pickleball, but you need to find a different location because there's not room at the golf course. Wayne Williams, Eden Prairie, said he’s not from Orono, so he wanted to let most of the residents go first. I play in the Tuesday night league. And a long time ago I worked at Woodhill so I know the course. I play the course a lot, even when I was younger. Most of my concerns have been covered. But some of the things I just wanted to throw out there, being from Eden Prairie, there is a city park every mile apart with paths and trails everywhere. And I notice here you've got like four parks, and they're all small and you've only got like 600 feet to play with. Is there any thought to maybe finding a new location, finding a donor to give you some land to put in the place you're talking about to get people to come together to put in a hockey rink to put in pickleball, to really make yourself a nice park kind of like Klapprich, where you could get something put together rather than trying to shoehorn this thing into the little spot at Orono? I pull balls off the second tee that would hit the pickleball courts, and I can overdrive two green and hit the fire pit. So it's not feasible. It looks really, really good on paper, but when that thing is built, the way you're talking about, it's not realistic. The other thing is revenue. Golf is up 30 percent across the country since COVID. Revenues are up 30 percent at Orono. I'm sure of that. And it's not just the league nights. There's parking issues there even when I go and play off-league nights. And if you try to build that parking lot down below, there are going to be cars hit. Some of the other things that weren't considered in the drawings, I noticed that the deck wasn't included. There's no warming house for the kids to put their skates on and those types of things. There's a lot of things missing. Like I said, it looks beautiful on paper. But I really don't think it's realistic. 48:00