Strong Local Economy : Development News

Community members can get involved in the design process for the Frogtown Farm and Park at a workshop on Oct. 12 from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Rondo Library. 

The 13-acre park in the works for St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood includes a recreation area, a nature preserve, and a demonstration farm. 

The upcoming workshop deals specifically with the design of the park's farm portion, which will take up nearly half of the site. Over the summer, the park pulled in the San Francisco-based Rebar Art and Design Studio to lead the farm's design process. 

The interdisciplinary agency, which works with numerous Twin Cities-based experts, was a good fit for the project because much of its work lies “at the intersection of art, design and ecology,” farm materials state. That includes experience with community farms and gardens.  
 
Betsy Schaefer Roob, a spokesperson for Frogtown Farm and Park, says next week's workshop will give community members a chance to share ideas and hear about the possibilities for the farm. That feedback will continue to drive several related meetings in the coming months. The idea is “to gather input and eventually responses to different concept designs,” she says, adding that the goal is to have a final design by early 2014.

Community members will consider how to facilitate programs at the farm centering on food production, education, and gardening, she says.  

After the design process wraps up, infrastructure will go in, while cover crops will be planted in 2014, she says. The farm will be up and running the following year.

The surrounding park is undergoing a separate community process. 

The idea for Frogtown Farm came from a handful of longtime neighborhood residents, and community involvement is something the farm aims to continue every step of the way. “Community is really the core of who we are and what we value,” Roob says.  

She hopes the result will be a “community place, a place to gather, to learn, to work, to play, and to share knowledge and, of course, food,” she says. “We really need the wisdom and diverse perspectives of the Frogtown community to build that place.”  

Source: Betsy Schaefer Roob, Frogtown Farm and Park 
Writer: Anna Pratt 

Travail Kitchen and Amusements, a Robbinsdale restaurant, is experimenting with a pop-up eatery called Umami in North Minneapolis. 

Umami, which is themed around Asian-style "comfort food," will occupy the space on West Broadway Avenue North for up to eight weeks, according to a prepared statement. The 45-seat restaurant is “the first tasting menu and takeout-driven pop-up restaurant in Minnesota,” the prepared statement reads. 

Travail collaborated with the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition (WBC) to open the place. 

The project fits in with the WBC’s ongoing effort to shine a light on assets in the West Broadway business district, according to Shaina Brassard, a spokesperson from the WBC. “We’re looking for ways to draw attention to vacant spaces on West Broadway,” she says. That includes pop-up galleries and retail shops in various spaces along the corridor. 

It helps that Travail, which is in the process of opening a couple of other local restaurants, has also been hosting pop-up events all over town this summer, she says. 

The space, which has sat vacant for a couple of years, features floor-to-ceiling windows, an open kitchen, a mural, and other art, plus long, community-style tables and more. Brassard is hopeful that Umami’s “presence there, which is beautiful and vibrant, will make people see the potential that the space has as a restaurant.” 

Although the WBC has long supported pop-up art events as a part of FLOW Northside Arts Crawl and other community initiatives, “It’s a strategy we’re working on this year in particular, as a part of our retail recruitment and business district revitalization,” she says. The pop-up idea encourages people to “think about space in a different way,” she adds.  

To help pull off the pop-up restaurant, the WBC negotiated a short-term lease for the space and it took advantage of grant money from the city’s Great Streets initiative.  

The place has already generated buzz. “The neighborhood is excited about having such a great sit-down restaurant in the area,” Brassard says. 


Source: Shaina Brassard, West Broadway Coalition
Writer: Anna Pratt 

Tracy Sides, a healthy-foods advocate who lives on St. Paul’s East Side, frequents the nearby Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. The grounds have become a source of inspiration for her, and more recently, the focus of a million-dollar idea. 

In February, Sides submitted a plan to transform a vacant building at Bruce Vento into a food hub, to the St. Paul Foundation’s Forever St. Paul Challenge, a contest to support ideas for improving the city.  

Sides’ Urban Oasis concept rose to the top, and on Monday the foundation announced it was the contest’s winner. The foundation will contribute $1 million to the cause.    

Urban Oasis was among 1,000 entries in the beginning. The pool was whittled down to 30 semifinalists and more recently, three finalists. A public voting system online determined the final winner. 

For Sides, the outcome came as a pleasant surprise. At the same time, it seems like a natural next step in a longstanding community process to liven up the nature sanctuary, she says. Urban Oasis is part of a bigger project to renovate the city-owned building, she adds.   

