Development News

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

When you think about the materials that make up urban places--concrete, brick, plastic, metal--you don't ordinarily think of yarn.

Yarn bombers, also known at knit taggers, are out to change that. They knit things that are meant to be worn outdoors, but not by people. They wrap their knitting around poles on the street or install it on chain link fences. It's part graffiti, part handicraft.

If you've seen knitting-covered objects in the Twin Cities, you've probably seen the work of yarn bombers. They've covered a big rock at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance at the University of Minnesota, decorated a structural column outside Borealis Yarns at Thomas and Hamline in St. Paul, and enlivened the Cleveland Avenue overpass above I-94.

It's a national trend that a few years ago took hold in the fertile, active knitting culture of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, which, according to Radio K, supports the greatest number of yarn shops per capita of any place in the United States.

These days, knitters of all ages learn stitches and share knit-tagging techniques at meetups such as "Drunken Knit Night" at Merlin's Rest. One knitter who has taken it to the streets, Ann Rojas, says a friend of her daughter's learned to knit for the sole purpose of practicing yarn bombing. 

"The stereotype of the old lady knitting at home is not too current," says Rojas, whose own yarn-bombing-in-progress once drew the attention of a St. Paul police officer. "I sent him on his way," she says.

Source: Ann Rojas
Writer: Chris Steller

A court ruling blocking a proposed development last week has put the fate of a key site in the renaissance at Minneapolis' downtown riverfront back in the hands of the Minneapolis park board.

Members of an ad hoc group have been working toward this moment, studying the past and considering the future of the original Fuji-Ya restaurant property. A meeting between the 30-member unofficial committee and park officials is set for July 23.

To say the late restaurateur Reiko Weston was ahead of her time in 1963 when she built the Fuji-Ya on the foundation of an old mill next to St. Anthony Falls is an understatement. People considered pioneers of riverfront redevelopment were latecomers by comparison, getting projects going a decade or two later. Weston actually bought the property even earlier, in 1958, says Rhys MacPherson, an architect at MS&R and a member of the ad hoc group. He has assembled a timeline showing how the site has been used since 1870. "It has been a process of continuous change," he says.

Now a narrow wedge of sloping riverbank between First Street and W. River Parkway, the site appears to contain little beyond the spare white walls of the former Fuji-Ya above a 19th-century limestone base. But below ground, says MacPherson, are four stories of fascinating mill infrastructure--some of it collapsed due to disrepair on the Fuji Ya's roof.

Weston sited her restaurant well, MacPherson says: You can hear the roar of the falls and gaze at bridge upon bridge, up and down the river.

Source: Rhys MacPherson
Writer: Chris Steller

It's deserving of a golden spike--or maybe a golden kickstand.

Sometime in November the nation's first bicycle freeway is due to reach the Mississippi River from the west, through the difficult terrain of downtown Minneapolis. The Minneapolis City Council voted July 2 to fund completion of Phase III of the Cedar Lake Trail, at a reported cost of at least $9.2 million for a single mile. Work begins this month.

Rather than do battle with motor vehicles on surface roads, bicyclists will be able to follow the final leg of the trail along a semi-subterranean path. They'll travel in a railroad trench, alongside tracks carrying freight and commuter trains, from downtown's near-north outskirts through the Warehouse District to West River Parkway.

If other sections of the Cedar Lake Trail look something like an interstate freeway cutting across wild, open land, Phase III will have the feel of an inner-city freeway slicing through the urban core, Renderings by engineering firm URS show a paved bike roadway running next to sheer embankment walls and under long sections of elevated highway, all the while enclosed by chain link fence. (See PDF.)

At the trail's new end, riders will emerge into more bucolic surroundings, descending a ramp through the Federal Reserve Bank's private wildflower garden to the serpentine river road, just upstream from the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

As a trailhead for commuters planning to pedal westward home, the new east entrance will be much easier to find than the trail's current starting point beneath the Royalston Avenue overpass.

Don Pflaum, city transportation planner, says other access points in the new section will be at Washington Avenue and Target Field.

