Southwest : Development News

A sizable rock-climbing community in the Twin Cities is underserved, according to Nate Postma, the founder and president of the locally based company Vertical Endeavors. Numerous area rock-climbing gyms have gone out of business through the years, he explains. 

Vertical Endeavors runs several indoor rock-climbing gyms in St. Paul, Duluth, and Warrenville, Ill. In St. Paul, it offers indoor and outdoor lessons, youth programs, and group events, along with a pro shop, weight equipment, showers, lockers, and year round climate control, its website states.

As an indication of the sport's popularity, the St. Paul Vertical Endeavors location sees over 100,000 individual climbers a year. Many of them become repeat customers, Postma says.
 
For years the company scoped out various sites for a potential Minneapolis location.

Postma was pleased when Mark Krogh, the principal of Java Properties, approached Vertical Endeavors about the possibility of bringing an indoor rock-climbing gym to 26th and Nicollet Avenue in Southwest Minneapolis, as a part of a larger proposal to revamp a couple buildings on the block.

With the help of Minneapolis-based DJR Architecture, developer First & First LLC is heading the $5 million project.

The gym will go into an 11,000-square-foot space that once housed the Ice House Studio in the Whittier neighborhood.

Postma says the $2 million state-of-the-art facility will be among the largest in the country. It could be as high as 60 feet, with 25,000 square feet of climbing space. Many climbing gyms are half that size, or even smaller, he says.

It'll accommodate different styles, abilities and ages, with top-roped climbing, bouldering, and auto-belays (which allow people to go solo). "This will put Minneapolis on the map," he says, adding, "Our customers are destination-oriented."  

A branch of St. Paul's well-known burger joint, the Blue Door Pub, will be the second-largest tenant next to the gym, while the popular Azia restaurant is returning to the corner with a new concept, according to Krogh. Thirteen apartments, another restaurant, coffee shop, offices, courtyard and parking are also part of the plan.

Krogh says the rock-climbing gym will draw many new people to the restaurant-filled avenue, dubbed Eat Street. "I really believe this is going to be the next Uptown," he says. "It should be exciting. I think it's going to bring a lot of energy to Eat Street."

Source: Nate Postma, founder and president of Vertical Endeavors
Writer: Anna Pratt

It took only 90 days for a Minneapolis neighborhood food co-op to raise $1.5 million in member loans earlier this year to fund a building renovation at a new location. That commitment on the part of 200 member-owners helped the Linden Hills Co-op Grocery and Deli attract $2 million more in financing from outside sources, including the City of Minneapolis, Peoples Bank and Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund.

The new store opened last week with 50 percent more retail space to accommodate a growing customer base, says Allie Mentzer, the co-op's marketing and member-services manager. That increase was reflected in sales as soon as the second day in the new location, when the store took in $43,300. That's a 46 percent increase over the sales for the same day a year before, Mentzer says.

Customer enthusiasm for the new store also showed up in the number of members the co-op enrolled in the first two days: more than 30. That's as many as sign up in the average month. Membership now stands at more than 5,000.

The opportunity to stay in Linden Hills yet gain room to grow in an existing building was rare: the neighborhood boasts only a couple of commercial buildings of sufficient scale. So the co-op's board acted quickly when the owners of the former Almstead's Sunnyside Market made their building available for lease in the summer of 2009. They signed on for 15 years, with first crack at purchase when the lease is up or before if the owners decide to sell.

The new location is seven blocks away, at Linden Hills' other commercial node.  

The co-op took on higher renovation costs to bring the building up to LEED certification standards for environmental sustainability, with green coolers, freezers, lighting and the like. (The board opted to leave its rooftop solar array behind for the next occupants of its former building, saving an anticipated $30,000 in moving costs.)

But the co-op, in the far southwestern corner of Minneapolis, continues to draw increasing numbers of customers from nearby suburbs as well as from other parts of the city. "We saw sales go up even in the economic recession," Mentzer says. "It's pretty remarkable."


Here's a video from Linden Hills Co-op's opening day last week:

It's the $27,000 question: Will people become regular bus riders if you mail them free bus passes and teach them about transit?

Seeking an answer is a neighborhood nonprofit organization with a playful name that sounds like a utility: Linden Hills Power and Light.

The name is "just a joke," says executive director Felicity Britton. It's meant to suggest empowering or enlightening the Linden Hills neighborhood on environmental issues.

The group has received one of eight grants for fighting climate change from the City of Minneapolis, a grant program now in its third year and funded by the federal Recovery Act.

Linden Hills Power and Light's idea is to promote transit ridership with a direct mail campaign to residents of the Linden Hills neighborhood in Minneapolis' far southwestern corner.

About 2,000 lucky residents will receive free Metro Transit bus passes in the mail, each with enough stored value for one round trip fare, explains Linden Hills Power and Light executive director Felicity Britton.

Metro Transit can track how many of the cards get redeemed, and which get more value added--an indication that a rider has become a regular.

Linden Hills is a bit below-average for bus-ridership, Britton says, with about 6 percent of residents riding regularly. Boosting that by 1 or 2 percent would mean 200 new regular riders.

The neighborhood is ahead of the curve in other environmental respects, including a pilot program for curbside compost pickups. (The rest of the city is set to have the service by the end of 2012.)
 
Besides buying bus passes and postage, the group plans a transit education program for the neighborhood. The effort is supported with $10,000 in federal funds plus more than $17,000 in locally raised matching funds and in-kind donations.

"We're calling it 'Taking the bus with training wheels,'" says Britton.

Source: Felicity Britton, Linden Hills Power and Light
Writer: Chris Steller

The movement to establish off-leash dog parks has been making inroads across the Twin Cities -- even in areas that don't offer up the kind of out-of-the-way nooks and crannies that are most readily repurposed for dogs and their owners to roam unattached.

The latest proposed site for an off-leash park is in the heart of south Minneapolis, miles from existing dog runs. But the idea of building such a facility in a park named for Martin Luther King, Jr. has stirred protest. Still, the president of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board says he thinks an accommodation can be found.

It's a big park, John Erwin points out, and people in the Kingfield and adjacent neighborhood have dogs that need exercise just as much as their counterparts in areas closer to the city's center or its outskirts.

A decade or so ago, the goal of setting up areas for dogs to run off-leash anywhere in the parks of Minneapolis and St. Paul was a cause that required energetic, organized advocates explaining the need and the benefits to a sometimes skeptical public.

Minneapolis now has four outlying off-leash dog parks--one each in Northeast, along the Mississippi River, at Minnehaha Creek and near Lake of the Isles--as well as three more around downtown, established through the efforts of the Dog Grounds nonprofit organization.

St. Paul has one official off-leash dog park at Arlington and Arkwright streets, but a city task force has been looking into the possibility of creating parks at other sites as well.

Source: John Erwin, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board
Writer: Chris Steller