June is the month when Twin Citizens get out and really enjoy their parks in staggering numbers—especially our chain of lakes. More than 5.5 million joggers, skaters, dogwalkers, cyclists, and ersatz nudists visit our city parks annually. That’s nearly twice as many visitors as Yellowstone National Park gets each year. We can thank our city founders for laying down the law. The lakes are public property, and should ever remain thus. In Minneapolis, private estates directly on the waterfront are an abomination. (The egalitarian tradeoff is that the park system was laid out so that there is greenspace within six blocks of every residential home.) Except for a shameless pocket of fiefdoms on the southeast shore of Cedar, every lake in the city is surrounded by uninterrupted parkland. Theodore Wirth was a champion of this noble vision.
In the big pavilion in the sky, superintendent Theo is undoubtedly fretting about the development on the western side of Twin Lake (known in the vernacular as the home of “Bare Ass Beach”) in the park bearing his name. The city of Golden Valley and a rogue’s gallery of profiteers have conspired to sell this prime greenspace to the highest bidders, who are dedicated to building—what else?—yet another outbreak of McMansions bejeweled with No Trespassing signs.
The Hidden Lakes development is not news. Five years ago, one lucky homeowner named Jean earned the distinction of occupying what is probably the first new house built on the shores of a Minneapolis lake for 100 years—her own private paradise. The elysian metaphors get lots of play in Hidden Lakes Development literature, which describes the peninsula between Sweeney and Twin lakes as “indeed, a private paradise. Imagine your own estate on this precious parcel dotted with majestic oaks and maple with sunset views to the west.” We can well imagine. That’s because, in point of fact, this is a public paradise, accessible to anyone with the courage to make the hike from the Minneapolis side, through the wildest stretches of Wirth park. The city of Golden Valley recently approved the peninsula for development of private homes (“starting at $1.5 million”) on this “precious parcel.”
Sharps like Barry Blomquist and Robert Schmid have cashed in on the parkland inheritance, having bought the 100-acre parcel fair and square. “So what?” say their critics. That their side of the lake is not in Minneapolis is no argument—it’s simply a testament to the fact that avarice, unlike love, recognizes borders. Less than a dozen homeowners easily trump a century-old ethic simply because the line between the enlightened and the benighted happens to bisect this beautiful lake.
It’s a done deal, so get your bids in now. But there is hope for the tree-huggers. Plans suggest that the new estates will be built on the Sweeney side, and the forested shores of Twin will escape the blade. Hidden Lakes owners will undoubtedly stake their claims on the west bank of Twin (indeed, they’re already trying to change the name from “Twin” to “Hidden”—which seems an exercise in counterproductive publicity), but they’ll have the unpleasant job of dealing with an intransigent population of park users who aren’t always burdened by normal expectations of “Minnesota Nice.” What’s worse, Minneapolis may require a 10-foot easement on the shoreline providing for public access (as they do on Cedar Lake, much to the chagrin of homeowners there who would prefer you didn’t know that). This may insure the expansion of “Bare Ass Beach” all the way around Twin Lake, into the backyards of Golden Valley. To paraphrase Hemingway, the moon also rises.
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