A Million-Dollar Rehab for the Kenilworth Channel

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board rebuilt the Kenilworth Channel, the narrow waterway linking Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles, in a project the agency estimated at about $1 million.

The work replaced failing retaining walls and stabilized the eroding shoreline between the Burnham Road bridge and Cedar Lake, adding native plants, wildflowers and shrubs along the banks, the Star Tribune reported when the board advanced the rehabilitation in 2020. Crews closed the channel to boaters for an estimated eight to 12 weeks to finish the construction.

The channel is more than scenery. It is the link that turns Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles into a connected chain for paddlers, and it moves water through the system. The stormwater improvements the board has built at Cedar and Isles, including grit chambers and constructed wetlands, depend on water flowing through the channel as designed.

The waterway is named explicitly in the board's Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles plan among the assets the agency intends to protect and improve. The project also drew on state Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund money through the Legacy program, which lists the Kenilworth Channel rehabilitation among its funded Chain of Lakes work.

For most park users the channel is a place to pause on a bike ride. Keeping it sound is what lets the rest of the board's lake restoration, much of it more visible, function as intended.