Public Invited to Give Feedback on Potential Sherburne County Park

(KNSI) – The Sherburne County Parks Department is now taking feedback from the community on a proposed park along the north side of Big Elk Lake.

The 430 acres of land are currently privately owned, but parks coordinator Gina Hugo says the owners want to turn it into a park.

“In 2019, the current property owners, who inherited the property from their late father, contacted the county with a desire to sell the property to the county to create a park because it was their father’s aspiration to see the property that he loved become a park and be protected,” Hugo said.

Hugo added that if all goes to plan, the county would acquire the property in 2022, and with help from grant funding, the first walking trails and parking lots would be built and ready sometime in late summer or fall 2023.

Before that happens, the county is taking the community’s feedback on two proposed concepts for the park. Concept A, which is a higher impact plan, Hugo said, includes hike-in tenting sites, a restored event barn, a picnic shelter and a bike skills park. Concept B, the lower impact design, includes a low ropes course, an orchard and picnic grounds. Both plans involve restoring prairie and savannah habitats as well as creating shore fishing and wildlife observation areas. Hugo says the county likely won’t go with just one concept or the other.

“The final concept could look like a combination of the two based on the feedback that we get,” Hugo said. “The concepts are really designed to kind of tease out what the community sees as high and low priority and get any other feedback that people would like to get.”

Area residents can look at the park concepts online and give feedback there. There will also be a public open house at the Sherburne County History Center in Becker on Thursday from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m. An RSVP is required, as are masks and social distancing.

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