Hackberry Park Orono Updates to Know This Fall

If you have driven down Willow Drive this summer and noticed grading equipment, fresh silt fence, and a chunk of the old ballfield turned to dirt, you are not imagining a sudden change. You are looking at the visible work following a process that began in 2023.

Hackberry Park sits on 3.58 acres at 170 Hackberry Hill, and until this year it held two tee ball and softball fields, a playground, and open grass space for two additional fields. The city has been trying to redesign it since 2023. The project has moved through planning and review stages since then.

Planning and Review Timeline

According to the Laker Pioneer, in 2023, Orono hired the engineering firm Bolton & Menk to draft a masterplan for Hackberry, along with study work at Antoine Park and a resurfacing plan for a stretch of the County Road 6 trail. Bolton & Menk's fee for the Hackberry portion alone was capped at $87,200. Their early design notes named the problems residents had been living with for years: a clogged drain tile causing standing water, tight parking, and cars moving too fast along Willow Drive. Their proposed fixes went further, calling for ash tree replacements, a drinking fountain, coniferous plantings along the road, and a reworked ballfield layout that would remove the northern field and improve the southern one.

The design work was followed by additional review and funding steps.

According to the Laker Pioneer, the city applied for a Hennepin County Youth Athletics grant to help fund construction in the fall of 2023 and was turned down. A year later, the council tried again, approving a second grant resolution in a split 4-1 vote. By June 2025, the council had greenlit further design work and construction plans were expected to be ready later that summer, according to the Laker Pioneer. Then, in August 2025, a concept plan went public. Neighbors and the local Baseball Association raised concerns about where fields were being moved and how much tree cover would come down. A special Park Commission meeting was called for September 9, 2025, to sort through the objections.

At a Park Commission meeting that November, commissioners noted the plan had gone to the City Council before it came back to their own commission for sign-off. They said the sequence felt backwards. The Park Commission is the body Orono created to vet park designs before they reach council chambers; in this case, its review followed the plan's presentation to the City Council. Commissioners flagged unresolved questions about grading, tree removal, and speed along Willow Drive, and asked for the chance to weigh in before final action, not after.

Survey and Community Feedback

The city conducted an online resident survey for roughly two weeks. According to the resident group Friends of Orono, which has tracked the process closely, the survey drew just 51 responses. That same group flagged something more specific than a low response count: across the listening sessions it tracked, the most consistent resident ask was to keep the two existing tee ball fields exactly where they are. That request does not appear as a standalone feature in the city's own published summary of what residents wanted.

The survey and listening-session feedback provide two different views of resident priorities, while the project's draft budget offers another piece of context.

Here's how the money has been staged across the project's Capital Improvement Plan, in draft form as of the most recent city budget documents:

That construction line is still marked draft in the city's own capital plan.

Construction Activity This Season

By late summer 2026, the city homepage said visitors driving past Hackberry might notice changes and pointed them to more information about the construction project.

For residents who use the park, a few practical notes worth knowing this fall:

• Field reservations at Hackberry run through the city's facilities booking system, and current construction may affect availability on the fields under active work. Check the city's Hackberry Park facility page before planning a game or practice.
• Antoine Park, off Fagerness Point Road, is going through its own lower-cost masterplan process and remains a fallback for neighborhood field time while Hackberry work continues.
• The County Road 6 trail segment between Old Crystal Bay Road and Willow Drive was part of the same 2023 Bolton & Menk contract and may see its own resurfacing work on a separate timeline from the ballfields.

The Part Worth Remembering

For residents interested in future park projects, following the commission and council review process can be useful. Commission meetings are open, and agendas are posted in advance on the city's Granicus portal. If a future project matters to you, those meetings are worth following.

Hackberry's fields will eventually reopen, the fencing will come down, and most residents driving past next spring will just see a park that looks a little different than it used to. The work behind a park project is the kind of local detail that never makes it into a listing description, but it's exactly the sort of thing that makes a place feel like home rather than an address. This is the day-to-day texture the Fowke Weber Team pays attention to across Orono and every community on Lake Minnetonka, because knowing how a place actually works matters as much as knowing what it costs.

If you have questions about Orono, Hackberry Park, or anywhere else around the lake, The Fowke Weber Team is always glad to talk it through.