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WEST RIVER PARKWAY// It's a special, beautiful scenic gift from the city to its peopleTed Jones; Staff WriterPublication Date: November 29, 1987 Page: 01G Section: ENTERTAINMENT Edition:METRO

Like Rome, like London, like Paris, Minneapolis finally has a trulyromantic place to take your sweetie for a smooch.

The new West River Parkwaythat opened last month alongside theMississippi River in downtown Minneapolis is blessed with those broad,heroic vistas that fill out foreign movies and give lovers something toponder during those moments when nothing needs to be said.

Granted, Minneapolis has never been short on parks, and this oneisn't quite the French Riviera, but it is a special, beautiful piece of

urban turf, reclaimed from an industrial no man's land, and differentfrom the others in Minneapolis.

The original plans for the West River Parkwaywere different, too.In 1886, H.W.S. Cleveland, the landscape gardener who planned many ofMinneapolis' parks, wrote an openletter to the Park Commissioners:

"The Mississippi River is not only the grand natural feature whichgives character to your city and constitutes the main spring of itsprosperity, but it is the object of vital interest and the center ofattraction to intelligent visitors from every quarter of the globe, whoassociate such ideas of grandeur with its name as no human creation canexcite. . . . It should be placed in a setting worthy of so priceless ajewel."

Cleveland went on to describe aparkwayfilled with virgin standsof trees and riverside waterfalls, but shortly afterward the chance toinstall such aparkwaywas lost. When opportunity knocked again 101years later, the door was opened to aparkwaymuch different from whatCleveland had had in mind.

Theparkway, designed by BRW Inc. of Minneapolis for theMinneapolis Park Board, runs alongside the Mississippi for 1 1/4 mileswith wide expanses of grass. It is equipped with handsome metalrailings, park benches, and plantings of linden and hackberry trees,Douglas fir and Austrian and Scotch pines. A meandering walking pathfollows the contours of the river's edge; there's also a biking path.

A wide area at the park's north end near the Bassett Creek outletis set up with picnic tables and outdoor grills in a mature stand of

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trees. Walkers can cross the Bassett Creek gorge by foot bridge. Theviews of the Minneapolis skyline are particularly lovely from this areaof theparkway.

With Loring Park on the other side of downtown, the riverparkway

gives the corporate noontime joggers a selection of destinations androutes. And with the park at Boom Island across from the newparkwaynearly complete, a wonderful circuit of walks and lanes will soonsandwich much of the river near downtown.

Cars enter theparkwayfrom Portland Av. on the south end, at 4thAv. N., and off Plymouth Av. on the north. Pedestrians have severalentry points, including a stairway from the Hennepin Av. Bridge; onemight be built from the 3rd Av. Bridge as well.

Theparkwaydoesn't necessarily look as expensive as it was - with

$5.7 million in construction costs alone - and that is as it should be.Noparkwaycould compete with this setting. Theparkwaycomplements notonly the river, but also the vital city the river helped to create.

Theparkwaypasses by the massive federal boat locks, the back ofthe Art Deco post office building, remnants of forgotten buildingsburied in the low bluff on the southern end of theparkway, and hasviews of the restored buildings lined up on Nicollet Island. Tall millsflank the shores while the 3rd Av. Bridge crosses it in giant, arcingleaps. Traffic passing across the metal grating of the Hennepin Av.Bridge emits a tenor hum, one that resounds at a deeper pitch whenheard from theparkwaybelow.

Theparkway's setting is not all beautiful; smokestacks andelectrical towers loom above the riverbank's horizon. But all of thesights and sounds of Minneapolis's first truly urban park make acelebration of the city's heritage.

The very idea of planting aparkwayin the middle of the city tohighlight the vitality of the city and its industrial, working riverwould have been incomprehensible to the city's first parkcommissioners. Minneapolis was a boom town when the city founded one ofthe country's first park commissions in 1883. Between 1880 and 1890,the population of Minneapolis leaped more than 250 percent - from47,000 to 165,000. Quiet space away from the city was needed.

According to a history of the Minneapolis Parks written in 1945 byTheodore Wirth, a former park superintendent, the city's openspaceswere designed for the passive enjoyment of nature. And thus theyserved. Until fairly recently, a municipal ordinance forbade men from

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even removing their shirts along Lake of the Isles.

A special feature of theparkwayis the wonderful view it affordsof the Stone Arch Bridge. Small in comparison to the nearby bridges,this one is a graceful, curved arc; it meets the eastern bank near the

Pillsbury "A" mill and the Riverplace and St. Anthony Main shoppingcenters. But it is out of bounds for park visitors.

The bridge was built in 1882-83 and is owned by BurlingtonNorthern Railroad. A company spokesman said negotiations are under wayto transfer the bridge to the park board. The bridge would make anatural, pedestrian-level connection between the west-bankparkwayandthe other side of the Mississippi, and give a much closer view of theriver's goings-on than any other vantage. But until the transaction iscompleted, a walk across the bridge will constitute not only atrespassing offense but a dangerous stroll, because the bridge doesn't

have handrails.

With the gleaming vistas of the skyline, the dynamic bridges, thepower of the wide river and the emphasis on action, movement andhistorical change that is implicit here, there is also something quietand sweet at work in the city's first truly urban park - something thatharks back to Cleveland's letter a century ago. He included a warning:"Unless you decide speedily to make (a park of the riverbank) . . .(it) will certainly soon become, and remain for all time, the mostunsightly and irreclaimably squalid quarter of the whole city."

This section of the riverbank from which the city grew has beenreclaimed. Something dirty and ugly and seemingly beyond hope has beenrejuvenated for a new park, the most democratically philanthropic thinga city can give itself.

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