The Crookston Park Board voted unanimously at Monday night’s meeting to rename the Highland Complex after Ray Ecklund, the former City Administrator, and Parks and Recreation Director, who was essential in getting the complex built in Crookston. Crookston Park and Rec Director Scott Riopelle said the Park Board would likely hold a small official renaming ceremony for the Ray Ecklund Complex at their May meeting. “We brought forward some ideas a while back of renaming Highland Complex,” said Riopelle. “The person who was instrumental in designing and bringing that forward to have that park was Ray Ecklund. He’s a former City Administrator and Park and Recreation Director for the City of Crookston. We felt it would be prudent to have his name on that. I have spoken with him, and he’s honored to have that. During the May meeting, we’ll probably have a little ceremony out there and dedicate the park or rename it to Ray Ecklund Complex.”
The Park Board voted unanimously to close the Crookston Sports Center and Crookston Community Pool effective at the end of scheduled activities Tuesday evening, March 17. That time was moved up Monday evening by Governor Tim Walz’s executive order that all such facilities be closed by 5:00 p.m. Both facilities will remain closed as long as the order is in place to fight the spread of COVID-19, coronavirus, according to Parks and Recreation Director Scott Riopelle. “With the coronavirus and the issues with no school taking place, we felt it was right that we would also close our facilities,” said Riopelle. “If the kids can’t go to school, it doesn’t make sense for us to have another place the kids can come and congregate. We want to stop the spread of this virus or slow it if we can. By not being open, it will be helpful. We had some classes going on at the pool, so we thought we better cancel those. Most of the activities at the rink were closed down with school not taking place. We will follow that guideline, and, hopefully, we don’t have any issues in this area, but we want to be proactive.”
The Park Board had discussed leaving the walkway open for walkers and monitoring those walking to maintain social distances, but the plan was dropped with the sweeping order from Walz.
The compressors for the ice will be shut off following activities Tuesday, and all activities booked for the Sports Center or Pool will be canceled as long as the closures continue. “Those will be canceled,” said Riopelle. “Anything happening during this amount of time that we’re closed are all canceled. I think I’ve spoken to a lot of them. We’ll find out how long this lasts. I do have some activities further down the road, but we’ll cross that path as we get closer to them.”
The board had also had a previous email vote to recommend to the Ways & Means Committee new showers for the locker rooms at the Crookston Community Pool. They held a second vote during the meeting to reaffirm that recommendation, which passed unanimously, explains Riopelle. “A little over a week ago, I got ahold of the Park Board and voted by email to see if they were on board with option three for putting in showers at the pool,” said Riopelle. “We brought it to the Ways & Means Committee last week, and it was approved there. We needed to have this on paper officially at a meeting. That’s why it was brought forward and unanimous again here. Now, on Monday, it will hopefully be passed at the council meeting, and we’ll save approximately three weeks on this process.”
