Entrepreneurship : Development News

In recognition of the unique Asian businesses and other cultural institutions along University Avenue in St. Paul from Galtier to Mackubin streets, the area is being branded as Little Mekong.

It’s an initiative that the local Asian Economic Development Association (AEDA) launched on Feb. 25.

The name references the Mekong River, which is a major river in Southeast Asia, according to Va-Megn Thoj, who heads the AEDA. “Most businesses in the area have a connection to the river,” he explains.

In his view, “By giving a name to a destination which has existed for a long time, we can draw more people into the area.” This is especially needed during Central Corridor light rail construction, he says.  

Already, as a result of construction obstacles, many of the businesses are seeing less foot traffic, he says.

With the Little Mekong branding, “We want to build on what we have,” which he describes as “an attractive destination for people to get introduced to Asian cultures and cuisine.” Although the district has been around informally for a long time, not too many people are familiar with it, he says.

Besides improving the streetscape and putting up district-related signage, Little Mekong will host a number of events, including family-friendly festivals.

AEDA is also working with businesses to create incentive programs to bring in more customers, including coupons and other deals, and to handle increased traffic. “We’re working with businesses to strengthen their operations and customer service,” he says.

The coming Central Corridor represents “a tremendous opportunity to create something of benefit to the neighborhoods and city and region," he adds.

Source: Va-Megn Thoj
Writer: Anna Pratt

After four years of sitting vacant, the space that once housed the Auriga restaurant in Minneapolis's Lowry Hill neighborhood will soon reopen with a unique deli concept.

The deli will be similar to those in Eastern Europe, but with a twist, according to Tobie Nidetz, a consultant on the project. Nidetz has helped open numerous restaurants in many locations.  

Citing a shortage of delis in the Twin Cities and beyond, Nidetz, who is known as "the food guy," says there's a "pent-up demand" for such a place.

He and real estate attorney David Weinstein, who lives near the space at 1930 Hennepin Avenue South, hope to fill that void, he says.  

Although specific details of the plan are still coming together, including the project's cost, physical renovations will happen mainly inside the space, while the old exterior will probably stay intact, the Southwest Journal reports.

Right now, Weinstein and Nidetz are still meeting with various designers, general contractors, and others to flesh out certain aspects of the project, including the deli's name, according to Nidetz.

However, they've already committed to a "fast casual" type of restaurant that will offer as many local, organic and sustainable products as possible, he says.

Most of the food will be made in-house. The deli will also offer desserts, coffee drinks, beer and cocktails, and more, he says.

But the signature menu item will be a variation on pastrami that's popular in Montreal.

Although the timeline is preliminary, Nidetz says he and Weinstein hope to open the deli this fall.


Source: Tobie Nidetz
Writer: Anna Pratt

The $4.8 million Emerge Career and Technology Center will help address a growing digital divide in North Minneapolis.  

Emerge Community Development will redevelop the former North Branch Library at 1834 Emerson Avenue North, to make way for the center, which will offer a wide variety of programming pertaining to emerging careers, with an emphasis on green jobs, according to Emerge executive director Mike Wynne.

Training will deal with entrepreneurship, job skills, and career learning, while several learning labs, computer kiosks, multi-use conference rooms, and offices will be available.    

So far, Emerge has secured about $3.3 million for the center. Recently the project was listed by a City Council committee as a top priority for transit-oriented design funds from the county.    

In 2009, Emerge acquired the historic building from the Geneva Services Co., a salvage company that will stay in the building until the renovation starts, according to Wynne. The 13,000-square-foot building was a library from 1894 until 1977.    

Calling the building an architectural jewel, he says, "It's the oldest standing building that was erected solely as a library in the state and it was the first branch library in Minneapolis," adding that the project has attracted support from historic preservation groups, government agencies, and other funders.

Emerge's fundraising campaign highlights the legacy of Gratia Countryman, who headed the Minneapolis library system for several decades in the early 1900s, according to Wynne. She was well known across the country for her work starting up children's reading rooms and the bookmobile, which originated at the branch library, according to Emerge information.

