Longfellow : Development News

When the $15 million Hiawatha public works facility at 26th Street and Hiawatha Avenue South in Minneapolis was in preliminary stages, the city decided to make it a model for LEED construction.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. 

The building, which opened its doors in June 2010, recently achieved that goal--becoming the state's first local government building to achieve LEED Platinum status, according to city staffer Paul Miller. 

It's the highest level of sustainable construction through the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification program. The Hiawatha facility is also the first public works building in the country to get such a high score for going green, according to RSP Architects, which worked on the project. 

The Hiawatha facility houses construction and maintenance operations dealing with paving, sewers, streets, bridges, and sidewalks and the engineering laboratory, according to Miller.

The site has two buildings, including the 1914-built Hiawatha facility, down from 18 original structures, according to Miller.

A handful of years ago the City Council singled out the Hiawatha project to go for LEED Gold status--to make a statement, he says. "We established that bar before we really even got into the design."  

The building ended up getting Platinum status, which is a step above Gold. Achieving it involved "a lot of good pre-planning and a good architect who shared the same goal," along with a LEED experienced contractor, he says. "Those things came together and we got a lot more points than we ever thought possible." 

Additionally, the LEED status came at no additional expense, while the building will now be 60 percent more efficient than it would've been otherwise, he says. "That's a huge savings in lifetime [building] costs for the city."   

Among the energy-efficient measures in place: the building's heating and cooling happens through a geothermal pump. Lighting controls, the stormwater management system, and a smaller building footprint also help. But a big part of the certification has to do with how much of the building's old materials were recycled, he says. 

Concrete rubble was crushed for use as gravel base, while timber was salvaged and reused for window and door framing. Much of the metal was repurposed, while the fencing surrounding the site comes from the metal decking of the old Lowry Avenue Bridge. "None of what was existing there before left the site," he says, adding, "Obviously the city is very proud of it."  

Source: Paul Miller, city of Minneapolis
Writer: Anna Pratt

In putting together a hip new coffee shop that opens this week in South Minneapolis, the scrappy Peace Coffee team found themselves climbing atop an abandoned grain elevator, coming away with a cool door that makes for a unique menu board.

They salvaged lumber from a demolished house for custom benches. Additionally, blue and white tiles that once lined the bottom of a swimming pool now form a beautiful floor mosaic, picturing boxy, espresso-guzzling robots and monkeys.

The build-out of the Peace Coffee Shop at Wonderland Park is in keeping with the company's social responsibility ethos, inside and out. Peace Coffee peddles fair trade and organic coffee, often literally, via bicycle, from its base of operations that includes a roastery, in the nearby Phillips neighborhood.

The company had considered venturing into retail for a while, according to Peace Coffee's Lee Wallace, who goes by "Queen Bean."

It came together after a local building owner approached Wallace just over a year ago about the possibility of developing the space in the Longfellow neighborhood, which was previously a photography supply store. "This just seemed like the right partnership," says Wallace, who is leading the charge.

"It's another way to support the Twin Cities' independent coffee culture and connect with customers more directly," she says. She's looking forward to talking with people about how they source their coffees. "We want people to understand how to taste coffee and understand the story that comes with the food," which she adds goes from the farm to the cup.

At the bar, customers can watch as their drinks are being made, while a lab area provides for barista training, fair trade classes, and more.

Source: Lee Wallace, Peace Coffee, "Queen Bean"
Writer: Anna Pratt

City maps usually use colors, shapes, and other marks to denote things like bus routes, school locations, and major thoroughfares. Now a University of Minnesota professor is asking locals to mark places of pain and joy on her handmade wooden map of the Twin Cities.

"Unseen/Seen: The Mapping of Joy and Pain" is the latest project by Rebecca Krinke, an artist who teaches landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota. She is taking her large-scale tabletop map of Minneapolis and St. Paul to parks and other locations, where she invites people to draw in gray where they've felt pain and gold where they've felt joy.

The result, still evolving, is more than a composite mental map. It's a communal emotional map that Krinke hopes will be enlightening and even therapeutic.

"It really seems to be working," says Krinke, who calls the responses so far "beautiful, interesting and strange." Some people happen by; others who have heard about the project come as if by appointment. Most who participate end up staying half an hour or so, often interacting with others as they mark the map.

To her surprise, many of the markings are linear rather than mere points. River banks are lined with more gold than even Minneapolis' popular city lakes.

Word of the project has traveled quickly, and Krinke says she'll be packaging it for display in Blacksburg, Va. (site of a horrific campus shooting), and Sacramento, Calif.

A map of wood, while a thing of beauty, is also anachronistic in the age of Google Maps. Krinke says she's interested in suggestions she has received for online, possibly worldwide, versions.

Source: Rebecca Krinke, University of Minnesota
Writer: Chris Steller