Midway : Featured Stories

Since the passage of the Surly Bill 2012, craft-beer entrepreneurs have rapidly opened breweries with taprooms in neighborhoods throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. All are doing their part to turn neighborhoods into top-of-mind destinations.

The Central Corridor is becoming the Twin Cities' new cultural hotspot showcasing local diversity, bringing communities closer together, and boosting economic opportunities.

Incubator or community kitchens have been gaining momentum in the Twin Cities, bringing together food entrepreneurs, ingredients, and innovation.

Issue Media Group (The Line's parent company) has launched Creative Exchange, a national online platform for storytelling and resource sharing around creativity and community. Saint Paul artist/organizer Oskar Ly was featured in the first issue.

The Green Line sets the stage for a full regional transit network unlike anything we've seen since the heyday of the streetcars.

How key non-profits have forged partnerships with healthcare institutions along the Green Line to generate corridors of opportunity for job seekers, residents, and communities.

Smart cities like Saint Paul are renovating their train stations (like the multi-modal hub Union Depot) into neighborhood and urban amenities.

Few organizations have done more to connect locally minded craft-beer enthusiasts with the startups that drive Minnesota’s resurgent brewing industry than the Beer Dabbler, which holds its Beer Dabbler Winter Carnival on January 25.

Galtier Community School in Saint Paul decided to revolutionize education through design thinking after the American Architectural Foundation’s (AAF) Design for Learning program.

Three about-to-open brewpubs and a new facility for a well established fourth are turning the Central Corridor area in Saint Paul and Minneapolis into the newest brewpub hot zone. And the architecture is as ambitous as the beer.

It's been an article of faith since Central Corridor light rail (Green Line) construction began that, despite all the disruption and traffic chaos of the building stage, the line would eventually become a magnet for local entrepreneurs. That scenario appears to be playing out; here are three entrepreneurial ventures that were lured to the line by light rail's promise.

As the building phase of the Central Corridor line finishes up, it's becoming clear that--thankfully--the direst predictions of business disruption didn't materialize. Now enterprises up and down the corridor are getting used to the new normal.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Get to know Irrigate, our public-spirited and art-fueled Central Corridor placemaking project.