Often I associate St. Paul with sand playgrounds featuring community provided sand shovels, trucks, and other toys, but I recently headed to Fuller Park near Nicollet and 50th and discovered much the same in Minneapolis. Happily, it still has the classic Minneapolis staple, a wading pool and rec center.
Fuller has Kompan play areas for the 2 to 5 group and the 5 to 12 group, typical sling style swings as well as baby bucket swings, a ropes structure, rockers, seesaw, spinners, and slides. The younger area is entirely sand, the older all EWF wood chips.
Between the play area and the pool is a well shaded picnic area, with 4 full picnic tables and a couple of standalone benches and grill.
The picnic area also has the entrance to pool, which conveniently gives you easy access from the playground and any base camp you set up at a table. Unfortunately, it does mean a full hike around the pool fence to go from pool to the bathrooms at the rec center.
The pool itself is closed right now, part of renovating the rec center (reopening this month) and resealing the pool (reopening next season). But from the pool side depth markings, this pool seems to be a bit shallower than most other pools I’ve been to even by Minneapolis wading pool standards at 15” deep.
A big boon for this park is shade, particularly in the morning. Large mature trees on the east side of the park and amongst the picnic tables provide lots of cover. Especially the older age play area, and the pool which supports the use of sun shades on the west side for afternoon shade. According to a local mom, the picnic area will be expanded and with it more shade infrastructure in the future. The shade on the younger play area does start to go away in the summer afternoons, so that’s a good time to get into swimsuits.
Notably, I think this park shows good attention to accessibility. The PIP (poured-in-place rubber paths) extends from a perimeter paved path and reaches the transfer points and slides easily, as well as a good number of the freestanding ground equipment like spinners, rockers, seesaw and swings. It doesn’t have that feeling of being performative but functionally useless, in my opinion, which is appreciated.
Overall, a good playground, easily enjoyable on a summer morning or afternoon if bringing a swimsuit. With a picnic lunch you could easily spend several hours here despite the parks overall small size.
