Valley Pond Townhome Association

Results: VPTA owner survey on hiring a management company

Griff Wigley — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:39:42 +0000

The responses to the VPTA owner survey on whether or not to hire a management company for the association are posted to the Members page (password protected).

Here’s a summary of the responses with two graphs:

Valley Pond Townhome Association garage sale coming up September 15

Griff Wigley — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:09:17 +0000

VPTA resident Sandy McClintock is organizing a multi-family VPTA garage sale (PDF poster) to be held on Saturday, Sept. 15, 8 am-2 pm. Each participating family will set up at their own address. Maps will be provided listing all participating addresses.

Contact Sandy if you would like to participate. Phone: 507-412-0665; email: sandy@themcclintocks.net.

Photos: 1st annual Building #1 summer potluck

Griff Wigley — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 14:07:35 +0000

Building #1 rep Jim Pence put on his Master of Ceremonies and Programming Extraordinaire hat yesterday and with his wife Liz, hosted the 1st annual Building #1 summer potluck in their backyard.

I weaseled an invitation for me and Robbie by promising to take photos for this VPTA blog. Pence’s neighbor Jowane Howard also snuck in, claiming seniority of some kind since she’s lived in the VPTA longer than anybody.

Other building #1 residents who bellied up to the potluck bar: Jerry and Ann Krause, Dennis and Sandy McClintock, and Scott McMillan.

See the large slideshow of 14 photos (recommended) or SLOW CLICK this small slideshow:

The storm water pond in Hidden Valley Park does its job

Griff Wigley — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 21:05:45 +0000

Normally, the storm water pond in Hidden Valley Park looks like the photo on the left. Last night, after 6 inches of rain, it was full and slightly overflowing in spots, much higher than the previous high mark since we’ve lived here.

Here are a few more photos:

See the City of Northfield storm water pond page for details about how the ponds are managed.

Make way for the ducklings

Griff Wigley — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 15:04:00 +0000

VPTA resident Cheryl Backstrom wrote via email:

Griff, on May 14, John and I enjoyed the “Make Way for Ducklings” parade across our backyard. 12 of them followed momma mallard.

Photo album: Valley Pond Townhome Association annual meeting

Griff Wigley — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:59:00 +0000

We had a great turnout for our VPTA annual meeting on May 8 at the NCRC building.

See the large slideshow of 31 photos (recommended) or SLOW CLICK this small slideshow:

City installs pet waste signs at entrances to Hidden Valley Park

Griff Wigley — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:14:09 +0000

At our last VPTA board meeting, we discussed whether the Association should pay to have the City of Northfield install one or more pet waste stations (example here) along the trail in Hidden Valley Park.

The Board decided that a better first step would be to ask the City to install “Please Clean Up After Your Pet” signs to see if that solved the problem.

This week, a City crew installed signs at the three entrances/exits to the park. Our cost: $54.

May 25 update. Robbie has been stuffing pet waste bags into the holes in the signs. And people are using them.

Spring cleanup around Hidden Valley Park

Griff Wigley — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:26:32 +0000

Last Friday, Jerry Krause joined me and Robbie for a trash pick-up activity around Hidden Valley Park. We got done in less than an hour. Saaaaweeeeet!

City Parks Department cuts down the noxious trees

Griff Wigley — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:46:47 +0000

I’m not sure when it happened exactly but some time in the past few weeks, a crew from the City of Northfield Streets, Parks & Facilities Divisions mowed down all the noxious trees at the south end of the pond in Hidden Valley Park. There were hundreds of small trees there, blocking the view of the pond for those of us on the south end.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to Street & Park Supervisor TJ Heinricy and his staff for doing this.

Pond dredging not scheduled for 5-7 years

Griff Wigley — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:01:07 +0000

It turns out that it’ll be a few years before Hidden Valley Pond is dredged. Here’s the email from Brian Welch, Engineering Resources Manager for the City of Northfield:

Mr. Wigley,

We plan to dredge the pond just east of Heywood Rd (between Creek Ln & Sunset Dr ), that we refer to informally as Rosewood Pond. The pond near Hidden Valley Rd. is in reasonably good shape compared to the ponds at Rosewood, John North Park and Grant Park. Those three ponds will be addressed first, and then Hidden Valley and the two ponds near the High School (east of Division on either side of Washington St S) at a later date.

Given the cost of restoration for each pond we expect that it will take at least 5-7 years to complete the first three ponds (the are included in the CIP to be presented to the Council tomorrow night). Hidden Valley Pond would likely come after that, closer to 2018-2020. The current rate of sediment infill is low so we do not anticipate significant changes to the pond’s functionality in that time frame.

We have a meeting scheduled this week with the regulatory agencies (DNR, Corps of Engineers, BWSR, etc.) to discuss their jurisdictional claims on the first three ponds. The construction time frame will be governed by any regulatory permitting process we are required to complete. Once we have a handle on the permitting process we will hold a neighborhood meeting for the Rosewood Pond area. The John North Park Pond work will be discussed in conjunction with the road work planned in 2012 for that neighborhood.

TJ will likely be involved in the initial draining of the Rosewood Pond, but the dredging project itself will be run through the Engineering Dept. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

Brian

——-
Brian Welch, Engineering Resources Manager/Transit Manager
City of Northfield
801 Washington St S.
Northfield, MN 55057
507-645-3027

See: Stormwater Pond Evaluation and Prioritization: Assessment of Six Basins (PDF). It was prepared for City of Northfield on June 13, 2011 by Barr Engineering.