The Mill City Times Interview: Tom Evers, Executive Director, Minneapolis Parks Foundation

Article by Becky Fillinger

Tom EversTom Evers has worked in parks for much of his professional life – from a Conservation Corps member to head of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation. We spoke to him about current projects – both locally and collaboratively with park leaders across the country. He also gives us ideas on how to engage with our wealth of Minneapolis park resources. 

Q:  You began your parks career in Vermont, as a Park Ranger and conservation corps member. Please tell us about those experiences.

A:  Being a Park Ranger was both incredibly fun and terribly exhausting. I moved to Vermont to work for the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, an incredible organization that hires Vermont teenagers from different backgrounds and forms crews of 8-10 Corps Members to build wilderness trails or run a handful of state parks within the Vermont State Park system. After leading a wilderness crew for one year, I spent two years running Saint Catherine State Park as the Park Ranger with a crew of ten Corps Members (high schoolers and early college-aged youth). Together, along with a co-manager and an assistant, we ran the park from Memorial Day Weekend to Columbus Day and were responsible for every facet of the park’s operations, including managing reservations, planning nature programming, mowing lawns, operating a concession stand, cleaning campsites, maintenance and enforcement. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had, and in many ways, the most rewarding.  

Running a state park is challenging enough, but having to forge a community with complete strangers, teenagers at that, most of whom had never lived away from home, while keeping a campground running smoothly taught me a lot – lessons I still use today. Some Corps Members never had a job before. Each summer, I witnessed a team come together and become stewards of the park and do it with pride. There was work to be done from sunup to sundown, and an educational curriculum for the crew as well. The experience gave me insight into the complexities of park systems and the different ways people experience a park. It also gave me a deep appreciation for the power of working with youth in the community.

My fourth summer in Vermont, I was offered a job by the State of Vermont to run a state park with a traditional park staff, not as part of the Youth Corps. I ran Button Bay State Park on Lake Champlain and loved the experience and the solitude. At the end of each workday, I went home to the Ranger House with a view of the Adirondack Mountains to the West and the Green Mountains to the East. I think fondly of those days. But I always knew it wasn’t my life-long calling – it was seasonal work with little free time untethered to the park. So, after three years running parks and five years living in Vermont, I needed a change. For a while law school called to me. I was accepted to Vermont Law School, but I changed course and decided to first move back to Minnesota to be closer to family and eventually found a career in fundraising and nonprofit leadership. I earned a Master’s of Public Affairs at the Humphrey School while working full-time in Minneapolis. 

Q:  I read that the Minneapolis Parks Foundation is part of a national effort to remake parks as more equitable and to build resilient communities. How is the national effort organized?

A:  Reimagining the Civic Commons is a learning network involving 10 cities including Miami, San Jose, Detroit, Chicago, Lexington, Macon, Akron, Philadelphia, Memphis and Minneapolis. It was started and is funded by several national foundations including the Kresge Foundation, Knight Foundation, JPB Foundation and a couple others with the aim of creating new solutions for ensuring cities invest in robust and equitable civic commons. Public spaces in our cities such as parks, libraries and museums are the backbone of our civic society and while they are not always shared equitably, they are some of the few remaining places where we share in public trust.  

It was an honor to be invited to join the network with the second cohort of five cities. The Minneapolis Parks Foundation and Pillsbury United Communities are partnering along with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and others to use some of the metrics developed through this network to think about how our public realm serves the community, who benefits, how these spaces might strengthen our city. We are focusing our attention through this partnership on the Upper River section of Minneapolis and being intentional about how the Mississippi River can reconnect to the neighborhoods in North Minneapolis and how to convey the benefits of improving and expanding the public realm.

The 26th Avenue North Overlook, also known as the Great Northern Greenway Overlook, is designed to help connect North Minneapolis residents to the Mississippi River via an off-street bike and pedestrian trail.

While we do not receive any direct funding from this network, we have opportunities to learn with other cities experiencing similar challenges. Last summer it was really powerful to explore the various approaches that cities were taking to address growing encampments or youth programming during the pandemic. The issues facing us in Minneapolis are not unique to us. Reimagining the Civic Commons creates some shared language, tools and a forum for learning with others in other cities.

Q:  What are the Next Generation of Parks events?

A:  I am so glad you asked this question. The Next Generation of Parks is the longest-running program of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation and helps connect our community to big ideas from around the globe. 

We launched it more than a decade ago as a speaker series focused on design – one of the first speakers was Robert Hammond who helped create the High Line Park in New York. The Next Generation of Parks series gained traction when several design firms from around the world presented as part of the Minneapolis Park Board’s Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition, which eventually became RiverFirst.

