The Center for Sustainable Living

“We are the leaders we have been waiting for.”
- David Korten, from The Great Turning - from Empire to Earth Community

Please join us tonight for our first of many Northfield Commons Café discussions. In these cafés, we will come together - ALL as leaders, to envision and create the community we wish to see - from the grassroots up!

We’d love for you to be a part of something we are very excited about!

Northfield Commons Café #1
“Drawing out our critical questions”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
7pm - 9pm
Tiny’s Hotdogs on Division Street
(Come early for great food!)

A very large embrace of thanks goes out to all who attended last night’s Northfield Park and Recreation Advisory Board. With a room filled to capacity, citizens came out to voice their opinions on the proposed archery range construction, which would have claimed over 30% of the park, destroying the prairie grasses, wildflowers, and habitats for various species of insects, birds, and mammals.

After hearing citizen concerns, in the end, the Park Board voted unanimously to consider other site locations for an archery range. Of the notable concerns, Park Board members were in agreement that their perceptions of the size of the range proposed by the Cannon Valley Sportsmen’s Club were not accurate, based on seeing the area in person at the park. Neighbors voiced their concerns of not receiving adequate (if any) notification from the City to build an archery range in the middle of this nearby park.

Many history lessons were told during the evening - the community organizing to obtain grants and donations of approximately $150,000 to establish the park, as well as the history of the Lashbrook family, who in the 1920s raised prized holsteins, marketed and sold across the country. The Lashbrooks were the “Cows” of Northfield’s motto of “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.”

Because of citizen action, Lashbrook Park, a prairie park with grasses that grow six feet high by fall, was saved from extinction. As one participant stated, “Archery is an admirable sport for all ages, and there may be many locations to create a range - but there is only ONE Lashbrook Park.”

For more information, you can read the article in the Northfield News which recounts the Park Board meeting and results.

Thank you to all who shared their voices to save this treasure of wild prairie land!

“We are the leaders we have been waiting for.”
- David Korten, from The Great Turning - from Empire to Earth Community

We hope you will join us for the first of many of what we are calling the Northfield Commons Café Discussions. In these open-space circle-based discussions, all are leaders and all are learners. As part of an emerging broader effort by the Center for Sustainable Living, we are building upon the idea of creating a “Local Learning Commons” - where citizens and neighbors learn from each other, engage in creative and compelling conversations, and ultimately create their own visions and manifestations for the kind of community they wish to see.

Café Discussion - “Exploring Our Questions that Matter”
Thursday, May 15 - 7pm - 9pm
Tiny’s Hotdogs - 321 Division Street (downtown)
(come early for great food!)

Using art and conversation as a medium, we will begin to draw out that which “we care about deeply” and our “dreams of community” to form the questions that matter - those questions we must address, in the hopes of creating a more sustainable, inclusive, and desirable future community. The questions that will emerge will be the basis for future conversations and cafés. Everyone is welcome. Come as you are.

Everyone is a leader.
Everyone is a learner.

For more information, please email us! info@centerforsustainableliving.org

Hello Neighbors,

I’m Amy Wilcox. I’m an old Permaculturist and a new CSL board member. Please check out the new Permaculture page tab to find out more about the subject. If you have any questions to ask or ideas to share, please post them to our new bulletin board

Despite very wet conditions up until the workday, and a start at noon instead of 9am, the Greenvale Park Community Garden Workday was a success.

On Saturday, May 3, gardeners put up new fencing for the expansion of the garden, marked off plot boundaries, and began to ready the garden for the 2008 growing season. With the unexpected wet conditions, the tilling has been postponed, so some gardeners may need to plant later than expected.

Many thanks to all who helped on May 3rd!!

For more photos see the Community Gardeners Flickr Photoset!

A proposal to make about half of Lashbrook Park into an archery range is now before the Northfield Park and Recreation Advisory Board. The proposal was made by the Cannon Valley Sportsmen’s Club on September 11, 2007, and is almost ready for final action.

Lashbrook Park, the natural area on the Cedar-Greenvale corner, was once a corn field. When Mary Ann Larson wanted to sell it in 1987, she told the Northfield City Council, and a developer proposed 98 apartments. Residents rose up in great opposition, and the proposal was altered to 50 condos.

Residents still objected, and proposed a park instead. Through a state grant of $75,000, a contribution of $25,000 from Saint Olaf College, $25,000 from neighbors in the area, and $25,000 from the City of Northfield, a “passive park” of 11 acres was eventually created from this land.

Now, the Cannon Valley Sportsmen’s Club proposes to take almost half of the land for an archery range.

In the original Master Plan for Lashbrook Park, written in 1994, the park was to be “openly programmed, ecologically-and-functionally-based public open space.” More of the Master Plan follows that:

It is an important pice of the connected elements of the city and the colleges’ wealth of open lands…Its design as a pastoral clearing recalls, subliminally, the use of the site by the previous owners, Albert and Edna Lashbrook, who raised prize Holsteins here.

From conversations with Northfield resident, Gloria Kiester, she notes that “The Lashbrooks were the COWS in our town motto of Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.”

The Center for Sustainable Living is dedicated to the preservation of our agricultural and natural lands. Lashbrook Park is a treasure which harkens back to Northfield’s historic roots. It should be preserved as a passive park of trees, grasslands, wildflowers, and sustained trails - for all to enjoy.

