Cedar - Riverside/West Bank : Development News

The $45 million Currie Park Lofts will turn around a vacant, blighted property in Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

It’ll also bring much-needed affordable housing to the area, according to developer Bianca Fine, who leads Fine Associates.

The six-story development will have 260 mixed-income apartments between floors two through six--with room to accommodate large families--while a cultural center, adult and child daycare, and a neighborhood grocer will share the first-floor retail space.

Right now, besides some limited parking, there’s a single-family home on the site that has an interesting history as a brewpub, and which the company is looking into the possibility of moving, she says.

One of the biggest advantages of the project's location is its proximity to the light rail transit lines, bus stops, and bicycle amenities. It’s also within walking distance of several large institutions, including the University of Minnesota, and downtown’s business district.

As such, “It’s a true transit-oriented development,” which helps fulfill city and neighborhood goals for the area.

Visually, Currie Park Lofts will blend into the neighborhood with a brick, glass and metal exterior, along with a pedestrian-scale design and landscaping. “Many different colors and finishes and textures will make it look like several different small buildings,” Fine explains.

Further, the design incorporates a number of balconies, which means “a lot of eyes on the street," and there'll also be green spaces and recreational areas.

Fine Associates has been working on the project since 2005, and that has “given us a lot of time to figure out how to do it best,” Fine says. “The more we got to know the neighborhood, the more we got to understand its needs,” and respond to them, which, she adds is key for its long-term success.  

In the next 20 years, projections show the need for housing in the neighborhood is likely to increase dramatically, according to Fine. “The neighborhood needs an engine of economic improvement,” she says, adding that the project will be “strongly integrated.”

Construction of the lofts could begin as early as this fall.

Source: Bianca Fine, Fine Associates
Writer: Anna Pratt

On Sept. 12, a new youth-sized synthetic-turf soccer field opened at Currie Park in Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

It replaced a nondescript grass and dirt field that buckled up in some places, according to Park Board commissioner Scott Vreeland.

The soccer field is a part of a larger, ongoing effort to improve the park’s facilities, including expanding the existing Brian Coyle Community Center. “Folks at Brian Coyle had been advocating for more resources,” he says.

To make the soccer field a go in the short term, Hennepin County provided a $295,000 grant from its youth sports program, which is funded by the Target Field ballpark tax, while the Park Board contributed $20,000, according to park board information.

Other collaborators included the Pillsbury United Communities, West Bank Community Coalition, and Cedar Riverside Youth Council.

More informally, the community’s elders helped figure out how to install the field to best serve the children. They also got the community behind it. “It’s a thing people wanted. It wasn’t particularly controversial. Everyone saw it as a win-win,” he says.  

In a diverse area where reaching a consensus can often be difficult, the soccer field is a visible community-building place where people “can go and meet people and kick the ball around,” he says. “It inspires me when I go by.”

He hopes the field gets used a lot. “It gives the opportunity for people to put aside their differences and get together in one space.”

Stewart Park has already gotten similar improvements while East Phillips Park is next.


Source: Scott Vreeland, commissioner, Minneapolis Park Board
Writer: Anna Pratt

The state's largest affordable-housing complex will soon undergo a considerable rehab.

Funding for a project to revamp Riverside Plaza in Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood closed on Jan. 5 while construction could begin next month.  

The modernist 11-building campus, which renowned architect Ralph Rapson designed in the 1970s, has 4,440 residents, plus a charter school, grocery store, and tenant resource center, according to city information.

Matt Goldstein, who works in the city's housing division, says that getting the finances lined up is a huge accomplishment on its own. 

A complicated $132 million deal restructures the property's debt and finances a $62 million renovation that includes $7 million for site and common-area improvements, according to city information.

Notably, 88 percent of the project's funding comes from private sources, he says.   

Goldstein explains that the rehab comes out of necessity. The heating and cooling system had started to go, which could leave a whole building without heat. As such, "The vast majority of work is being done behind the walls," he says.  

