🍂 Monthly miscellanea: November

🛝 Construction underway on new Cooper Playground

Crews are underway overhauling Cooper Playground, removing all but one of the structures and replacing them with a brand new set of equipment.

It's been more than two years since the school board announced a surprise plan to remove the aging playground from the vacant school, citing a lack of funds for maintaining play areas at inactive buildings. (A policy that also took out the Longfellow School playground.) The group Save Cooper Playground formed in response, kicking off a two-year saga that twisted and swung as much as the playground's new equipment soon will.

The group ultimately worked with the school board to secure a $100,000 Hennepin County grant to fund the new equipment. Even with the grant funding, the project has almost fallen through multiple times, first over a question of who would maintain the new equipment, and again when the board announced plans to move the Anishinabe Academy to the site in the next few years.

But the board eventually agreed to maintain ownership of the playground, and committed to building the playground regardless of what happens with the surrounding site. The new playground is scheduled to be completed by December 10.

🏗️ No plans for newly-cleared site at 37th and Minnehaha