MANKATO — Some oddities will be appearing in Mankato city parks in the coming months — at least in the eyes of traditional park users.
The quartets of wooden posts at Lions Lake and Tourtellotte parks, the 12-sided enclosures at Wings Over White Oaks and Lions Lake parks, the 2-ton concrete table at Stoltzman Park, the parallel 35-foot-long lanes, including one paved in concrete, at Erlandson Park … .
They might prompt some puzzled looks from the toddlers headed to playsets, the pickleball players walking to their courts, the older adults using park paths for exercise or the folks holding family gatherings in picnic shelters. But city leaders are hoping the new items will catch the eye of teenagers and young adults who might not find much else in municipal parks to interest them.
The $50,000 pilot project, approved by the council in May and amended Monday night, will bring hammock stands to two parks and gaga pits to others.
The posts placed in pleasant, wooded areas will be perfectly spaced for hooking up hammocks. The original plan was to install half of the stands in the oak-covered top of the knoll in Sibley and in the grove of trees on the northeast side of Tourtellotte. On Monday, the ones at Sibley were shifted at the request of city staff.
“The contractor ran into hard rock that he could not get through,” a staff memo to the council explained. “Because of this, it is recommended that the two sets of hammock stands that were programmed to be installed at Sibley Park be moved and instead placed at Lions Lake Park, to the north of the playground. This park has ample green space to add these stands and nice shady trees to make the area comfortable.”
The gaga pits — made up of 12-sided hard-plastic fencing about 3 feet tall — will give kids a place to play a game, described by city staff as “a gentler version of dodgeball,” that they may have experienced in PE class or summer camps. One pit is slated for Lions Lake and the other for Wings Over White Oaks Park.
And there will be signs explaining what the items are to less knowledgeable generations.
The purpose of the other new additions to Mankato parks will need no explanation when completed. The 4,000-pound concrete table — designed to stand up to Minnesota winters — will become a pingpong table when the net is added and when paddles and pingpong balls are placed in a nearby mailbox-like storage container at Stoltzman Park.
The lanes being graded this summer at Erlandson will become cornhole courts once boards are added in 2025. The city will provide weather-resistant beanbags, and one of the lanes will be paved to allow for easy use by players in wheelchairs.
All of the new elements were selected to be potential magnets for young people who may have decided, once they had aged out of traditional playgrounds, that municipal parks had little to offer.
“This an attempt to attract an older audience,” City Manager Susan Arntz told the council prior to the project’s approval. “You know, the tween, teen, young-adult audience.”
A not-insignificant chunk of that population appears to be more than ready to relax in city parks, college campuses and other greenspaces during the warmer months — provided there are sturdy, properly spaced tree trunks or similar substitutes available.
Arntz, the mother of teenaged and 20-something daughters, said she hears that Mankato’s parks are too often lacking hammockable trees.
“Some of the trees, according to my children, are not planted close enough,” she said. “And so by using these hammock stands, we’ll be able to provide a better space.”
The project’s timeline — established before the June floods and potentially facing delays as staff focus on park and trail repairs — called for all of the new elements, other than the cornhole courts, to be installed this summer with monitoring of their use and popularity starting in August.
The monitoring could include people-counting cameras placed in the parks and voluntary responses by park users through the city’s online public engagement website.
“Based on the outcomes, future park investments can be considered,” according to a report on the pilot project.
Either way, an additional $30,000 allocation will be required in the 2025 budget to complete and equip the cornhole courts.