A playground makeover at St. Paul’s Cherokee Regional Park featuring a 24-foot climbing structure is drawing criticism from some neighborhood parents.

Noah Namowicz considers the park to be one of St. Paul’s less-heralded wonders — a 100-acre blufftop oasis overlooking the city itself.

But its rebuilt playground? He’s not pleased with it.

“Everyone in the neighborhood was like, ‘What is this thing?’ ” said Namowicz, referring to the sky tower.

He’s one of a group of parents who have taken their concerns about the recent $342,000 overhaul to City Hall.

After attending community design meetings, Betsy Thompson expected a shady tree grove, rolling berms for toddlers to crawl over and bench-style seating.

Beth O’Connell, who grew up going to Cherokee, thought it would be a place for her 1½-year-old daughter with a variety of activities for children of different ages.

Instead, after waiting eight months for the playground to reopen in April, the three parents repeatedly emailed St. Paul City Hall demanding an explanation.

The parents say that the new sky tower — a 24-foot-tall climbing structure attached to a large covered slide — has left many a 5-year-old hanging from its mesh-like rope walls, screaming for help.

O’Connell said that in a recent outing, in less an hour, “I saw three parents rescuing their kids, or the kids were just uncomfortable going up there by themselves. One kid was 10, and the kid was like ‘Oh, this is scary.’ ”

At the other end of the playground, a small house attached to an infant slide looks as if it has been cut from the pages of Dr. Seuss. Six swings and monkey bars round out the perimeter.

The planned berms were never constructed, the tree grove was not planted, and a concrete walk encircling the site sits half-finished, ending in a semi-circle.

The park offers two benches and a picnic table, which is half the seating area that was in the city’s final concept designs. A tree-lined path exists only on paper.

The new playground replaces a decades-old children’s maze, complete with slide and climbing areas, that many parents agree outlived its popularity.

“It seemed largely that the budget got spent on this one large structure,” said Namowicz, a father to two children. “There’s this thing that’s good for big kids, and a teeny-tiny house for babies. But there’s nothing for kids that are 3 to 9.”

Clare Cloyd, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Parks and Recreation, said parks planners held community conversations leading up to the redesign and determined that a regional destination should get a regional amenity a bit out of the ordinary.

“There was no objection to the tower during the community engagement phase,” Cloyd said. “We have seen it getting a lot of use, and there are traditional play areas at several surrounding neighborhood parks within walking distance. We heard ‘modern, challenging, something different’ during the community process and delivered on that.”

A vocal group of parents feel otherwise.

They say the new playground lacks shade and skimps on seating and that it pales in comparison to the upgraded play areas by the West 7th Community Center on Oneida Street or the Highland Park Community Center on Ford Parkway, where a variety of elaborate jungle gym environments provide activities for different age levels.

They’ve dug into budget numbers and come back with more questions.

BUDGET QUESTIONS

Comparable playgrounds offer a wider variety of amenities for less cost.

An extensive overhaul of Longfellow Park in Minneapolis last year added five slides, an elaborate jungle gym, a separate globe-shaped climbing structure, a sandy tot lot and a Dr. Seuss-style house for toddlers, among other amenities tailored by age and ability.

The Longfellow project was initially projected to cost $297,000 but came in $15,000 under budget, or about $60,000 less than the $342,000 spent at Cherokee Park playground.

At Harmon Park, a few blocks away in West St. Paul, officials spent roughly $95,000 on a new playground in 2014 to 2015, adding three distinct activity areas for kids of different ages through a Golden Valley-based contractor.

“That was our big question: Where did our money go?” Namowicz said. “One of the things that they had spelled out was that the budget for this, being a regional park, was a third more than what other parks get. (But) the amount of resources we got in our park, just relative to the budget, just seems to be way off.”

City officials have said the Cherokee project was advertised in a difficult bidding environment in the summer of 2017. After two responses from contractors came back too high, they put the playground improvements up for bid a second time with fewer amenities in summer 2018.

Five contractors responded, and the low bid was awarded to Albrecht Companies of Roseville.

The sky tower is from Elephant Play, a playground equipment vendor based in Canada, and the rest of the play equipment is from Landscape Structures of Delano, Minn.

Parks and Rec planners met with concerned parents at the park in early May to hear their frustrations, and St. Paul City Council member Rebecca Noecker and representatives of the contractor and playground manufacturer were also there.

“As park designers, we also share the disappointment in not being able to construct the full vision of the play area with the mounds and tree grove,” said Alice Messer, St. Paul Parks and Rec design and construction manager, in a May 20 email to about a dozen concerned parents and five city officials. “We tried in our first bid attempt but were unsuccessful in the bidding climate at that time.”

Longfellow Park in South Minneapolis just got upgraded too — with five slides, a Dr. Seuss house, a sand tot lot and multiple play environments. Documents show it cost less than the improvements at Cherokee did: pic.twitter.com/TL0QCZK4eD — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) June 7, 2019

In emails to residents, city project manager Cheeneng Yang said 47 percent of the $342,000 in total funding was dedicated to play equipment and play surfacing.

Another 24 percent — about $82,000 — went toward design and community engagement. About 21 percent went to site work and 7.5 percent to permitting and demolition.

Residents have questioned why design and community outreach costs were so high.

For the Longfellow project in Minneapolis, community engagement totaled $1,600, according to the Minneapolis Parks Board. Design and construction management added less than $24,000 combined.

Parents have noted that at Cherokee Park, the city’s three community outreach meetings and an open house were largely advertised through fliers posted at the park itself, leaving many neighbors in the dark about the planned improvements.

O’Connell, who said she wasn’t aware the Cherokee Park playground was scheduled for overhaul until it was actually closed, wishes more parents had gotten word in advance to comment on early renderings.

“I would say the original design is horrible,” she said. “I know it sounds harsh, and I’m trying to be compassionate, but did you honestly think this was going to be a structure that would draw in people to this regional park? That’s what they said, ‘It’s a regional park and we’re trying to draw people in.’ ”

Noecker, the council member, said she’s actively working on ways to make the tower more accessible, such as possibly attaching a secondary slide halfway up the structure, though her kids seem to appreciate the tower as-is.

“Every time I’ve been there it’s been bustling,” she said. “In general, the whole space feels much more lively. It’s challenging to design something that is going to make everybody happy. Hopefully we’ll be able to add something that will get to that ‘missing middle’ age group. To me, the biggest issue is engagement — finding out what people want.”

Whatever happens will require finding new funding, which may be challenging given that Parks and Rec dollars are already committed to future playground improvements elsewhere in the city, such as Harriet Island.

Cloyd said the department is open to “add elements to the play area through private fundraising.”

ABOUT THAT SKY TOWER

Not every parent objects to the sky tower, which at 24 feet offers a rigorous climbing challenge unique to any city park.

“I’m not discounting those neighbors’ feelings, but we’ve been playing at Cherokee Park for the last three to four years with our child, and I’d bet the number of children playing there on an average evening has increased by two or three times since the new installation,” said neighborhood resident Bjorn Arneson. “Isn’t that what we want?”

Namowicz isn’t impressed. He and other parents call the setup dangerous and poorly designed.

“There are several swings and weird things under the tower, and they swing into the center bar, and people have been hitting their heads on them,” he said.

The contractor went back out in recent weeks to adjust the settings.