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wood and paper sculptures by Seitu Jones and Mary Hark at the Rondo Library - Bill Kelley
wood and paper sculptures by Seitu Jones and Mary Hark at the Rondo Library - Bill Kelley | Show Photo

Union Park

St. Thomas
St. Thomas
This is a complex neighborhood with a bit of everything: plenty of green, leafy streets; a Lutheran university (Concordia), a Catholic university (St. Thomas), an interstate (94), and several bustling business districts, including Snelling-Selby, where there's a clutch of stylish shops that are so Francophile that they hold their own Bastille Day celebration, and Marshall at Cleveland, where a great ice cream shop, Izzy's, shares the street with an eccentric martial-arts-goods emporium.

Union Park Features

On a once-stodgy Saint Paul corner, boutiques blossom

Time was when the northwest corner of Snelling and Selby was a meat-and-potatoes kind of locale: A sporting-goods store was there, and a shoe shop and a day-labor place. Then along came developer Ed Conley, who remade two buildings on the corner. The result: one of the city's plus chic shopping destinations, home to a designer handbag shop, hip vintage wear, lingerie, couture, and more. It's a peaceful, colorful touch of European-style savoir-vivre at one of the capital city's busiest intersections.

The Central Corridor's funky treasures: A slideshow of offbeat "stops" on the future light rail line

In one magical zone in the Twin Cities, there's a loon made of junk, a chimney covered in shattered glass and ceramic shards, a place to buy tarantulas, and a hotel straight out of the Coen brothers. It's called the Central Corridor. The Line's ace managing photographer, Bill Kelley, and its managing editor, Jon Spayde, traveled University Avenue and Washington Avenue, where much of the light rail line will run when it's completed in 2014, seeking out their favorite offbeat, oddball, one-of-a-kind, things, things they hope and trust will be preserved through the construction of the line and the development of the Corridor neighborhoods. Herewith, their top ten.

All aboard: Years before it rolls, Central Corridor light rail is already connecting Twin Citians

It's four years before a single train is slated to set out on the tracks, but the Central Corridor light rail line between Minneapolis and Saint Paul has already created a powerful network of connections across the Twin Cities. In particular, ad-hoc collaboratives, instead of a single light-rail "czar" or bureaucracy, and Saint Paul's traditionally strong neighborhood political structure, have pushed planning for how the line will impact the city now and in years to come.
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