Recently I was out on the bike and decided I had some time for a playground. Being a few miles from home I checked the map for parks nearby and headed to Luxton Park in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis.
I’m glad I did.
Luxton Park play area is tucked away behind the park’s rec building, and sandwiched against a high interstate sound barrier, so it’s easy to miss from the street. It also has mature trees nearly all the way around it, providing great shade and woodsy scents, and adds to that cozy feeling of being away from the city, even if you can still here the traffic on the other side of that barrier.
The play area was rebuilt somewhere around 2019 according to a staffer I spoke to, replacing an old style wooden playground (the sliver tweezers are still available at the staff desk though they see much less action today). It’s a Landscape Structures play area, featuring composite structures for both the two to five and the 5 to 12 age groups, a set of swings, and a sand pit. The older age set has a roughly linear flow, from a tiered net structure that branches off into a rope course and terminates at a freestanding slide. The toddler area is a small standard structure with a few steps, play panels, and slide, a pretty common pre-made unit. This area also has the bulk of freestanding ground pieces like rockers and seesaw. Finally, there is a set of swings.
Immediately next to the play area there is a unique pool. Like most Minneapolis park pools, it is a shallow splash pool about 16” deep and without a zero-depth entry. Uniquely, this pool isn’t just a square or circle. It’s something like a semi circle, with a tall concrete wall on the east side, a central fountain jet, and an interesting waterfall (slide?) feature in one corner. It’s clearly a considered design, not just a plop-in-place piece.
Overall, this park shines for its shade and variety of equipment. It’s easy to pass up since you’ll likely never just happen upon it, but it’s worth a trip up.