The food hub, which will take up a couple of floors in the four-story building, will include a food cooperative, eatery, event space, catering company, and a food truck. Commercial kitchens will be available for rent, while the hub will also provide business training to small ventures oriented around food. Communal suppers on Sunday nights and cooking classes will also help make the place a true community center, she says. 

The food hub is about “creating something that’s a thriving asset for the community, and that’s addressing some of our needs,” she says. Additionally, in a diverse neighborhood, a food hub seems like an appropriate way to “acknowledge and celebrate our differences,” she says. “We’re connecting people through food.” 

Although food hubs are experiencing a groundswell of popularity across the country, Sides’ concept is unique for the “unprecedented number of spokes [it has]. In a way, it’s modeling a healthy food system, with growing, producing, distributing, selling, preparing, eating, and composting waste,” Sides says. 

It’s about “creating a more equitable and healthy food system. That’s the real outcome I would love to see from this.”


Source: Tracy Sides
Writer: Anna Pratt 
Image: Kevin McKeever - Image Generation

Betty Danger’s Country Club, a Tex-Mex restaurant featuring dining while sitting on a Ferris wheel, a mini golf course, and a “pro shop,” is destined for Northeast Minneapolis. 

The restaurant plans to take over the former home of Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge, a retro drive-in at 2519 Marshall St. N.E., according to city materials about the project. The location has been empty since Psycho Suzi’s relocated nearby a couple of years ago.  

Leslie Bock, a.k.a. Psycho Suzi, owns both places, along with Donny Dirk’s Zombie Den in North Minneapolis. 

She described the personality behind Betty Danger’s in a letter to neighbors, according to the TC Daily Planet, which quotes her: “Betty is apple pie and sunshine, but sadly lives in a time warp with no sense of reality or logic. Poor Betty."   

The restaurant's most striking attraction, a 60-foot Ferris wheel, will offer views of the Mississippi River, the downtown skyline, and the Lowry Bridge.     
  
Last Monday, the city’s planning commission approved plans for the restaurant, which will also have a clubhouse, a covered terrace, an outdoor kitchen, and a full bar. The place aims to open by early next year.  City Council member Kevin Reich says of the neighborhood’s reaction, “The predominant tone I’m getting is that everyone’s looking for a win-win.” 

Parking is the main issue that has come up with the area’s neighborhood group. That said, it’s a solvable problem, Reich believes.  “The city’s not afraid of the novelty of it,” he says, and will be breaking it down into various regulatory items and other nuts-and-bolts issues. It helps that “the community is very engaged,” according to Reich.

Bock is known as someone who is “committed to being a good neighbor, who’s very creative, thinks out of the box, and brings landmarks to the area." In terms of finding the "wow factor," Reich says, “She’s done that in a big way."  


Source: Kevin Reich, City Council member 
Writer: Anna Pratt 

The Corcoran Neighborhood Organization (CNO) wants to encourage community participation in the planning of an ambitious event it's hosting this fall called Take the Field. 

The Oct. 11 event, which will take place at Minneapolis's South High School's athletic field, will be a block party-style get-together with a special artistic project, a picnic, a movie screening, and more. 

Tonight, people will gather at the intersection of 21^st Avenue South and 31^st Street to brainstorm for the event. 

Besides the community-building aspect, Take the Field aims to spark a dialogue about neighborhood traffic issues and possible solutions, according to CNO community organizer Ross Joy.

The event was inspired in part by the school district's decision to phase out yellow school bus service to the city's public high schools, he explains. Starting this fall, students will walk, bike or take public transit to South High, or more cars might be on the road, according to CNO.  

In response, the neighborhood group wants to lead a discussion about how 21^st Avenue and 32^nd Streets could become major corridors for pedestrians and cyclists. CNO hopes to jumpstart that conversation at the meeting this week, which is open to anyone. Attendees will help flesh out event details, as well, Joy says. 

The neighborhood group is collaborating with the artistic trio Janaki Ranpura, Andrea Steudel, and Meena Mangalvedhekar, known collectively as JAM, on the event's main attraction, in which huge projections and sound will turn the field into an interactive art space. Attendees can join in the visualization, or they can take in the spectacle from the bleachers.  

Joy hopes the public art project will “engage the community about the big ideas of scale, time and space.” That's important as the neighborhood considers how walkers, bicyclists and car drivers fit together, physically. 

