What’s going on?

Two organizations that have been advocating for 18 holes at Hiawatha have submitted a nomination to have the golf course added to the National Register of Historic places. What does that mean? Well, the details are complicated. The short version is that if this nomination is accepted, the golf course would be federally recognized as historically significant. This would entail a review process before changes are made to the course but it is unlikely to prevent the implementation of the 9-hole master plan.

MPRB has drafted a comment on the nomination that provides important context and fills in much of the history that has been left out of the nomination. We especially want to express gratitude to MPRB staff for acknowledging the importance this site holds for Dakota people, and for their commitment to a plan that honors multiple histories.

What can I do?

The most impactful action you can take is submitting a written comment to the SHPO review board by emailing your comment to Amy Spong, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, at Amy.Spong@state.mn.us. Feel free to write about whatever you feel the review board should know on this topic, though if you’d like to know more about how they make their decisions, read on. Hiawatha for All’s full statement on the nomination can be found here. A statement by Dr. Waziyatawin to SHPO can be found here.

If you’d like to do more, the other two things you can do are submitting a comment to the HPC and contacting your MPRB commissioners to express support for the draft letter. See below for more details on those.

Timeline

Tuesday, Jan 17th: The Heritage Preservation Commission meets to discuss whether to provide a recommendation on this nomination. Their decision will be provided to SHPO but is not binding. This meeting is not open to the public and the HPC body does not have a public comment period as part of their meetings, but the public can send written comments for members of the commission to CPED staff member Erin Que at Erin.Que@minneapolismn.gov. Read Hiawatha for All’s statement to the HPC.

Wednesday, Jan 18th: The Minneapolis Parks & Recreation board will be voting on whether to approve the draft letter to be sent to SHPO concerning the nomination. Contact information for MPRB commissioners is available here.

Tuesday, Feb 7th: The SHPO Review Board will consider the nomination at their meeting and will vote on whether or not it should be accepted into the National Register of Historic Places. Written comments to the review board should be submitted to Amy Spong, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, at Amy.Spong@state.mn.us. This meeting will be held virtually and will include a public comment portion.

Will this block the master plan?

No. Even if approved, a historic designation is unlikely to prevent implementation of the 9-hole master plan. The golfers have been working hard to spin this as something that would scuttle the whole plan, but that is inaccurate.

Inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places has some benefits but is not meant to prevent all changes to historic properties. The primary regulatory effect of a historic designation is that in some cases, changes to a property will be required to undergo a “Section 106” review, a federally mandated process to “determine the effects of proposed work on those properties and find ways to avoid, reduce or mitigate harm to them”.

The master plan is already subject to Section 106 review, because it is changing the shoreline of the lake, another condition that triggers federal review. MPRB planners have designed the new plan from the very beginning knowing that it would need to pass review. Many of the measures included in the master plan, like maintaining 9 holes and adding historical interpretive elements, are the sorts of things that a Section 106 review will count as reducing and mitigating harm. Unlike the golfers, the federal government does recognize the urgency of addressing catastrophic flooding and unchecked pollution, and understands that some change may be necessary.

Who’s involved

The National Register of Historic Places is a list maintained by the National Park Service of “historic places worthy of preservation”. The NPS makes the final determination on what is added to the register, but they delegate most of the decision-making to state agencies.

The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is the agency that oversees this process in our state. They have a review board that votes on whether to accept a nomination into the register. If they vote to accept a nomination, it is forwarded to NPS for final approval.

The Heritage Preservation Commission (HPC) is an appointed commission that oversees historic preservation issues for the City of Minneapolis. Minneapolis has its own local designation framework, but the golf course is not being considered for a local designation at this time. HPC is required to participate in any nomination for a city property that is submitted to SHPO. They can provide a recommendation to SHPO on a nomination, but it is not binding.

Got all that? HPC is the city level, which provides a recommendation to SHPO at the state level, who votes on the nomination before forwarding it to NPS, at the national level, for final approval.

What determines if it’s historically significant?

The job of the SHPO review board when reviewing a nomination is to apply the criteria set forth by the National Park Service to determine a property’s eligibility for the national register. You can read a bulletin from NPS or find more information on their site if you’d like to dig into the details.

Eligibility is based on a property both “being associated with an important historic context” and “retaining historic integrity of those features necessary to convey its significance.” In simple terms, a historically significant property should have been the site of important historical events and should have features that provide a connection to that past.

SHPO is tasked with determining if Hiawatha Golf Course meets that criteria. The nominating document proposes its inclusion as a property “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history”. The nomination focuses on the 1952 battle to integrate the clubhouse, and on the period from 1952-1972 where Hiawatha served as a gathering place for black golfers and was used to establish official handicaps used for tournament play.

Notably, the nomination encompasses not just the clubhouse, but the entire 140 acres containing the 18 hole golf course. For the nomination to be approved, the review board must agree that the entire golf course meets the criteria for historic significance.