As a part of the project, the old bookmobile garage and classrooms will be repurposed for the career tech center while some of Emerge's partners will move into the building to support its operation. "This community asset needs to be returned," says Wynne, adding, "It's a purpose that's accessible" to individuals and big and small groups.   
 
Emerge plans to wrap up the fundraising aspect in 2011 and begin construction before the year ends. "It's been a challenging time to hold a capital fundraising effort, but we continue to see progress," he says.  

On a broad level, the development contributes to the revitalization of the West Broadway commercial corridor. "At a time of great disparities in joblessness in North Minneapolis and communities of color, this is a chance to bring a support mechanism that works in a very direct way."

Source: Mike Wynne, executive director, Emerge Community Development
Writer: Anna Pratt

Eric Brew, a St. Paul resident, has long thought about creating an arts hub where writers, painters, thespians, and others could hang out and feed off of each other. 

The timing seemed right, so he recently set in motion an online kickstarter fund, to which anyone can contribute, to make it a reality. 

He's eying a 4,000-square-foot space in Northeast Minneapolis, the previous home of City Salvage, which moved next door, for a combination coffee shop, bookstore, and creative outlet he's calling Brew's Coffee & Books.

To make it a go, Brew needs to raise $32,000 in start-up expenses, including the first month's rent and deposit, business licenses, permits, coffee bar, bookshelves, and plumbing.

So far, the project has received $1,575 in startup funds, according to its website. The deadline for raising the money is May 4.  

Brew, who was inspired by the famous Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris, wants to provide a similar feel, with a book-filled partition and plenty of nooks and crannies. "It's the complete opposite of what's there now," he says. "It has an empty floor plan." 

The vacant space has hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, and a stage. Brew is looking to incorporate writing studios and a lending library, along with books for sale on consignment and dramatic performances.

He envisions a place where people can teach or attend classes, perform, and participate in discussion groups and more. "The biggest thing is having an open space available to all kinds of artists, not specifically writers or actors, but everyone."

Brew's will emphasize sustainable practices: "We promise to be as green as we can be in two environmentally taxing industries, coffee and publishing," its website states.  

For starters, the café will serve specialty coffees that come from a local roaster who supports "direct trade" coffee beans that come straight from farmers through an area importer, while sustainable practices will be constantly refined, according to its website. Food will also come from local sources. 

The cafe will try to use as many secondhand items as possible, Brew says. To get the concept beyond the idea stage, he's working with a couple of collaborators while also networking with artists. He hopes to open the cafe in June.   

Source: Eric Brew, originator of Brew's Coffee & Books
Writer: Anna Pratt

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

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

One of the most unusual development projects in the Twin Cities is facing a painfully common problem this month --foreclosure.

Schafer Richardson's East Bank Mills development was designed to bring nearly 1,000 new living units to the Minneapolis riverfront but stalled once the recession hit. Now a sheriff's sale is set for Nov. 15, with urgent negotiations underway to keep the project alive.

David Frank, who has been working on the project since his first day at Schafer Richardson seven years ago, says hope for East Bank Mills' future is "tempered with a hefty dose of reality." The project's financing structure, via 24 different banks, would be "unwieldy even in good times," he says.

The developer is pressing ahead on two fronts: trying to bring new money, people, and ideas to the project; and short-circuiting the foreclosure process through talks amongst the various parties' attorneys. But time is short. As Frank noted, when the calendar flipped this week the 15th was in the middle of the page.

East Bank Mills remains an ambitious vision, even languishing on paper. Plans include renovation of the historic Pillsury A Mill, a handsome 130-year-old limestone edifice that was the world's biggest flour mill in its heyday. Designed by Minneapolis architect LeRoy S. Buffington (who had a claim as one of the earliest skyscraper designers), the A Mill towers above Main Street, the oldest street in the city. Other massive buildings in the multi-block former Pillsbury milling complex would also be reused, including a red-tile grain elevator with silos that would remain empty but would support condominiums above.

Does Schafer Richardson regret environmental, historic-preservation and neighborhood planning processes that slowed the project's process? "Not really," Frank says. To forgo those steps is "not really our style."