Otherwise, the building could become uninhabitable and would "create an amazing burden on shelters and other available housing stock," he says, adding that there is no money to acquire the property and tear down the building.   
 
For the city, the bottom line is about extending the building's lifespan and "enhancing the quality of life for these residents," he says. "The comprehensive nature of the renovation does that."  

Other goals of the project are to increase safety on the campus, improve energy efficiency, and better provide for pedestrians and bicycles. The city also pushed for a workforce plan that creates 200 construction jobs, with 90 spots reserved for neighborhood residents.

Goldstein is hopeful about the project's potential impact on the area.

The renovation is aligned with several other projects, Goldstein explains. The nearby Cedars, also a large affordable-housing complex, will soon be revamped, while planning for the neighborhood's Central Corridor Light Rail stop is underway, along with additional streetscape improvements.   

It's part of a conscientious effort to make the developments work together. "The Riverside Plaza project isn't happening in a vacuum," says Goldstein.

Source: Matt Goldstein, Housing Division for Minneapolis
Writer: Anna Pratt

Architects from the University of Minnesota's Metropolitan Design Center led a workshop on Nov. 20 at the school, which dovetailed with an earlier talk about creating a framework for the future of the University District.

The district includes the university campus and its surrounding neighborhoods. 

At the event, which drew nearly 100 attendees, presenters Ignacio San Martin and Marcy Schulte challenged people to think in terms of connection, stressing sustainable, walkable communities.

Organizer Ted Tucker, a 40-year resident of the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood who serves on the University District Alliance, a board that's trying to improve the area, says it builds on the "transformational visioning" process that the group initiated.

The district faces unique challenges, with several large institutions in close quarters, such as the university, Augsburg College, and nearby clinics and hospitals. "We're trying to improve connections with surrounding neighborhoods so it's mutually beneficial," says Tucker.

At this early stage, the group is just trying to keep the lines of communication open as opposed to laying out any specific plans. "We want to have neighborhood residents talking to developers," he says. "They can get accustomed to what residents might be concerned about."

Conversely, he says, "Residents can hear about how developers operate and what they're looking for."

At the recent workshop, San Martin conveyed a perspective that "goes back to geology, landforms, and how the river works with adjacent neighborhoods and the ecology of the area," Tucker explains.  

On a map San Martin pinpointed 10 contested territories that are key places "where there are lots of different forces coinciding."  

For instance, there's the question of what should happen with a right-of-way that's known as Granary Road, which once served the Burlington Northern Railroad. It starts at one end of the Stone Arch Bridge and continues through the industrial area in Southeast, near the new TCF stadium. Part of it is planned to be a two-lane road. There's been discussion about extending it. Some people believe it should be used for trucks. "There are different ideas on the best way to use the land available," Tucker says.   

The events give residents and other community stakeholders the chance to hear ideas for the area and react, Tucker says, adding that their feedback will help inform the process as it moves forward.


Source: Ted Tucker, representative of the University District Alliance
Writer: Anna Pratt

The Twin Cities are showing a fresher face to the online world after Google recently updated its local Street View images.

According to Google spokesperson Deanna Yick, "it usually takes several months from when the photograph is taken until it appears on Google Maps," where the Street View feature is available.

Observers variously reported via Twitter that Google's trucks made the rounds last year in St. Paul and this year in Minneapolis. Google gathered its first round of pictures in 2007, stitching them together to create a virtual local landscape on the internet.

The company isn't keeping images from its initial Street View sweep of the Twin Cities publicly accessible, once newer ones replace them. The goal, according to Yick, is to give online visitors current views so they can feel "as if they're there in person."

A local landmark widely noted when the Twin Cities first joined Google's Street View universe in late 2007 was the former I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, captured intact before its collapse in August that year. Street View visitors now can virtually drive over the new I-35W bridge, but views also remain showing the old span from beneath.

