coordination/collaboration : Development News

A broad, neighborhood-scale approach to rebuilding city neighborhoods hit hard by bank foreclosures has netted Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity the prize of an appearance by a former president and first lady.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are stopping in St. Paul and Minneapolis this week as part of the 2010 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project. The Twin Cities are among only four urban centers the former first couple will visit during the national week-long effort.

In St. Paul's Payne-Phalen neighborhood and Minneapolis' Hawthorne neighborhood, thousands of volunteers will join forces to construct, renovate and do repairs on 26 homes. The high-profile event is meant to focus attention on the need for affordable housing--a need exacerbated in recent years by the wave of foreclosures.

"We serve the seven-county metro area," explains Nancy Brady, a vice president at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. "We do a lot of work in all communities that want us to work with them. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, we focused on neighborhoods that were most impacted and partnered with those neighborhoods."

That means coordination with local government in each city, as well as neighborhood organization like the Hawthorne Area Community Council and the East Side Neighborhood Development Corporation.

With 14 events during the week, including opening and closing ceremonies, "this is our Olympics," Brady says.

Source: Nancy Brady, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity
Writer: Chris Steller

Turning the tide along Minneapolis' upper riverfront from industrial dominance to recreational opportunity is the impetus behind a major design competition now underway. Organizers hope the winning plans will showcase features of the best in recent park design from around the world.

It's all about "urban regeneration," says Andrew Blauvelt, curator of architecture and design at the Walker Art Center. Minneapolis has a long history with its own extensive park system, but locals are open to outside ideas in planning their parks' future.

The Walker has teamed with the Minneapolis Parks Foundation and the University of Minnesota College of Design to explore "The Next Generation of Parks," as they've called their joint effort.

A "Next Generation" lecture series bringing national and international ideas into the local mix began last summer. It continues next week, when Peter Harnick, director of the Trust for Public Land's Center for City Parks Excellence, speaks at the Minneapolis Central Library. In November, Ed Uhlir, executive director at Chicago's Millennium Park, will give a talk at the same location.

But the riverfront design competition is the collaborative's first initiative that will put park-design innovations like those its lecturers have describe to the test locally--although moving beyond a winning concept isn't guaranteed.

The competition is open to all professional designers, with a shortlist picked in October and a winner announced in February. Blauvelt says the public will have a chance to see an exhibit of the competing entries at his museum in late January or early February, with a related event such as a public forum also likely to be held there.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which has its own broad plan for the what it calls its "Above the Falls" parks, is also a competition sponsor. Minneapolis' riverfront revival of recent decades can be traced to another major design effort, titled "Mississippi/Minneapolis," a 1972 effort led by the city's planning department.

The Walker recently completed a summer-long park experiment of its own called "Open Field" on a grassy plot next door, with the space used for everything from performance to learning labs.

"Parks can be anything," says Blauvelt.

Source: Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center
Writer: Chris Steller

Minneapolis' North Loop may not be as forested as other more outlying neighborhoods of the Twin Cities, but this autumn brings colorful changes there anyway.

Known for being stocked with living spaces converted from former warehouses, the North Loop will finally see redevelopment of a warehouse building that has long been on the market: the Holden Building at 607 Washington Ave. N., which dates from 1910. Local firm Greco Development has a purchase agreement for the 180,000-square-foot building and plans to convert it into apartments.

Greco's Arnie Gregory says it'll take about $25 million to rehab 180,000 square feet of "old, boarded-up, vacant building" into 120 apartments (half affordable, half market rate). He'll rely on a mortgage of $12--14 million as well as "pay as you go" tax-increment financing. He expects downtown service workers will snap up the affordable units, while the market-rate apartments will go to young professionals. The basement and first floor will have 100 stalls of parking, a 5,000 square-foot annex will house retail or a bar, and each residential floor will have a common area, possibly including co-working space. Why buy it now? Gregory credits state tax credits for re-use of historic buildings.

"The neighborhood is always glad to see an imposing older building re-purposed for active uses," observes David Frank, president of the North Loop Neighborhood Association. Greco is scheduled to present the project to the association's planning and zoning committee next week, according to Frank.