Source: David Frank, Schafer Richardson
Writer: Chris Steller

This month St. Paul held its 30th art crawl, and the semi-annual event has grown so popular that it has spawned a smaller, monthly version. Foot traffic at Saint Paul Art Crawls averages 20,000–24,000, says Robyn Priestly, executive director at the Saint Paul Art Collective, the nonprofit that runs the event.

Spectacular fall weather may have suppressed attendance at this month's three-day crawl. Priestly says reports are still being tallied from organizers at the four "clumps" of studios across the city: Lowertown and downtown; Grand Avenue; University Avenue; and the East Side.

The crawls' appeal is partly architectural, Priestly says: "Looking at the buildings is part of it because these are great old buildings, whether they're the new rehabbed buildings on University Avenue or the old warehouses down in Lowertown."

First Friday open houses occur every month in which the collective isn't mounting an art crawl. The scaled-down monthly crawls feature studios in five Lowertown buildings: Tilsner, Jax, Lowertown Lofts, Northwestern Building and the Northern Warehouse. The next First Friday, on Nov. 5, marks the one-year anniversary of the event.

One of the collective's other projects has been opening a new art gallery in the Northern Warehouse. On exhibit now (call 651-292-4373 for hours): artwork by the collective's past and present board members.

The crawls grew out of open houses held by members of the Lowertown Lofts artists' cooperative 20 years ago. For the first decade they were annual affairs before growing to a twice-yearly event that has stayed true to its original impetus. "It is a giant open house," Priestly says.

Source: Robyn Priestley, St. Paul Art Collective
Writer: Chris Steller

On a sunny Sunday August afternoon last year, Leo Kim waded into the stream in downtown St. Paul's Mears Park for a new angle on a scene that had become familiar to him--maybe overly so--after many attempts at photographing it.

"What if I were a squirrel?" Kim asked himself. "What would I see?"

The resulting picture--an intimate view of natural forces set into motion in the city's midst--inspired Kim to embark on a nine-month quest to capture more images of surprising serenity within the city of St. Paul.

Now he's trying to raise $24,000 to publish a book of 96 photos he's calling "Saint Paul Serenity." That's twice what his earlier photo-book of North Dakota landscapes cost, but Kim decided he wants to keep the money in the local economy by using a Minneapolis printer instead of shipping the work overseas. An event on Thursday launches his fundraising effort, which he says is so far going more slowly than did the North Dakota project. He's hoping to get enough book orders to have "Serenity" printed by Christmas.

Kim, a professional photographer, lived in Minneapolis for 15 years before a 2005 move to Lowertown near Mears Park. He found he hadn't created a cohesive series of Minneapolis images--"Someday I will," he vows--but he readily discovered the serene scenes he went looking for around St. Paul.

"The city has done a great job with the landscape," says Kim, an immigrant of Korean heritage who came to Minnesota via Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Austria--not to mention time spent studying in North Dakota. He says he aspired to become an architect or city planner but couldn't bear to be in meetings. Instead, he seeks out St. Paul's wild side, often finding "I have the place to myself, only a stone's throw from downtown.

"It's amazing."

Source: Leo Kim, Leo Kim Photography
Writer: Chris Steller

The unlikely pairing of local history with Segway rides has propelled tour operator Mobile Entertainment, LLC, to success in both Twin Cities. Marketed as Magical History Tours, the $80-per-person excursions are now in their seventh season in Minneapolis and second in St. Paul.

The appeal of joining the lines of "people on a stick" that snake through the downtown Minneapolis riverfront and the elevated outskirts of downtown St. Paul is a "yin-yang thing," says owner Bill Neuenschwander. People enjoy experiencing the novelty of Segways while they take in historic sights and stories.

Many people in other cities have tried to copy Neuenschwander's model but have fallen short, he says. He has tried 27 Segway tours around the country and found some to be joy rides minus the joy. Without the element of history-on-wheels, he says, riding at 12.5 miles per hour from Point A to Point B gets dull fast.