If you agree that the park should remain open to all people in all seasons, we urge you to contact the members of the Park Board to voice your concerns. As well, you can attend the next meeting of the Park Board to speak, or simply show your support. Bring documents, memories, stories, and thoughts that will help establish Lashbrook Park as an open space to be enjoyed by all people in all seasons.

The Park board will meet:
7pm, Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Northfield Community Resource Center, Room 105
1651 Jefferson Drive
Northfield, MN

Come enjoy the the 2008 Green Living Expo this weekend, May 3-4, at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. I was only able to attend the final hours of last years Expo, but I won’t make this same mistake this year.

This is the largest annual environmental event in Minnesota, offering all kinds of workshops and featuring hundreds of green exhibitors to give you the ideas and materials for making your life more healthy and sustainable. Entrance is Free as are the workshops which run all day on Saturday and Sunday.

So grap some friends and carpool up to the Expo!

• Getting There; Transportation Resources

Meeting: 7:00pm; Tuesday, April 29, 2008; City Hall-Council Chambers

On Earth Day, April 22nd, the Northfield Planning Commission discussed a proposal from the Economic Development Authority to annex 530 acres of prime farmland west of the Municipal Hospital to make room for a future business park. While it should come as no surprise that Northfield is looking to grow, the scale and rapid push for annexation are unsettling.

In all likelihood, this land will not be developed for another five to ten years, so rushing to a decision may endanger Northfield’s wish to become a healthy sustainable community. So far, the Economic Development Authority has attempted to anticipate the economic cost and benefit of the annexation in the Financial Impact Analysis. Unfortunately the city has not considered the environmental and aesthetic impacts of the project. Furthermore, their economic analysis is suspect for leaving out a number of likely expenses.

Though the business park will increase tax revenue, the new businesses will also attract new community members. Increasing population invariably translates into a greater burden on public services, demanding more schools, more electricity, more police, more waste treatment, more water, more health care, more road maintenance, etc. While the Financial Impact Analysis offers some possible numbers on utility and road costs, along with estimates of potential tax income, it fails to mention the broader economic impacts on the community. If we are to seriously consider becoming a sustainable community, economically or environmentally, these externalized costs must be considered.

At the same time, we are missing a discussion of what Northfield stands to lose in the annexation, namely productive farmland and open space. When citizens met last summer to discuss their wishes for Northfield’s new comprehensive plan, they expressed a great interest in maintaining the City’s rural character and open space. Moreover, the City Council approved a set of Development Principles which set a priority for development, favoring both infill and redevelopment of sites currently within city limits above outward expansion.

Consequently, the City of Northfield has a lot of questions to answer before they can move forward and approve the Annexation. For instance, why has this site west of the hospital been prioritized? How is it more economically viable than infill and redevelopment? What are the other potential sites and why have they not been considered? What are the environmental impacts of annexation? How will the city undertake the annexation and meet its other goals of increasing green space, increasing low-income housing, making the community more walkable, connecting Ceder Avenue with Highway 19, and keeping productive farmland in production? Yet, before these questions can be answered, they need to be asked.

Please find time to make it to the Annexation Public Hearing on Tuesday April 29th. The planning commission will be meeting in the City Hall Chambers at 7:00pm.

Resources:

• City Council Approved Land Use Principles
• New Comprehensive Plan Drafts
• Northfield Planning Commission Website
  
• Northfield Economic Development Authority Website
  

Greenvale Park Community garden for 2008 is full, with a waiting list! If you are interested in gardening with us in the future, you are encouraged to fill out an application and send it in (instructions on application, which you can download from this website.) Having applications from interested gardeners will help us know how many potential gardeners are out there, so we can plan for expansion at Greenvale Park and at other Northfield locations in the future. If you are interested in helping us identify other good community gardening sites around town, please contact us at northfieldcommunitygardeners@hotmail.com. As interest in local food and sustainable living grows, we expect there will be more and more people interested in community gardening! We’d love to have more energetic folks to help work on expansion of opportunities in Northfield.

Upcoming Events for Greenvale Park Community Gardeners:

Gardener Gatherings
Tuesday April 15 or Wednesday April 16, 2008
6:30 – 8 pm at Greenvale Park School Cafeteria

This is our chance to meet fellow gardeners, learn about how the community garden works, sign up for your volunteer work teams, learn where your plot will be, and have a little fun too. We have some great heirloom seeds donated to us by Seed Savers Exchange, and these will be available at the meeting. 2008 community gardeners should attend one meeting or the other . . . whichever is more convenient.

Spring Work Day
Saturday, May 3 (rain alternate, Sunday May 4)
9 am – 3 pm (or till finished) at the garden site at Greenvale Park Elementary

We’ll need everyone’s help to edge the garden, put up the new fencing, mark plots, hang gates, mark communal tools, and a few other things. Come whenever you can for as long as you can. Bring work gloves if you have them. Also if you have a flat shovel you can lend for the day, bring that too.

The Center for Sustainable Living will be holding its Annual Meeting on Saturday, March 22, from 2pm - 3:30pm at the Northfield Public Library. Come join us in the Community Room as we recap 2007, choose new board members, and set intentions for 2008!

We will be looking to fill vacancies on our board, and possibly add board members as well! If you are interested in learning about the CSL, volunteering on our board, or have items of interest that we should hear, please come! This event is free and open to the public!

To read about our accomplishments for 2007, read on for our 2007 Report Narrative.
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