These are issues that have been building in the neighborhood for some time. Last spring, South High students led a petition asking local government leaders to improve 21st Ave S and 32nd Street for cyclists. “Most students live east of Hiawatha highway 55 and thus major crossing like at 32^nd Street are often dangerous and discourages bicycle use,” Joy explains. 

Furthermore, the event dovetails with other planning efforts in the neighborhood, including its small area plan and the Urban Planning vision for East Lake Street, he says. 

“One of the big outcomes we are seeking is for the wider community to embrace a new identity for the South High Athletic Field,” Joy says. 

That identity should be “high-use and diverse, engaging for pedestrians, and safe for cyclists,” he adds.  


Source: Ross Joy, lead organizer, CNO  
Writer: Anna Pratt 

Last week, the White House honored Steven Clift, the founder and head of E-Democracy, an online forum where people discuss everything from neighborhood development to airport noise, as a Champion of Change.  

Clift was among 15 people across the country to receive the award. The honorees stand out for their work "to build participation in our democratic processes while using new technologies and engaging less represented communities via open government and civic hacking,” a prepared statement about the award reads.  

Clift, a fellow with the Ashoka association of global social entrepreneurs, started the nonprofit E-Democracy in 1994. Even today, “Most cities don’t have anything like that," he says. 

The website has continued to evolve as well. For example, last year, with a Knight Foundation grant, it started a volunteer-run initiative called BeNeighbors.org that strives to “connect all neighbors online (and off) in public life,” a prepared statement reads. 

So far, BeNeighbors.org has over 15,000 members throughout the Twin Cities and beyond who participate in numerous online forums, according to E-Democracy materials.

The forums are especially busy in South Minneapolis. Clift hopes to see the site gain traction in St. Paul.  

This involves “tackling areas that are community information deserts with limited in-person (or online) opportunities to connect people locally across race, immigrants and native-born,” and more. To do so, the organization has been reaching out to people in person at local libraries, soccer games, and community festivals and even going door-to-door. The idea is to “make virtual space welcoming, open and relevant,” Clift says. 

Already, posting volume on the site has increased 152 percent from St. Paul-ites over the past year. St. Paul is the first city he knows of with “a network of open online spaces covering every neighborhood/district,” he says. 

In the forums, “People love to celebrate local small business, get recommendations on service, development along the light rail,” along with art events and more. In some ways, the result is akin to the virtual version of a grocery store bulletin board, Clift says. Meanwhile, the website’s volunteers are monitoring certain topics, looking for intersections of culture and place, among other things, he says. 

Seeing the progress so far is encouraging. “These are pretty exciting times. We’re looking forward to expanding the work and sharing the welcomes,” he says.

Source: Steven Clift, E-Democracy
Writer: Anna Pratt 

Last weekend, a vacant building at 1001 West Broadway Avenue in North Minneapolis was turned into a large-scale work of art. 

A bold vinyl wrap featuring photographic images from the neighborhood wraps around two sides of the three-story building. 
The project kicks off the FLOW Art Crawl, an annual event since 2006 that’s running this weekend with more offerings than in previous years. 

Many different galleries, studios, theaters, and other spaces are a part of the art crawl, which stretches down West Broadway, from the Mississippi River to Penn Avenue North, according to art crawl materials. This includes a Caribbean cultural "masquerade parade" and a mini-Open Streets event in partnership with the Minneapolis Bike Coalition. Open Streets allows for bicyclists and pedestrians to freely wander North 2nd Street.  

Dudley Voigt, FLOW’s artistic director, says that each year during the event, “We have made a piece of public art that lasted beyond the event.”   

The three-story building can’t be occupied at this time, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be showcased,” she says.  

FLOW, along with the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition, collaborated with the city, which owns the building, to “figure out a way to wrap it, to use art on a larger scale and amplify what we’ve been doing for a long time,” she says. 

The project expands on the city’s façade improvement efforts and the coalition’s work around business recruitment, corridor marketing and creative placemaking, a prepared statement from the city reads.  

The guerilla-style photos that characterize the vinyl wrap, which Armour Photography, owned by Jake Armour, shot in June, feature area business owners, organization leaders, artists, architectural elements of the corridor and more. 

“What’s great about this is that you can drive by it and see it anytime. It’s a celebration of the great things happening on the North Side everyday,” she says.

A number of other North Side buildings have also gotten an artistic makeover. “Public art makes any space look good,” on both the inside and outside, Voigt says. At times, this type of public artwork has even led to a building or another space being rented or purchased. “We see that story playing out over and over again, the intersection of art and commerce,” she says. 

