Downtown/Lowertown : Featured Stories

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: Carlyle Brown's American Family opens at Saint Paul's Park Square Theatre in mid-March. It's the nationally acclaimed, locally based playwright's first attempt to explore the black experience through a white central character. And it will also mark Brown's first appearance onstage at Park Square. 

One of the major influences on Big Table Studio (see feature above) has been Jenni Undis' Lunalux print shop and paper-goods store in Minneapolis. So we thought it would be opportune to re-run our Lunalux feature from 2011, in which we describe how Undis combines charm and cool, tradition and innovation. (By the way, the other major influence on Big Table is the CoCo coworking space--check out our Big Picture feature below for more on that.)

In a season of economic gloom and doom, the veteran business developer and partner in the CoCo coworking spaces sees a hopeful future in the bright eyes and collaborative ethics of young entrepreneurs.

Changing regulations and evolving tastes are sparking a craft-beer and microbrewing revolution across the country, and nowhere is the quirky, über-entrepreneurial, nouveau-beer buzz louder than in the Twin Cities. Are you ready for Angry Planet Pale Ale and Masala Mama IPA?

For urban designer Peter Musty, who's collaborating on plans for the Loring neighborhood in Minneapolis and the Ford site in St, Paul, walkable, transit-focused neighborhoods are non-negotiable. We need them for our health and prosperity--and to help our culture calm down.

Midway Stadium doesn't have enough showers for two teams, it's not fully handicap-accessible, and the outfield is actually sinking a little bit each year. Little wonder that the Saint Paul Saints want to build a brand-new stadium in Lowertown. But the old park is still a fine performance venue for a club that pioneered oddball baseball.

Hobbled by a broken ankle but determined to see as much glow-in-the-dark art as he could, our reporter plunged into the dusk-to-dawn art extravaganza called Northern Spark on the night of June 4. He saw luminescent plankton, 1,600 light-bulb pixels, and a wall of perfectly legal virtual graffiti.

Nobody expected Central Corridor light-rail construction to be easy on the small businesses along the route. But now that the challenges of access and parking are hitting, business owners, the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations are working to keep the Corridor as customer-friendly as possible.

Mike Day, senior vice president of the Science Museum of Minnesota, has explored volcanoes and chased tornadoes. But he finds plenty of excitement just helping people discover the mysteries of the world around them--like whether King Tut was murdered and why he had a cleft palate.

While many classical music ensembles struggle to survive and thrive, there's one early-music group in Saint Paul whose bottom line is as secure as its artistry--in large part thanks to the fresh ideas and entrepreneurial savvy of its artistic director, Jordan Sramek. Sramek has led Saint Paul's Rose Ensemble vocal group to artistic freshness and solid growth not by crowd-pleasing gimmicks but by knowing his audience, stretching the boundaries of the repertoire, and turning concerts into rich and multifaceted experiences of the past.

When the Great Recession swept in, it took a toll on development--including the building of new housing for the homeless. But now, along with other signs of life in the economy, local developers in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors are back on the job in a highly visible way, rehabbing major buildings and creating "support housing" within them--places to live that also offer services that help keep people off the streets.

If you live in one of the cities and towns Eureka Recycling serves, chances are you've seen its big green trucks lumbering along, picking up waste. But if you think Eureka is just another green-bottles here, brown-bottles there outfit, you're in for a surprise. It's one of only a handful of nonprofit recyclers in the country, and its vision goes way beyond recycling to a world that doesn't produce waste in the first place. To that end, it collaborates with artists and restaurateurs, encourages manufacturers to think zero-waste, and in many other ways acts as if the green future has already arrived.

Want to be healthy? The celebrated Moroccan-born chef David Fhima says: eat butter, cream, and other supposedly "bad" foods if you love them. But eat them in moderation, and in all your eating, opt for "real food"--fresh foods that come right from mother nature. The stuff Fhima is phobic about is lo-cal fake food that may not be fattening, but isn't healthy either. The chef, who's had his share of glitzy successes and failures in the Twin Cities restaurant scene, has brought this "real food" philosophy to his Saint Paul restaurant, FACES, to Lifetime Fitness' health clubs, and even to high school.

There's a lot of excitement about "green jobs" and their potential to put America back to work. But defining what a green job actually is can be difficult, say some clued-in researchers in the state Department of Employment and Economic Development whose efforts have helped put Minnesota is in the forefront of the infant science of green-labor-market studies. A few real-world trends: there are many shades of green in the job market, the total number of certifiably green jobs in the state isn't large yet, and yet the potential for green-job growth is real.

On his web site Olive & Myrtle, Saint Paul designer/merchant Aaron Porvaznik sells beautiful, high-design things, from housewares to toys to bedspreads, that aren't exactly necessities. So why is he thriving at a time when most folks don't have many spare dollars to spend? It might have something to do with the passionate care he takes to make sure that everything on Olive & Myrtle is sustainably sourced--and his conviction that good design and sustainability are practically the same thing.