Northfield's Way Park Will Be Star of Fall Festival

There isn’t a better way to celebrate a busy construction season at Northfield’s than to have a party.

Friends of Way Park—the community group that has shepherded the park’s restoration–will sponsor its second annual fall festival from 6-8 p.m. Saturday at the park, on the former site of Northfield City Hospital between St. Olaf Avenue and First Street.

While the community event will feature drumming, storytelling and refreshments, the star of the evening will be the park itself. Specifically, the new amphitheater, rain garden, paved walkways and freshly planted maple and oak trees that now dot the south portion of the park.

Those amenities were added during a flurry of construction activity in August and September.

Saturday’s fall festival is patterned after pumpkin festivals that are something of a tradition on the East Coast, said Friends of Way Park chair Sarah Carlsen said. Residents attending the festival are being asked to bring a carved pumpkin with a candle.

An 'exciting' construction season

“So excited” is how Carlsen described the recent additions to the park.

“Many people have been working on this park for a long time,” she said. “For all of that commitment and now seeing those results, that’s exciting.”

Friends of Way Park has spearheaded the effort to transform the site from the former home of Northfield City Hospital and Dilly Skilled Nursing Facility to its current form. Since it was organized in 2004—a year after the hospital moved to its current home on North Avenue—the group has raised more than $40,000 for park improvements and community support for returning the parcel to parkland.

Carlsen said hundreds of volunteers have assisted the group in moving the park effort forward. That number includes FWP board members, neighbors who have performed landscaping and lawn work and community residents who have led petition drives, distributed flyers and attended governmental meetings to show support for the park.

“This community has put a lot of trust in us [FWP board] in giving us money as far back as 2003 and holding it until we moved ahead with construction,” said Carlsen, who has been active with FWP since 2009. “They believed in us and in our mission.”

This year’s projects costs totalled about $37,000, as well as in-kind contributions from local residents and businesses. Among the contributors was Leif Knecht of Knecht’s Nursery, who donated 18 trees.

Carlsen said she envisions the amphitheater playing host to a large number of arts and educational programming.

With FWP project funds depleted, the group is considering fundraising efforts in coming months, Carlsen said. Proceeds would go for such projects as adding plants to the rain garden, building a memorial garden dedicated to residents who worked at and were served by the hospital and planting more trees.

What already has been accomplished, Carlsen said, illustrates the high level of support to park has received from the community.