Something the North Loop is not so well known for is a sizable population of children. But the facilities to attract and maintain a (much) younger population will see a significant increase with the addition of a new playground at 400 W. River Pkwy. Construction of the playground begins this week, with a big boost coming next month: a national convention of park officials has designated it as their public-service project. A series of fund-raising dinner events is underway.

But the North Loop's biggest new feature is Target Field, where the Minnesota Twins began play this season. One of the facility's most admired public features is a plaza designed by local landscape architect Tom Oslund and an adjoining parking-ramp screen called "The Wave" by California-based artist and MacArthur Fellow Ned Kahn. Oslund and Kahn will share the stage for an artist talk at noon, Sept. 16, at the Minneapolis Central Library. Later that day, beginning at 6 p.m., an  interactive musical event will celebrate "The Wave."

Source: Arnie Gregory, Greco Development; David Frank, North Loop
Neighborhood Association
Writer: Chris Steller

A downtown block that has sat largely vacant for almost two decades--despite its location at the confluence of three major streets--may soon get back its mojo.

In the 19th century, construction on what's known as the Nicollet Hotel block, where Washington Avenue meets Hennepin and Nicollet avenues, led the way to development of the downtown Minneapolis we know today. Now hopes are high that redevelopment on the same spot, next to the new Central Library, can again lead to a revival of neighboring blocks at the north end of downtown. Mayor R.T. Rybak pitched the idea of a public park at the city-owned site during his annual budget address last week. The city's planning director, Barb Sporlein, says city staff, regional officials, and downtown leaders are in talks about a renewed effort for possible three-pronged redevelopment there, including parkland, mixed-use and transit.

A federal grant helped the city buy the block as a site for a transit hub, but two rounds of requests for proposals in 2005 and 2009 did not produce a project that's taken hold. Now excitement over devoting at least some of the land for needed downtown park space is dovetailing with prospects that the block could host a new streetcar line running from Central Avenue across the river to the Nicollet Mall downtown. Where that streetcar line would run, who would pay for park upkeep, and what sort of mixed-development could share the block are questions Sporlein says studies or another RFP may answer.

The turnaround scenario is that adjacent areas would gain energy from a revived Nicollet Hotel site, just as Gold Medal Park sparked development in downtown's Mill District. "This could be a hard-working block," says Sporlein.

Source: Barb Sporlein, City of Minneapolis
Writer: Chris Steller

They say nothing succeeds like success, and that's the attitude Lund's is bringing to plans for a new grocery store in St. Paul's Lowertown.

The grocery chain has committed to leasing 30,000 square feet of ground-floor space in the Penfield, a mixed-use building for which the City of Saint Paul has taken over the role of lead developer.

Mayor Chris Coleman announced the grocery deal at a press conference last week for an initiative called Rebuild Saint Paul that encompasses $15 million in city funding for more than a dozen development projects around the city.

The Penfield project has had its ups and downs but the grocery chain remained certain it wanted to be a part of it, says spokesman Aaron Sorenson. One reason: a similar and  "extremely successful" Lund's store near downtown Minneapolis.

"This store is patterned in many ways on [the] Northeast Minneapolis [store]," Sorenson said, adding that St. Paul store will have more of an emphasis on prepared foods and "grab 'n' go" items. The Northeast Minneapolis store is slightly smaller at 26,000 square feet.

The Northeast store, the chain's only new location in the last decade, gives Lund's "extra confidence" in its downtown St. Paul prospects, says Sorenson, noting that both sites are on the "outskirts of downtown."

"We feel very confident about bringing that model" to St. Paul, where Lund's sees a rising downtown population that lacks a nearby full-service supermarket.

Sorenson emphasized that Lund's interest has held steady throughout shifts in Penfield plans. With or without city or federal money in the project, Lund's always intended to lease space at market-based, not publicly subsidized, rates.

Back in Minneapolis, plans are yet to gel for a store actually in downtown, where Lund's owns a two-story building. Those two floors, Sorenson says, raise a difficult question: "What items do you put on what level?"

Source: Aaron Sorenson, Lund's
Writer: Chris Steller