We invite people who have advanced parks, programs or landscape design in innovative and transformative ways. Now (or at least in times that aren’t constrained by the pandemic), it’s grown to be more than a lecture series. Today, the Next Generation of Parks events include not only a free-to-the-public evening presentation, we also host a community workshop where practitioners in the Twin Cities can have time in a smaller group setting to engage with the guest speaker. For example, when Dr. Robert Zarr came to town to discuss Parks Rx America, a program that prescribes park visits to patients, we made time for him to visit with health practitioners in Minneapolis and with other park professionals interested in learning from his work. We see the Next Generation of Parks as a chance to learn as a City and expand our potential with innovations developed elsewhere. The lecture events are now recorded and shared on our website. 

Q:  Please tell us about RiverFirst. What is this initiative and the projects under it?

A:  The RiverFirst Initiative is an implementation framework for restoring and creating a series of parks and trails that connect the Mississippi River from the city’s northern edge to St. Anthony Falls. This section of the Minneapolis Riverfront - especially upriver from Plymouth Avenue - is an unfinished link of our park system and the Riverfront is mostly privatized with a patchwork of industrial and commercial sites. RiverFirst is a partnership between the Minneapolis Park Board and the Parks Foundation to reconnect neighborhoods to the River and address some of the long-standing environmental problems along the river, and extend the parks system to the full length of the river in Minneapolis.   

The vision has evolved over the past decade as we gained a better awareness of systemic racism that was designed into our city. The completion of I-94 in 1984 cut off the primarily African American neighborhoods of North Minneapolis from the River and the industrial zones between the Interstate and the River only increased the barrier to the river. RiverFirst is a work in progress – with park designs being informed by the community – to repair some of that history and extend the park system to the river’s edge.

The versatile Water Works site was designed for a multitude of activities.

In 2015 we launched a capital campaign to help fund the construction of the Water Works site located on the River Road between Portland Avenue and the Third Avenue Bridge and to fund a new River Overlook at the end of 26th Avenue and a new trail section connecting it to Ole Olson Park. We raised $18.1 Million from generous donors to help move these two projects forward and we expect to partner with the Park Board to continue doing more as part of RiverFirst. A park system is never finished – and likewise, RiverFirst will always be a work in progress. With the opening of Water Works and the Overlook this Spring, the community will begin to see how close we are to delivering on the promise and potential of a Mississippi River lined with parks through the entire city.

Lake Nokomis is a popular spot for walkers and runners.

Hockey and general skating on Nokomis.

Q:  What's your favorite Minneapolis park?

A:  The Nokomis-Hiawatha Regional Park is an extraordinary city park that serves a wide swath of South Minneapolis without ever feeling overcrowded. It’s home to two lakes connected by Minnehaha Creek, it has pollinator gardens maintained by the Friends of Nokomis Park that support monarch butterflies, groomed cross country ski trails in winter, and nearly every amenity you could ask for in a park including skating rinks, ballfields, golf, tennis courts, playgrounds, walking and biking trails and fishing piers. I live nearby, so I am in it or travel through it every day. My daughter first played softball with the Hiawatha recreation league – Go Lakers! Both of my kids have held birthday parties there and it was at this park that they learned to cross country ski with kids from the neighborhood. On my evening walks, I often see a beaver or hear owls. And in several locations, I can see the downtown skyline, reminding me that that we’re still in the city.       

Q:  How can we be involved in the activities of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation?  

A:  Attending our Next Generation of Parks is a great way to be introduced to the Parks Foundation and learn more. Our next one is scheduled for Thursday, April 29, featuring The Sioux Chef team of Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson. They are opening their restaurant Owamni at Water Works this Spring and will be sharing more about their philosophy around indigenous food systems.

Artist rendering of the much anticipated Owamni restraurant, opening soon within Water Works. 

We also host Walk and Talks around the city introducing people to different places with a deeper look into the history and ecology of parks within the Minneapolis park system. You can download a self-guided tour on our website now – or sign up to get information about future guided walks. We don’t have a robust volunteer program because the Park Board does that quite well and many local friends’ groups throughout the system have gardens and other places for volunteers to help maintain. But if you reach out to us, we are happy to connect people to volunteer coordinators for different parks. 

And of course, donating to help us do even more is a great way to stay connected to our mission of transforming lives through parks and public spaces. This year we merged with another legacy parks organization – People for Parks - and established the People for Parks Fund of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation to grant funds to initiatives within the park system led by local groups. And once a year, we host a breakfast fundraiser in a riverfront park called Sunrise on the Mississippi. It’s a great way to support our work while celebrating our amazing parks with others who share a passion for maintaining this incredible park system.

Please follow us on social media - Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and please read our blog, Common Ground, for news and stories about the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, our community partners, and Minneapolis parks. We welcome engagement from our community!