The Cornerstone Group was one of the first real estate development companies invited by the Prospect Park neighborhood to acquire land in the Towerside Innovation District. We joined with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization to build a first-of-its-kind system that manages stormwater runoff jointly rather than separately over 8 acres of land owned by four private developers.

Each of the four parcels works together like a Rube Goldberg machine for waterflow. The MWMO worked with each individual design team to grade each site and funnel all of the treated and untreated rain and snowmelt from these properties and flow into two biofiltration basins. Instead of going into the storm sewer system like it normally would the runoff in the these basins is treated with engineered soils and native plants that clean the dirty runoff by removing pollutants. The two-biofiltration basins finally drain into a 206,575-gallon underground storage tank for future re-use. The tank sits below the largest filtration area which doubles as a privately owned green space that puts the watershed and ecosystem on display.

The stormwater system is the first of a more extensive “district system” envisioned throughout Towerside, the MSP Innovation District. The district system design integrates infrastructure to facilitate sustainability and resilience for the community while adding new public amenities like green space. The stormwater system is also a component of the larger redevelopment of Fourth Street, which is known as “Green Fourth.”