North Side : Development News

Here's a measure of how serious Minneapolis is getting about bicycling: the city's draft Bicycle Master Plan, which is up for public comment this month, might tip you over if you tried to bike with it.

The plan, with accompanying design guidelines, runs to nearly 500 pages of text, tables, photos, and more. Its predecessor, from 2001, was a map.

The new document lays out Minneapolis' policies on bicycling and tells how city government intends to carry them out. If the city council adopts it, the master plan will be the first word--if not necessarily the last--on where biking will take Minneapolis and where Minneapolis will let biking go.

A series of five public meetings starts this week at which people can learn about the plan, express opinions and offer ideas for changes. A comment form, like the master plan itself, is available online.

Even before the meetings, members of the city's active bike community were sizing up the plan online at Minneapolis Bike Love and the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition. Resident Brendon Slotterback sees lots of city-planning documents in his job as Dakota County planner but says this seems like "a big deal." At his blog, Net Density, Slotterback made a new map to show which improvements actually have the maintenance funding needed to start construction.

Billy Binder, a member of the city's Bicycle Advisory Committee, a lifelong Northside resident, and longtime bicycling advocate, admires the master-plan effort but says the process is moving "way too fast." Guidelines showing 12-foot traffic lanes and 5-foot bike lanes are disappointing, he says, because narrower widths would let bike lanes proliferate even on skinny streets. Binder plans to comment but says he also will directly lobby council members to seek a plan worthy of what Bicycling magazine calls America's most bike-friendly city.

Sources: Billy Binder, Minneapolis Bicycle Advisory Committee; Brendon Slotterback, Net Density
Writer: Chris Steller

An annual arts crawl reaches the age of maturity at its fifth year. At least that's how Dudley Voight sees the FLOW Northside Arts Crawl, which at the ripe old age of five will once again enliven West Broadway in Minneapolis this Saturday.

"At the fifth year, you can ask different questions," Voight says. "We're not going away. What are our goals? That's really pretty fun."

FLOW is not standard gallery-crawl fare, although Voight says her inspiration for it came from the regular jubilance of monthly crawls in the Warehouse District in years past, when that downtown slice of North Minneapolis teemed with visual arts venues.

Businesses that aren't art galleries play a big role in FLOW, hosting art shows and performances. A highlight this year is Catalyst Community Partners' newly renovated 5 Points Building at Penn and Broadway, now home to KMOJ-FM Radio ("The People's Station"), which will host three floors of exhibits and arts activities.

Familiarity breeds interest in art, says Voight. One measure of FLOW's impact is that businesses on Broadway now routinely have art on their walls throughout the rest of the year.

"It's an invitation to people to come into our community, into our space," she says, and the art they'll see is a sample of what the community has on offer. "All the things that happen at FLOW happen all year round in north Minneapolis."

Source: Dudley Voight, FLOW Northside Arts Crawl
Writer: Chris Steller

This will be remembered as the year the City of Minneapolis got serious about community gardening.
 
In previous years, City Hall had an ad hoc system for entertaining occasional requests from groups who wanted to start gardens on city-owned property. Now an initiative called Homegrown Minneapolis is taking that to the streets, with a pilot program soliciting groups to lease space at 20 sites around the city.
 
These aren't just any 20 pieces of unused urban property. In a kind of "American Idol" for local vacant lots, city staff winnowed down a list of about 60 potential garden spots, ranking each on factors such as sun, safety, and access to water. An initial list of 22 properties included two that soil tests showed weren't safe for growing food. Of the remaining 20, two are spoken for: 1213 Spring St. NE, in the Beltrami neighborhood, and 3427 15th Ave. S. in Powderhorn.
 
One of the most critical criteria was whether the properties would tempt developers as the economy turns around. It wouldn't be fair to seek groups committed to gardening for sites likely to sell soon, says Karin Berkholtz, community planning manager. The city will take applications through the summer, with one-year leases for those new to gardening and multi-year leases for experienced groups.
 
Community gardens have gone in and out of fashion over the decades, appearing in city plans as far back as 1917. But this time, Berkholtz asks, "Is it a fashion or is it a paradigm shift?"
 