Meanwhile, the vinyl wrap is expected to last several years. “The city and the community want to see the building occupied before the banner fades,” says Voigt.  

Source: Dudley Voigt, artistic director, FLOW 
Writer: Anna Pratt

The Minnesota Beer Activists group is planning a community garden centered exclusively on hops, which are used to flavor beer.  

Andrew Schmitt, the group’s executive director, saw a need for fresh, locally sourced hops. “I thought, ‘why not have a garden dedicated to just hops, which the community can use?’” he says. “We have a great community of home brewers in Minnesota and this is one way we can help with that.”  

He knows of no other community hops gardens in the country. The Minnesota Beer Activists worked with Hennepin County to find a spot for the garden. They setled on a lot at the corner of East 38th Street and Dight Avenue in Minneapolis’s Longfellow neighborhood.  

Besides turning a vacant space into a productive one, the garden dovetails with several local breweries. “It brings neighbors together and they can share something they have in common,” he says.   

The Minnesota Beer Activists plans to run the hops garden cooperatively. People can sign up to take part in much the same way that they would in any other community garden, collectively maintaining it, he says.

To help get it up and running, Hippity Hop Farms in Forest Lake is donating hop plants and trellises, which cuts down on the group’s overhead costs, he says. Schmitt hopes to track down some rain barrels as well.

The garden will start out by planting Cascade hops, which are “great all around for making beer, in terms of taste and aroma,” he says, adding, “As things progress, we may look at some other styles.”

Schmitt plans to edge the garden with wheat and barley. He also wants to set up a bench to create a park-like feel, he says.  
By October, the garden should have its first harvest. The hops will be good for home brewers and cooking enthusiasts alike.

He hopes to make the garden the “leading edge of what could be a movement,” inspiring other community hops gardens in the area, and beyond.

Source: Andrew Schmitt, executive director, Minnesota Beer Activists
Writer: Anna Pratt

To flesh out its in-progress street design manual that’s part of a broader plan, St. Paul is holding a photo contest of “street elements" that can be found throughout the city.

The manual will provide "a clear framework for street design processes,” according to city information. Community members can help add to the manual with snapshots of “street elements,” which include sidewalks, benches, crosswalks, bike racks and lanes, boulevard trees, outdoor cafes, and more.

The contest, which has an Aug. 1 deadline, is open to anyone, from the amateur to the professional photographer, according to Anton Jerve, a city official who is leading the charge. Contest rules, along with a lengthy list of “street elements,” sample photos and image requirements can be found on the city’s website. Some people may even be able to use their smartphones, depending on how good their cameras are, he says.  

The contest is a creative way to get the public involved in the digital manual, which will see plenty of use from city planners, he says. “This is an opportunity for people to go out and take photos and help us customize the manual,” he says, adding, “It showcases the good things we’re already doing.”         

This will contribute to the city's Complete Streets Plan, which is all about street design that takes into consideration “the needs of all street users, of all ages and abilities,” city materials state. The manual will “talk about how we can bring the street elements all together to design a complete or balanced street,” Jerve says.            

Part of what makes it helpful is that “People will take photos of places they like. It gets people out and about and thinking about the streets, and the relationship between what we’re calling something in the manual and how it’s functioning,” he says.  
 
Source: Anton Jerve, city of St. Paul
Writer: Anna Pratt

Heyday, a new restaurant coming to Minneapolis's Uptown neighborhood, has big plans to transform the space once occupied by the former Sunny Side Up Café and an adjacent Laundromat.    

Lorin Zinter, a principal of Heyday whose partner is chef Jim Christiansen, says the pair scouted out lots of restaurant spaces all over the city for several years before settling on this location. They’re fans of Uptown, which is ideally situated “so close to single-family homes, condos, apartments and other great businesses. It was a great fit for us.”

To make way for Heyday, the concept for which they’re still developing, the pair is planning a dramatic renovation of the space. The building will take on a whole new look and feel, he says.

For starters, they’ll be removing the exterior siding and installing new windows and doors, while the interior will be brought down to the floorboards and studs. “We’ll start from scratch and it’ll be open, extending up to the ceiling,” he says, adding, “I love the original exposed hardwood ceilings.”

Natural materials will characterize the place, while local artist Terrence Payne, founder of the Rosalux Gallery, will create an original piece that will lend plenty of personality to one interior wall. “We’re excited to work with him. He’s immensely talented. We want to use local artists, so visitors can see and feel the impact of people in Minneapolis within the restaurant,” Zinter says.