Last year, the St. Paul tours operated out of the Minnesota History Center. This year the Segways have a storefront of their own on Grand Avenue. Next year they'll move to another a couple blocks down the street. (The company will also begin offering tours focused on sculpture and architecture in downtown Minneapolis, and possibly outlying locations like Stillwater or Northfield.)

The tours have proved different in St. Paul, where the emphasis of the narrative is on the Who--colorful personages who populated the frontier town's blufftop Gold Coast, Summit Avenue.  In Minneapolis, Neuenschwander says, the focus is on the What--the technological advances that built the city's industries, especially flour milling.

At 7.5 miles long, the St. Paul tour takes as much time as Minneapolis but is a mile longer--a difference made possible by full-throttle travel on the flats of Kellogg Boulevard between Cathedral Hill and the state Capitol.

Elsewhere on the circuitous St. Paul route, the Segways take an off-beat path that cars, pedestrians, and bikes wouldn't or couldn't follow, Neuenschwander says.

From a Segway perspective, he says, "St. Paul is eclectic, gnarly, and kind of bizarre."

Source: Bill Neuenschwander, Mobile Entertainment, LLC
Writer: Chris Steller

Sometimes an innovation is so welcome that it doesn't need branding.

When medieval Icelanders needed a name for their big invention, the world's first parliament, they settled on simply calling it the All-Thing.

This summer the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors (MAAR) faced the dilemma of naming its invention, an online, interactive database of local real-estate activity.

The MAAR staff took the Icelandic route. They called it The Thing.

Click on thething.mplsrealtor.com and you become the master of your own real estate data. Choose a Twin Cities neighborhood, a date range and a metric such as Days on Market, and colored lines appear, stretching across a chart to tell the story you want.

The Thing grew out of a desire to do better at communicating data, says Jeff Allen, who directs research at MAAR: "We were frustrated at our own inability to explain to our Realtors what was happening in the market in a way that was digestible and understandable to them."

MAAR "stumbled onto a business model" while trying to solve that problem, Allen says. Now its data-gathering arm, 10K Research, follows 70 markets for local realtors' associations. Some prefer a members-only approach to Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data, which is included in The Thing's database, but Allen says that in the Twin Cities the attitude is that "information should be transparent."

So far Allen says the "vast majority" of The Thing's users are real estate professionals seeking market information for their customers, says Allen. But the website is open to all and may eventually draw more lay users. "It's still in its infancy," he says.

Source: Jeff Allen, Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors
Writer: Chris Steller

From the ashes of the Arise! Bookstore, which closed up shop in May, will soon rise Boneshaker Books, in the same spot on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis. Boneshaker, a collective, bought the one-story building from the Arise! collective to continue an outpost of progressive publications there. But the seven-member Boneshaker crew--including some veteran members and volunteers with Arise!--also wanted to make a clean start. That meant a summer (or more) of renovations to the approximately 1,500-square-foot space.

To cover costs in the interim, Boneshaker Books is leasing the space to Storefront in a Box, an organization which in turn is offering rentals by the week to anyone with a good idea for using it--from a weeklong "Nerd Party" to a rummage-sale fundraiser for a one-woman theater production. The Women's Prison Project, which distributes books behind bars, will maintain its small space in the building. Meanwhile, Boneshaker is holding its own events at a variety of off-premise locations, including Washburn Fair Oaks Park and the Triple Rock Social Club.

Boneshaker Books' name derives from an early name for bicycles, though collective member Tom Schumacher says the association has grown diffuse and the name is now an "empty signifier" open to interpretation. The collective is calling its group of donors of $250 or more the "Skeleton Crew"--each of whom can choose a book that will stay in stock in perpetuity.

Schumacher concedes that opening a new independent bookstore is "somewhat quixotic." But he says the collective is counting on support for its niche market (progressive politics, defined more broadly than by its predecessor) as well as a solid base of support from the the neighborhood (Whittier, and across the street Lowry Hill East).

Source: Tom Schumacher, Boneshaker Books
Writer: Chris Steller

Psycho Suzi's, a popular, tiki-themed "motor lounge" in northeast Minneapolis, will move six blocks down Marshall Street to a 15,000-square foot space that used to house Gabby's, a riverfront saloon in a swirl of controversy until its recent closing.