People in the Twin Cities can count on Google to blur faces and legible license plates, Yick says. But that isn't enough for some people in Germany, according to University of Minnesota sociology professor Joachim Savelsberg, who is on sabbatical in Berlin. He reports that "debate about Google Street View reflects attitudes that differ substantially from those in the United States." A history of dictatorial governments spying on citizens there has led people there to gain the right to have Google take images of their homes out of its Street View system. Savelsberg notes, however, that "only a small percentage of Germans have made use of this right."
 
Sources: Deanna Yick, Google; Joachim Savelsberg, University of Minnesota
Writer: Chris Steller

Being divided into 84 neighborhoods isn't always an advantage for Minneapolis. It's a daunting number of distinct districts to grapple with, for officials at City Hall as well as community organizers.

But that impressive roster may have helped Minneapolis secure host-city status for the Neighborhoods, USA Conference in 2013. The Mill City outscored four other cities vying for the national organization's annual meeting -- by a large margin, according to Neighborhoods, USA staffer Karen Huber.

A three-person Minneapolis contingent blew away the organization's board of directors with an impressive presentation at this year's conference, held recently in Alaska. Runners up included Rochester, Minn. (in second place), as well as a couple Pacific Northwest outposts: Eugene, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash.

Board members scored competing cities on criteria that included number of neighborhood organizations and their level of activity. (Most--but not all--of Minneapolis' 84 neighborhoods have resident groups.)

Racial diversity was another consideration for the Neighborhoods, USA board, half of whom are African-American. Minneapolis looked better than some places the organization has considered in the past, Harber says, recalling the response to a relatively homogeneous Utah city.

The group met in St. Paul in 1986. The economic downturn of the last few years has made centrally located cities more appealing as meeting places, she says. The cost of travel has cut attendance by the grassroots activists who make up the group's membership, says Harber, from 1,000 before the recession to a low approaching 400. For the conference in Minneapolis, Harber says the group is anticipating 500–600 attendees.

They'll fan out across the city for tours and meals in Minneapolis neighborhoods. Harber says people who come to the conference are "very relaxed" and down to earth. Some are still learning to grapple with grants and making demands on local leaders at city halls. The conference is a low-key event where they can hone those skills. "You don't have to impress the big shots," Huber says.

Source: Karen Harber, Neighborhoods USA
Writer: Chris Steller

The news that the Bedlam Theatre will have to leave its West Bank space in six weeks to make room for an expanding mosque hit many fans of the offbeat troupe hard.

But Bedlam has periodically embraced and flirted with homelessness in the past as a possibly beneficial artistic state (see its 17-year history recounted in the Twin Cities Daily Planet), only to be set straight by supporters who liked the company's current or earlier digs.

Now co-founder and -director John Bueche says exactly what the theater wants in a new space "is a good question. Sometimes our preconceptions have been proven short-sighted."

Even letting slip that the theater would concentrate its search within the city limits of Minneapolis was enough to generate emails from Bedlam-lovers in St. Paul and a phone call from the St. Paul mayor's office.

The group, founded by grads from St. Paul's Macalester College, has since backed off its insistence on the Mill City.

Would, say, a spot in a suburban strip mall be out of the question?

Bueche said the group, which has built up a loyal following through social events that go well beyond standard theatrical performance, now has two main criteria: "proximity to a young, diverse audience" and a location on "an alternative transit corridor."

That suggests that Bedlam's perfect space is the one from which they're being evicted--located only steps from the Cedar-Riverside light rail station and in the heart of the  immigrant-rich West Bank neighborhood.

"It wasn't our choice," Bueche clarifies. "We'd be happy to stay." He sees a silver lining for the neighborhood Bedlam celebrated in its "West Bank Story" production. "We're moving because development is happening here"--due in part, he says, to resolution of decades-long lawsuits between local landowners.

Source: John Bueche, Bedlam Theatre
Writer: Chris Steller