A bar and lounge will take up close to half of the space, while the restaurant portion will fill out the remainder of the nearly 4,600-square-foot area, he says.  

Even though Zinter and Christiansen have a background in fine dining, “We don’t want it to be only a special-occasion place. We want it to be a place in the neighborhood where people feel free to walk down anytime.”

Construction will start in mid-July, while the restaurant aims to open in December.  

“I think there’s such a great food scene already on Lyndale, and it’s building nicely. We want to contribute to that and make this part of the city that much more fun and enjoyable,” he says.

Source: Lorin Zinter, co-owner, Heyday
Writer: Anna Pratt

Urban Growler Brewing, a small packaging microbrewery with a taproom, is in the works for a vintage brick building in St. Paul's St. Anthony Park neighborhood. The place is hosting an open house this Friday and Saturday.

Although the 6,200-square-foot warehouse space still has a ways to go before the brewing can happen, the event is a chance to learn more about Urban Growler or to become a member, according to brewer and co-founder Deb Loch.

Loch, whose business partner is Jill Pavlak, says the women-run brewery’s mission is to "bring people together through beer." Also, they want to make craft beer more accessible to women. Although beer brewing is male-dominated, long ago in the brewing tradition, “It was a woman’s job,” Loch says.

Right now, the brewery is fundraising to build out the space. That includes installing the right equipment for the brewing process. Besides that, “We have to make sure the structural integrity is there to hold the weight of the tanks,” she says.

The brewery plans to make traditional and specialty beers, while its “Plow to Pint” series will include local ingredients. “We’ll be partnering with local farmers and bringing out their story,” and some customers might act as “specialty suppliers,” too, she says. The brewery will have a “kitchen where a small but delicious menu of food that goes with beer will be made. We hope to have a local twist for that as well."

Its ambiance will be “warm industrial,” according to Loch. “We hope it becomes a community gathering spot,” she says, adding, “We envision this area becoming the next Northeast Minneapolis,” brewery-wise.  

The place joins a growing list of local breweries springing up in the area, including Bang Brewing Co., Burning Brothers Brewing and Surly Brewing Co. “Craft beer is growing like crazy in the Twin Cities,” she says.

She hopes that the neighborhood “becomes a destination for people outside the area. “There’s a lot of interest in beer out there and there’s plenty of room for everyone.”  


Source: Deb Loch, co-founder and brewer, Urban Growler Brewing
Writer: Anna Pratt

Before the Kosama Body Transformation fitness studio moved into Laurel Village, a downtown Minneapolis apartment complex, the 4,000-square-foot space had been vacant for over a decade.  

Jake Madrinich, who owns the local Kosama, says, “I was able to come in and work with the landlord, who wanted there to be an amenity for people in the building.”   

From the outset, Madrinich had been looking to bring the fitness studio to the neighborhood because “This area is starting to change and grow,” he says. Plus, the central location offers “great visibility,” and it’s easy for downtown commuters to stop in before or after work.

Even though gym memberships tend to wane in the warmer months, Kosama, which opened six months ago, continues to grow its clientele, says Madrinich. The fitness studio stands out for its group dynamic, he says.

While people work out in a group, their heart rate is being monitored, with a display on a TV. This fosters a healthy level of competition. “Nobody wants to be last on the heart rate monitor,” according to Madrinich.

It may sound counterintuitive, but in a group setting, where everyone is trying to meet various fitness goals, “Self-consciousness goes away and we get down to getting results,” Madrinich says. “We’re helping people with lifestyle changes and making fitness a part of their life.”

“Even though it’s in a group setting, we provide individual feedback,” he says, adding that people receive an email afterward telling them how many calories they burned along with other infoirmation.
 
Beyond fitness, “I really hope we can become a focal point within the community, where people can get to know their neighbors,” Madrinich says.

Source: Jake Madrinich, owner, Kosama
Writer: Anna Pratt

The recently formed Women on Bikes Saint Paul, an advocacy group that aims to get more women biking around the city, is looking for a full-time community organizer to lead the way. (See the job posting here.)

The group hopes to fill the position by early July, according to Jessica Treat, the executive director at St. Paul Smart Trips, its umbrella organization.  

The idea behind the initiative is to “advance the political will in St. Paul” as it pertains to bicycling. “We want to turn out a coalition of women, including women with kids, for bicycling issues,” she says. “It’s about livability.”

