Cleary Lake Regional Park Long-Range Plan
Cleary Lake Regional Park is the most visited regional park in Scott County and is a valued asset in the community. To ensure the park and its offerings remain relevant to future generations and the broader changing community, and compliant with the Metropolitan Council’s long-range plan and funding requirements, staff commenced a long-range planning process in 2020.
The intent of the Cleary Lake Regional Park Long-Range Plan is to provide an update to the vision of the park for the next 20 years. The previous long-range plan was completed in 1998 and many of the proposed improvements have been implemented since that time. The park will remain an active, amenity-rich place for people to gather, recreate and enjoy access to nature in a suburban regional park setting.
Three Rivers Park District and Scott County will continue to operate the park in partnership to continue to leverage the benefits of two organizations providing their expertise and knowledge to best provide for the growing populations of Scott County and surrounding areas. Direction from both boards, the Scott County Comprehensive Plan, Three Rivers Park District System Plan, and extensive community involvement helped shape the vision for the park. The Scott County/Three Rivers Policy Committee, which consists of the chair and vice-chair of each board, met in May and consensus at that meeting was to move forward and publish the plan for public comment.
Community Engagement Process
The community engagement process was designed with input from Three Rivers staff and aimed to facilitate diverse opportunities for community feedback. When planning feedback opportunities, staff not only focused on capturing various perspectives about Cleary Lake Regional Park, but also encouraged dialogue and comments on challenges facing communities in and around Scott County relating to parks and open space use. Though engagement coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, staff worked to create both virtual and in-person feedback opportunities consistent with health and safety guidelines at the time. Public engagement efforts were developed with intentional inclusion of traditionally underserved populations and stakeholders. This included engagement focused on communities of different race, ethnicity, national origin, income, ability, age, and other pertinent characteristics.
Plan Highlights
Cleary Lake Regional Park’s development concept is the culmination of over a year of community engagement, feedback from leadership, and analysis by Scott County and Three Rivers staff. The plan reflects the community’s priorities as well as addresses the limitations of the park to sustain the growth that is anticipated in the region. Highlights of the plan include increased trail capacity, expanded day use facilities, improved infrastructure to help with program delivery, and improved and expanded camping facilities. The plan also calls for continuing natural resource management and investment at its current level.
Public Comment Period
At its August 15, 2024, meeting, the Three Rivers Park District Board of Commissioners authorized the release of the draft long-range plan to the public for review and comment. The public comment period will remain open through September 19, 2024. To comment on the plan, submit comments in the box below, email them to Alyssa.Olson@ThreeRiversParks.org or mail them to Three Rivers Park District, Cleary Lake Regional Park Long-Range Plan, 3000 Xenium Lane North, Plymouth, MN 55441.
Following the review period, and assuming no significant changes, the plan will be forwarded to governmental partners, including the Metropolitan Council, for approval. Upon approval from all partners, the Three Rivers Board of Commissioners will be asked to grant final approval to the plan.
Sometimes I like to just hike a small section of the trail, and prefer less crowds. The access points/trails into the park on CR87 are great for this, and I love having them.
But perhaps consider adding a couple of small "parallel" parking spots at these access points. Not many, just a couple at each access point, assuming the County would actually allow it, since it is off of CR87...
(Currently people just park in the dirt, which is fine, but it would be nice to have actual spots)
Maintain the 3 "off the paved trail" trails during summer. This might have changed since I have hiked them a couple years ago, but during the summer months, those 3 extra trails into the woods are awesome, but I recall some were fenced off/not mowed/not maintained. I don't believe they should be paved, and in fact, I would be against paving them, but just running a mower through there once a week would be fine.
I will 2nd (or 3rd) the request for some sort of parallel biking paths along the hiking paths. As someone who bikes around the lake on the path, yelling out "On your left" over and over gets tiresome.
I know there has been talk in the past about expanding the golf course to 18 holes, in some of the unused areas of the park. Please don't do this. There are plenty of golf courses around already, and I would hate to see all the trees pulled down to make way for it.
I'd love to see snowmaking on the nordic trails. Take some pressure off Hyland. I agree with both separated bike path, and interconnecting with other trails.
The repair stand donated by the Great Scott Cycling club was put in a stupid location. That should be up front near the visitor center. People take bikes off the car and want to top off the tires. Not halfway around.
much of the park is in need of a tree planting strategy along the lines of an arboretum. lets get some interesting trees planted to expand the interest of the park beyond paths and the lake.
Having previously lived in the northwest metro, I’ve been able to enjoy an amazing network of trails connecting wonderful Three Rivers Parks like Elm Creek, Mississippi Gateway, Fish Lake, French and many more local trail systems. After moving to Scott County I’ve been very disappointed in how fragmented the park and trail system is. I think the biggest opportunity for Cleary is to improve connections to the community and parks surrounding it. There has been significant residential development north of the park but there is no direct access from the north. A trail along Texas avenue leading to the park between 158th Street to Eagle Creak Ave would be a huge win and improve connectivity to Murphy-Hanrehan. Texas Ave. barely has a shoulder, making for a very dangerous approach to the park.
My husband and I ride bikes often at Cleary Lake. As the population of Credit River Township has grown so has the park use. It is difficult to ride around walkers and dogs on leashes that frequently are across the path from their owners. We would love to see a separate path added for bikers and rollerbladers to provide much needed safety for bikers/rollerbladers from walkers.
It would be my dream to have ALL the Scott county and neighboring parks all joined together via paved trails so you can run from one to the next.
I suggest adding signage to make the paved trail around the lake unidirectional, with foot traffic advised to keep to the right. During busy times, faster traffic (bikers and roller bladers) must frequently slow or stop when there's pedestrian traffic on both sides of the trail and no room to pass. I've also seen near head-on collisions where bikers traveling in opposite directions pass foot traffic and enter each other's lanes without good visibility around blind curves. Making the trail unidirectional could improve safety for all.
Forgive me if this is already implemented, but I’d love to see a “bike only” lane along the trails.
A big playground (like at Lake Minnetonka Regional Park or Cottage Grove's Woodridge Park) would be great!
Love this park! Enjoy walking/biking the trails. My only concern for it is there is quite a lot of fallen trees along the trails, and I am concerned that fires that could possibly start ruining this beautiful park.