Source: Karin Berkholtz, City of Minneapolis
Writer: Chris Steller
 

The Minneapolis Farmers' Market on the outskirts of downtown is already a seasonal sensation, a place where the chance to jostle with other shoppers past 240 stalls of flowers and food is guaranteed most summer mornings.
 
Now the adjoining Farmers' Market Annex, where crowds spill over to shop at 160 more vendor stalls, has turned a little-used parking lot and storage area into a showplace for home landscape and garden services called Urban Garden.
 
Owner Scott Barriball compares Urban Garden to a permanent home and garden show in a farmers' market setting--a sort of outdoor version of the nearby International Market Square design showplace. The offerings range from pergolas, fire pits, and bubbling boulders to handmade willow furniture, birdhouses, and tomato trellises.
 
Barriball says the equivalent of close to $1 million in labor and materials went into the creation of Urban Garden, transforming a site he says used to be "an underutilized mess." Vendors and contractors tore out blacktop and built landscaping attractions that include three outdoor kitchens, two waterfalls, and a rain garden.
 
Barriball's Annex is a for-profit counterpart to the nonprofit Farmers' Market operated by the Central Minnesota Vegetable Growers Association. Together they lay claim to having the largest selection of any market in the Upper Midwest, with an atmosphere like a European bazaar, drawing as many as 25,000 people daily.
 
Source: Scott Barriball, Minneapolis Farmers Market Annex
Writer: Chris Steller
 

Calvin Littlejohn had had enough of running his small construction business out of a spare bedroom.

Since founding Tri-Construction, Inc., in 2001, Littlejohn and business partner Lester Royal had made the move from residential to commercial construction. But they were still "Mickey Mouse-in' it," as Littlejohn puts it.

That's why he likes their new office at 1200 W. Broadway, a building developed by Catalyst Community Partners.

"We can have clients come over to the office, use the conference room. It adds another layer," he says. "That much more professionalism."

Catalyst is a developer with a mission: reviving business along commercial avenues in the most troubled urban areas, particularly along West Broadway on Minneapolis' north side. That's where Catalyst lays claim to more redevelopment (in partnership with board member Stuart Ackerberg's The Ackerberg Group) than any other developer.

That's also where Littlejohn went looking for office space so he could move Tri-Construction out of his home. "We wanted to stay in North Minneapolis," he says, but suitable space was hard to find on West Broadway. "I don't think there was anything."

Tri-Construction has also won contracts with Catalyst. The firm's minority-owned status brings opportunity, he says, but not business, which requires performing better than everyone.

"The thing I like about what Catalyst does is, they see a need within the community, development that needs to take place," Littlejohn says. "They are coming in, putting their money where their mouth is. Put [buildings] in, allow commerce to do the rest."

Source: Calvin Littlejohn, Tri-Construction, Inc.
Writer: Chris Steller

A group of designers who call themselves the What!Worx Collaboration have won a design competition for artist housing on Minneapolis' North Side by taking a collage approach -- both to the design and to how they worked.

That's appropriate, because the Bearden Place townhouses are meant to honor 20th-century artist Romare Bearden, who used collage to depict and comment on contemporary life, particularly for African-Americans.

The competition, sponsored by the City of Minneapolis and the Builders Association of the Twin Cities, was also a way to stir up ideas for regenerating neighborhoods hit hard by the foreclosure crisis (pdf).

The site, at Sheridan and Plymouth avenues, is in the Willard-Hay neighborhood, one of two in Minneapolis still seeing foreclosures in double digits each month. Citywide, the foreclosure rate fell in 2009 but has been creeping up again this year. City government has been battling back on a number of fronts � including the Bearden Place design competition.

Ira A. Keer, an interior architect, started What!Worx in 2007 with other design professionals from major firms who found themselves on their own as the recession took hold in their industries. "Our combined portfolios opened doors," Keer says. The group's ad-hoc business structure could respond flexibly as opportunities arose.

What!Worx's Tim Heitman, a graphic and environmental designer, said the team's 1,600-square-foot live/work spaces (pdf) were among the most generous of the 38 submitted designs. The exteriors, Heitman says, have a color collage's "sense of articulation and individuality."

Negotiations to build the project are underway.

Source: Ira A. Keer, Tim Heitman, What!Worx Collaborative Design
Writer: Chris Steller