City News
State of the City Shoreview has always been a city where people come together to make it a great place to live, work, and play. This has remained true over the past two years as we all found countless ways to adapt to the pandemic. The city continued to find new ways to deliver services, provide help to our business community, and ensure the safety of our residents. Our staff, residents, and businesses have shown just how resilient we all are. Despite all the challenges that the pandemic continued to pose, the city completed several projects in 2021 and will launch even more this year. Here are highlights from Mayor Martin’s state of the city address. You can read or watch the full state of the city at shoreviewmn.gov.
Leadership changes City council In January, our city lost a key leader when Councilmember Terry Quigley passed away. He served Shoreview for nearly 50 years and was a staple in Shoreview’s leadership for the last 21 years. Councilmember Quigley’s wisdom, experience, and sense of humor is deeply missed. Although no one can replace Councilmember Quigley, the city council recently appointed John Doan to the vacant seat through December 31, 2022. Read more about Councilmember Doan on page 6. City manager After 28 years as city manager, Terry Schwerm retired at the end of November 2021. Terry was instrumental in developing Shoreview into an outstanding and vibrant community. He accomplished many things in his 28 years and was an exceptional public servant. The city undertook an extensive search process to replace Terry. In October, the city selected Brad Martens as our new city manager. Brad was most recently city administrator at Corcoran, and brings a wide-range of experience and impressive qualities that will serve him well as he leads our organization.
Vision, mission, and values In early 2021, the city council solidified our reputation of being a welcoming and vibrant community by adopting new vision, mission,
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and value statements. Through these new statements, the city will be able to ensure our culture and values continue well into the future. See the full statements at shoreviewmn.gov/our-city.
Shoreview Commons The second phase of the Shoreview Commons project was completed in 2021. This phase included a destination playground and shelter, as well as a friendship garden. The playground features six different areas for kids of all ages including a treehouse tower, challenge course, and hillside slides. It is one of the most exciting playgrounds in the entire metro area. The city partnered with the Shoreview Community Foundation to build the friendship garden on the north end of the pond. The garden features a sculpture of children playing, as well as dedicated brick pavers. The garden represents our community’s value of being welcoming and inclusive to all.
Park system master plan The city is currently updating the park system plan and hopes to have it finalized later this year. This process included reviewing all city parks, demographics and recreation trends, meeting with the public, and developing a conceptual master plan for each park. The city will be making substantial investments over the next several years to our parks based on this plan.
