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Read the letter from the Campaign to the Robbinsdale City Council

Robbinsdale City Council

Robbinsdale City Council Meeting on July 1, 2008

MnSUN newspaper article

Look what Robbinsdale just picked up from the Mn/DOT ‘Beehive Graveyard.’

Before $100 million worth of Highway 100 road improvements in 2001, Mn/DOT crews dismantled three parks and retained the materials. Mn/DOT’s Mary Wenner showed Rick Birno and Karen Laukkonen the materials that were salvaged from the parks that once lined Lilac Way.

The City of Robbinsdale has now moved all of these historic materials from Mn/DOT’s location to Robbinsdale’s public works garage until they can find someone to put together and install the furniture. We hope that the materials are saved for a future restoration of Graeser. If you live in Robbinsdale, please contact your City Council to encourage them to restore this historic area!

Limestone picnic table tops, formerly in the one of the seven Highway 100 parks. Removed for road reconstruction.
 
In 2001, Jackie Sluss of Mn/DOT said “Saving the remaining stone fixtures and replanting the (200 lilac) shrubs may seem unusual for Mn/DOT, but it’s part of a project to mitigate the loss of this important cultural resource under the National Historic Preservation Act.”
 

Park benches, waiting for restoration.

More limestone picnic table tops.

Limestone picnic table bases. These were handmade by unemployed stonemasons in the late 1930s, out of limestone quarried from the Minnesota River by the Mendota Bridge.

Sadly, this pile of rubble used to be a beehive. It has collapsed over time, since it was removed from a Lilac Way park in 2001.

A rare octagonal limestone tabletop.

Park benches and picnic table bases.