August 15, 2011
12 Miles
Desnoyer Park and St. Anthony Park
Maybe babies are delivered by the stork after all. I was biking north on Pelham Boulevard just north of Interstate 94 and I saw a nondescript white warehouse with blue stripes called Stork-Twin Cities Testing. Perhaps this is where the baby-delivering storks live and are trained, and the pickup trucks help with deliveries.
When Stanley E. Hubbard built KSTP’s new studios in 1948 he purposely had the facilities constructed straddling the border of Saint Paul and Minneapolis at 3415 University Avenue. My ride took me past the east side of KSTP along Territorial Road to Berry Street. Rumor has it that the three-legged tower has one leg in Saint Paul, one in Minneapolis and the third on the borderline of the two cities. I’ll have more about the unique relationship between KSTP and Saint Paul and Minneapolis when my travels take me on University Avenue, past the front of the station.
One of the experiences I’ve enjoyed most in the short time I’ve been Biking Saint Paul is to stumble upon a sight I’ve never laid eyes upon before. An example of this is the Saint Anthony Park Community Garden. which I spied after I exited Raymond Road to the west. The sun was dropping in the sky, which is my cue to ride on residential streets as much as possible. It’s a self-preservation reflex.
As Raymond Place became Robbins Street, I saw this expansive garden with close to a dozen people picking, weeding, watering and trimming. I pulled off the road, parked my bike and took a stroll through the two block-long garden. As you can probably gather from the photos, corn, carrots, beans, berries, grapes and flowers are just a sample of the crops folks grow in these amazingly diversified plots. 
A woman picking some berries told me the plots are rented on a yearly basis to neighborhood residents. 
She said the rental fees cover the cost of water and other city services.
Originally railroad property, the St. Anthony Park Community District Council purchased the land around 1999. For more information, http://sapcc.org/node/774
