Thomas - Dale/Frogtown : Development News

Nieeta Presley envisions a day sometime soon when a new coffeeshop at University and Dale in St. Paul will offer a "Frogtown with Two Hops of Rondo."

If you have a better name for a drink, Presley invites you to put your money where your mouth is. The organization she directs, Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation (ASANDC), is planning to open the Rondo Coffee Cafe in the new Frogtown Square mixed-use building. For a $500 donation, ASANDC will assign any name you like to a beverage on the menu.

But Presley says the real purpose of the cafe is not to create new drinks but to be a generator of social enterprise -- hiring and training people who have trouble getting work elsewhere and helping folks learn how to start their own businesses.

The cafe's name recalls the lost, lamented Rondo neighborhood, home to St. Paul's African-American community before the construction of Interstate 94 destroyed it almost half a century ago. The Rondo Coffee Cafe will serve as a mini-museum to the memory of Rondo, Presley says.

To that end, supporters may donate lesser amounts to have their family photo from Rondo displayed on the cafe's walls or on top of a table. She wants to include stories with the photos.

The kind of photo customers might see is one that's been offered already from 1954 when Hubert Humphrey was re-elected to the U.S. Senate. The donor's dad--an African-American weighing more than 300 pounds--is shown seated in a wheelbarrow that's being pushed by a "little white guy" up Cathedral Hill, as Presley recalls it. The two had bet on the outcome of Humphrey's Senate bid, and the photo documents how the bet was settled.

Eventually the display could grow to include memorabilia of community life since Rondo Avenue disappeared, Presley says, to answer the question, "What happened next?"

Source: Nieeta Presley, Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation

Writer: Chris Steller

When the National Brotherhood of Cyclists finally held a long-discussed "summit" of African-American bicycling groups from around the country, they chose to come to the Twin Cities. And while here last weekend, they held the Twin Cities Urban Bicycle Festival, believed to be the nation's first African-American-themed bike fest, as part of St. Paul's Rondo Days.

The Brotherhood is the national organization of Major Taylor bicycle clubs--named for the 19th century Indiana man who was cycling's first African-American world champion. The bike summit drew cyclists from Major Taylor clubs in Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Nashville, Oakland, and Columbus, Ohio, according to Louis Moore of Minneapolis, president of the Major Taylor Bicycling Club of Minnesota.

All knew that Bicycling magazine had recently named Minneapolis the country's best bike city, Moore says. And most had heard of the Midtown Greenway bicycle and pedestrian route that crosses Minneapolis. On a 40-mile group ride starting in St. Paul, the Greenway's Martin Olav Sabo Bridge was one of the highlights--particularly for Moore, who was an aide in former U.S. Rep. Sabo's district office for 20 years.

"I was his bicycle man," says Moore of his years pushing bike projects for Sabo's Minneapolis district. "I taught him how to sit on a bike." (Growing up on a farm didn't leave Sabo time for biking, Moore explains.)

Are the Twin Cities' predominantly African-American neighborhoods underserved by bike facilities? Yes, says Moore. North Minneapolis, for example, has few bike routes, with more planned but not funded. Moore says that's due to the work of vocal advocates from other parts of town, adding that the North Side is slated to get a bike/walk center, funded in part with federal dollars, within two years.

Source: Louis Moore, Major Taylor Bicycling Club of Minnesota
Writer: Chris Steller

When you think about the materials that make up urban places--concrete, brick, plastic, metal--you don't ordinarily think of yarn.

Yarn bombers, also known at knit taggers, are out to change that. They knit things that are meant to be worn outdoors, but not by people. They wrap their knitting around poles on the street or install it on chain link fences. It's part graffiti, part handicraft.

If you've seen knitting-covered objects in the Twin Cities, you've probably seen the work of yarn bombers. They've covered a big rock at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance at the University of Minnesota, decorated a structural column outside Borealis Yarns at Thomas and Hamline in St. Paul, and enlivened the Cleveland Avenue overpass above I-94.

It's a national trend that a few years ago took hold in the fertile, active knitting culture of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, which, according to Radio K, supports the greatest number of yarn shops per capita of any place in the United States.

These days, knitters of all ages learn stitches and share knit-tagging techniques at meetups such as "Drunken Knit Night" at Merlin's Rest. One knitter who has taken it to the streets, Ann Rojas, says a friend of her daughter's learned to knit for the sole purpose of practicing yarn bombing. 

"The stereotype of the old lady knitting at home is not too current," says Rojas, whose own yarn-bombing-in-progress once drew the attention of a St. Paul police officer. "I sent him on his way," she says.

Source: Ann Rojas
Writer: Chris Steller

A turnaround at the St. Paul crossroads known as UniDale has been 25 years in the making, and 2010 looks to be a big year for progress there. A new mixed-use development, Frogtown Square-Kings Crossing Apartments, will mark a significant milestone in the transformation of an intersection that is due to host a major stop on the Central Corridor light-rail transit line.

The intersection of University Avenue and Dale Street was at one time notorious as the site of an adult-entertainment complex known as The Notorious Faust Theater (yes, that was the business' full and official name). The Faust gave up the ghost in 1995; standing on that site now is the new Rondo Community Outreach Library, in a building with housing above.

Kitty-corner from the library is the Frogtown Square site. The deal for the new building closed May 31, allowing construction to begin the next day. Frogtown Square will have 11,000 square feet of commercial space at street level. Kings Crossing Apartments will contain about 48 units of affordable rental housing for senior citizens on the upper three floors.

Meyer Construction, a minority-owned firm, is the general contractor for the $13 million project, which is a joint effort of four community development corporations (CDCs) and Episcopal Homes.

What might light-rail riders see at Frogtown Square's retail level? "At one point, we talked about a hat store," says Patty Lilledahl, who directs business development and finance for the City of St. Paul--a "perfect fit," if it happens, for the building's residents.

Source: Patty Lilledahl, City of St. Paul Planning and Economic Development
Writer: Chris Steller