McGregor evaluating how to hold downtown events without harming park

By Audrey Posten | Times-Register

The city of McGregor is evaluating how it can hold more events downtown without harming centerpiece Triangle Park.

Community members, including organizers of the annual Fall Arts and Crafts Festival, discussed the issue with city leaders during a recent meeting of the new Parks and Green Spaces Committee—a merger of the previous park and tree boards. 

“Some of the folks who have shown up to the meeting today are concerned about being able to have more events downtown. They believe having more events downtown would help the merchants of our town and help revitalize our downtown,” said Anne Kruse, a board member of the McGregor-Marquette Center for the Arts, which has organized the art festival since 2022. “It’s a beautiful park and nobody wants to hurt the park or hurt the trees. The question is how do you design the park so it can be used for those things? How do you have that balance?”

The Fall Arts and Crafts Festival has been held in Turner Park, on the west edge of McGregor, the past three years due to Main Street construction. Kruse stressed it will be held there again in 2025, but that there is interest in returning it, or perhaps smaller events, to downtown in coming years.

Even before construction necessitated the festival move from its long-time home in Triangle Park, vendors had not been permitted to set up in the park’s grass, but rather on the surrounding brick streets or on First Street. Deterioration of the bricks in recent years made the ease and safety of that difficult too.

“Last year, when we wanted to consider moving back downtown because of construction preventing people from driving through town and to Turner Park, we were told being on the brick was too dangerous. Yet, other events were allowed to be held on the brick. That’s why we want to have this discussion,” Kruse said.

McGregor Economic Development Director Brandi Crozier hopes planned 2026 reconstruction of the brick streets around Triangle Park—including re-laying of the bricks and addressing the underground infrastructure—will alleviate those concerns. 

A separate project, but that will likely occur simultaneously, will enhance Triangle Park itself. The McGregor City Council, at its July 16 meeting, approved sending out RFPs for a landscape architect. Crozier indicated work would take a couple of months, beginning in spring or summer, and would provide more protection to the park’s five trees. 

Preliminary concepts have “created green spaces around the trees. In the middle, around the fountain, they’ve created walking paths so people will walk through the center of the park,” she explained.

Maria Brummel has been the long-time chair of the McGregor Park Board and now co-chairs the new Parks and Green Spaces Committee. She said the 2017 tornado was hard on the trees, and credited local arborist Dan Keyes for his work in saving them.

Even before that, though, she said there were concerns about the trees’ health.

As Brummel explained, a landscape architect who was helping the city during a visioning program over a decade ago said, “You are never going to bring the grass back. You are killing your trees. The best thing you could do is pave over the whole thing and have a plaza.”

“I don’t know about you, but having a cement plaza isn’t nearly as nice as having some green grass and trees around a fountain,” Brummel said.

Instead, the city opted not to allow art festival booths within the park to limit compaction, which Keyes believed to be the culprit of their poor health.

According to Brummel, staff from Iowa State University have also tested dead branches from Triangle Park trees. They found the trees aren’t diseased, but “dying from compaction.”

Keyes stands by the assessment. 

“Too much compaction on the grass and trees,” he said. “Not saying you’ve got to stand there and shoo people out of the park, but you can’t have thousands of people on the grass, under the trees.”

In working with Iowa State University again the past few years for the Iowa Living Roadways Community Visioning Program, Crozier said she shared these concerns. Julia Badenhope, the brainchild of the visioning program and head of ISU’s landscape architecture department, was “taken aback” by the previous ruling.

“In her mind, this is a design problem. There are different grasses out there that would establish just fine,” Crozier shared. “She said it would take a whole lot of consistent being on that ground to create that degree of compaction and there are maintenance things that can be done. She’s more than willing to work with us on that. The way [the upcoming Triangle Park project] is designed, you really shouldn’t have a problem moving forward.”

And if not Triangle Park, Crozier said the city needs to develop a suitable event space downtown. Due to McGregor’s various designations, the state is pressuring the community to hold more activities that stimulate commerce.

“We are getting pressure, not just from our locals, but from the state, that if we want to keep our designations, we need to have more events downtown, whether that’s returning existing events or creating new events. We need to find spaces to do that,” Crozier said.

The meeting wasn’t to debate the merits of holding the art festival at Turner Park versus Triangle Park, but to start a conversation.

“In some ways, Turner Park was an ideal venue for [the art festival] and could still be an ideal venue for it. Whether it’s the art festival or other things, we need to bring more things to downtown,” Crozier continued. “Our parks are great spaces, and when we have an opportunity to activate them, especially when it activates commerce, I think we should. I ask that we’re open to hearing ideas, open to hearing from experts. But, ultimately, these decisions do lie with the council.”