Treat is a co-founder of the group along with Amber Dallman and Samantha Henningson. All of them are avid bicyclists. 
 
The idea for the group came out of a grassroots process to get a bike boulevard on Charles Avenue, from North Aldine Street to Park Street. It was a success, but it took quite a bit of effort to turn out women and families. “That was eye-opening to the three of us involved,” Treat says. “We said, ‘what would it take to turn out that voice repeatedly?’”   

The “percentage of women on bikes is a lot lower,” than it is for men, she says, adding, “There are real reasons for that.”

A recent survey from St. Paul Smart Trips of over 200 women in the city showed that safety is a major concern when it comes to biking, especially for those with children, she says. “It’s not that there aren’t sympathetic men, but women with families are a powerful constituency that needs to be heard."

The group’s next step is to pull together a group of spokeswomen from each city ward, who would be responsible for connecting with local politicians. Soon, the group will also organize an advisory body of some sort, to “help us decide what to focus on,” she says.   

Some areas of the city have little to no bicycle infrastructure. “We need to have some conversations about trade-offs, what are the priorities,” she says. “We need to start talking about why biking and having a bike-supportive city is important to business in St. Paul, and attracting talent and young people.”  
 

Source: Jessica Treat, executive director, St. Paul Smart Trips
Writer: Anna Pratt

The Buttered Tin, a new bakery/restaurant, is slated to open in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood later this month.

The place has a $10,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign underway, for which it needs $2,000 to reach its goal by next week. 

Jennifer Lueck, who co-owns the place with her business partner, Alicia Hinze, says the money will help get the bakery up and running. She hopes the campaign gets community members to take ownership of the bakery/restaurant right away, too. 

The pair focused on this neighborhood because “We knew it was a need. There’s nothing like it in that area,” Lueck says. Lowertown “seems like it’s right on the verge of exploding with light rail and the new stadium coming. It feels like a good time to get in and establish ourselves,” early, she says.  

The space previously housed a sub shop but had been vacant for a number of years. It had a good floor plan already, with space for 45 seats inside plus outdoor dining for 20 patrons. “We didn’t have to do a major renovation or construction,” Lueck says.

Instead, they mainly reimagined the look of the space, and created an open kitchen, so people can see the food as it's prepared. "We think it’s important that people feel connected to their food,” she says.

The partners want the café to be a comfortable neighborhood gathering place. “We feel we’re contributing to the neighborhood,” Lueck says. To create that feel, the space has ceiling tiles, dark wood, “a cool floor that’s really durable,” and reclaimed marble from the historic Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis, which makes for a unique countertop. “Aesthetically, it’s traditional or classic. That’s what our aim is for the interior."

It’s been fun to see the elements she and Hinze picked out a year ago falling into place, says Lueck. “We’re so excited. It turned out beautifully,” she says.

Source: Jennifer Lueck, co-owner, The Buttered Tin
Writer: Anna Pratt  

The Midtown Greenway, a 5.5-mile biking and walking trail in South Minneapolis, is too dark in some places.

This was a key concern raised by the Midtown Greenway Coalition’s crime-prevention task force, which recently studied the Greenway’s safety, according to Soren Jensen, who leads the organization.  Jensen says the coalition’s Trail Watch, a volunteer group of bicyclists who patrol the Greenway nightly, tries to keep an eye on things.  

But the group has been working to go beyond that to ensure safety along the path. “We wanted to see if we could come up with more ways to keep crime low in the Greenway,” he says. That’s what led the organization to form the crime-prevention task force a number of months ago.

To evaluate conditions along the Greenway, the task force members, armed with light meters, went out one night “measuring the amount of light in the corridor,” he says.  

In the end, they found too many shady spots, going by national trail standards, he says. Of particular concern are “very dark stairs and ramps,” at some points along the trail.

Although the Greenway has a low crime rate, "When there have been late-night muggings, they have tended to be near the dark stairways.”

To get a better handle on the situation, the task force produced a Google map; it’s an internal document that pinpoints the worst places along the Greenway, in order of priority, he says. Soon, the coalition hopes to see more lighting installed and signage that lets people know they’re under surveillance on the Greenway.

“We have prioritized about 15 sites so far, mostly between Interstate 35W and Hiawatha Avenue, and will continue to roll out our rankings of dark spots as the city moves to fix them,” he says.


Source: Soren Jensen, executive director, Midtown Greenway Coalition
Writer: Anna Pratt