Dear Friends of Patrick Eagan Park,

The numbers have now come in. This past Saturday, a total of more than 30 volunteers from Friends of Patrick Eagan Park and the Sierra Club canvassed neighborhoods near the Eagan Core Greenway educating people about the importance of Open Space and kicking off a local month-long "Embrace Open Space" campaign.

We partnered directly with the Sierra Club (North Star Chapter) who generously created and donated lawn signs for the campaign and indirectly with the McKnight Foundation who created the www.EmbraceOpenSpace.org Web site.

Eagan ThisWeek had a photographer on hand as volunteers returned to the Trapp Farm Park staging area and WCCO interviewed one of our Sierra Club partners, Joshua Davis, the previous day, so some additional visibility should stem from the event.

Thanks to our campaign, one can now see, from Caponi Art Park to the McCarthy farm to individual neighborhoods around the city, black & white and bright light green Open Space promotional signs. The signs say "We can do better! We can embrace open space!" and include the Embrace Open Space Web site (shown above). The signs also include local content, saying "Preserve the Eagan Core Greenway" along with our URL: www.FriendsofPatrickEaganPark.org.

In all, more than 160 signs were distributed around the community along with two brochures on the Eagan Core Greenway and an upcoming Open Space organizational workshop on May 17th. We have at least as many signs remaining, so please contact John or me if you or your friends and neighbors can display one of these signs. "Preserve the Eagan Core Greenway" bumper stickers are also still available---please let us know who we can share these with as well.

Thanks to all of you who contributed to Saturday's success!

---Jack Conrad

www.FriendsofPatrickEaganPark.org