Leslie Bock, Psycho Suzi's' owner, says she was moved to buy the expansive, 1.5-acre property because it allows more elbow room and the Mississippi River frontage holds strong appeal.

"I think tons of people are drawn to waterfront dining/drinking and we're all hoping we don't screw it up,"  Bock says via email. "The space and location will truly allow us to be all we can be. We need space to be creative and artsy, and obviously Northeast Minneapolis is that place."

The building will allow Bock to triple the 80-seat indoor capacity of her current location. She says she'll also be expanding the menu ("slightly"), and "adding some nonsense to keep the space interesting."

The new building is one of several commercial and residential properties along that stretch of Marshall Avenue that border the river. That's a rarity in the city, where most of the riverfront is parkland--or, in the "Above the Falls" sections of North and Northeast Minneapolis, industrial.

The short distance from the current location should make the move--now planned for the fall, close to the establishment's seven-year anniversary--easier, though still a daunting prospect. As Bock puts it, "We are excited and scared out of our pants.

"Psycho Suzi's concept was also meant to be oceanfront. What was I thinking?" she writes. "There are plenty of oceans to be had in Minneapolis ... via the Mississippi River gateway!"

Source: Leslie Bock, Psycho Suzi's
Writer: Chris Steller

The Birchwood Cafe occupies a special place in the Twin Cities--and not only because it's perfectly poised, five blocks off the Mississippi River and five blocks from each of two major south Minneapolis thoroughfares: East Lake Street and East Franklin Avenue.

The Birchwood is also the consummate neighborhood cafe in a neighborhood that, to many inside and out, is the consummate Twin Cities community: Seward.

That special perch complicates Birchwood owner Tracy Singleton's desire to expand what has become a landmark for locavores and lovers of its environmental vibe and "good real food."

The building began life in the 1920s as a dairy, becoming a neighborhood store in the 1940s that lasted until Singleton made it a cafe in 1996--with the Birchwood name a constant. Business, however, has not stayed still, and Singleton's excitement and anguish over expansion options have played out publicly in venues such as the cafe's monthly newsletter and a neighborhood blog.

A bid for a commercial building across the street to house the cafe's catering arm was aborted in the face of concern for existing tenant businesses (though Singleton promised to preserve several). Now Singleton is again contemplating an alternative that would be a blow to the personal roots she has laid in Seward: sacrificing her own home next door to the cafe.

"Last month I said that we were going to expand the Birchwood without using my neighboring house on the corner," Singleton writes in her latest newsletter. "Now it looks like we cannot achieve the breathing space we need without considering this option in the mix."

Source: Tracy Singleton
Writer: Chris Steller

Actually operating the Midwest's largest commercial rooftop farm may yet prove to be the biggest challenge for Sky High Harvest, LLC. But in the meantime, founder Dayna Burtness has discovered that finding the right location is a challenge in itself.

"It's not like there's a directory of flat roofs," Burtness says.

Burtness is seeking to turn her four years of organic gardening experience into a for-profit business, raising high-end, interesting vegetables such as heirloom tomatoes, kale, greens and root crops.

But instead of growing food in the country, as she did while a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Burtness wants to grow it in the city, close to the market where it will be consumed. And since Minneapolis lacks expanses of available vacant land for farming, she's looking up for a building that could support a farm. Prerequisites include an EPDM surface, at least 10,000 square feet of virgin roof surface, and two access routes up.

That last one is a toughie -- but necessary to meet the fire code if farmers are to be toiling and tilling on top of a building. So Burtness has been scanning Google Earth's aerial images of Minneapolis, looking for the telltale shadows from twin pilot houses indicating two sets of stairs, on a nice, flat roof at least a half-acre in size.

Burtness is in consultation with rooftop farmers in New York City and Chicago and says she feels it's now or never for commercial rooftop farming to take hold here, in part because of the city's current "Homegrown Minneapolis" program.

Source: Dayna Burtness, Sky High Harvest
Writer: Chris Steller