Source: Don Pflaum
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

"I believe if you have a sense of place, you have a better sense of direction," says Lemoine LaPointe, who directs the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. "A sense of place was already created here hundreds of years ago."

Reinvigorating that sense of place for Indian people on Minneapolis' Franklin Avenue is the purpose of an effort called the American Indian Cultural Corridor, started last year by the Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI).

LaPointe made his comments for a video NACDI produced to promote the cultural corridor concept, a vision of economic vitality and Native identity along a street that has been, for going on a century, a major focal point of American Indian urban life.

NACDI has taken that vision high-tech via an animated video that swoops down Franklin, starting at Cedar Avenue, current site of the American Indian OIC (AIOIC).

But the organization has taken a very concrete step as well, purchasing a headquarters building at the eastern end of the corridor, at Bloomington and Franklin avenues, with the AIOIC. Meanwhile, New Native Theatre has formed, offering reading series and planning a full production in 2011.

In some ways the vision is a throwback to what Franklin Avenue was like in the early decades following the federal government's relocation of Indian people to cities, when a full spectrum of goods and services was available to serve the immediate community. Now NACDI wants to see that richness return, this time fueled by Indian ownership and entrepreneurship.

Source: Lemoine LaPointe
Writer: Chris Steller

A high-speed train route to Chicago is coming, politicians and transit planners say. But a route to New Orleans already exists and you choose the speed--the Mississippi River Trail is built for bicyclists.

The MRT traces the Mississippi's full length, from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico, following local roads (mostly) and dedicated bike paths (where possible). It's been around since the 1990s but has stayed under most people's radar in large part due to a lack of signage.

That began to change last year in Minnesota, as the state Department of Transportation started putting up signs along one side or in some places both sides of the river.

Not every part of the river has roads on both sides, but Minneapolis and St. Paul are already bicycle-friendly on both the east and west banks.

MRT signs now dot Mississippi River Boulevard in St. Paul, but Minneapolis has lagged because of local concerns about marking too many trails. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's Grand Rounds Parkway is nearing completion and has its own signs, including ones along the river. But MRT, Inc. board member Suzanne Pepin says she expects that MRT signs will be added soon, allowing Minneapolis to visibly join the 10-state route.

Minnesota is taking the lead among the 10 states along the route with a state Department of Transportation program pushing acceptance, awareness, and enjoyment of the MRT, Pepin says. "This is the right time for the trail to take off," says Pepin, who predicts the MRT will become "one of the most incredible international tourist attractions."

Source: Suzanne Pepin, Mississippi River Trail, Inc.
Writer: Chris Steller

How high buildings can rise along the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities metropolitan area is one of the questions at issue as a state law, called the Critical Areas Act, gets an overhaul this year.

Since 1973, the law has required each city along the 72-mile urban and suburban riverfront to establish plans for protecting its stretch of the river. Those plans are supposed to tell developers about restrictions such as height, setback, and density.

But just as the river itself sometimes turns stagnant and cloudy, the Mississippi River Critical Area Act had by many accounts turned into a confusing and spottily enforced provision in recent years. That inspired the state legislature to order first a review and then a reform of  rule making under the law. By the end of 2010, the National Park Service will have drafted new rules for districts within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.

Some buildings, such as the Carlyle and Riverwest in Minneapolis, found a way around height restrictions. Reform will help in cities like Minneapolis that have riverfront rules in place, says Irene Jones, program director at Friends of the Mississippi River, a local nonprofit advocacy organization, by making state law "generally easier for the city to enforce, less arbitrary."

In St. Paul, the 740 River Drive tower, which predates the law by a decade, offers a vision of development without state restrictions. To see how the law protects the river gorge, Jones points to the relatively undisturbed view downriver from the Marshall Avenue/Lake Street bridge.

Source: Irene Jones, Friends of the Mississippi River
Writer: Chris Steller

They have overrun suburban strips and main streets in small cities. Now there is a move afoot at Minneapolis City Hall to stop the proliferation of digital signs throughout neighborhood commercial districts.

Electronic sign technology first popped up in Minneapolis in downtown's entertainment district, soon spread to billboards in industrial locations overlooking freeways, and then progressed to smaller signs at neighborhood businesses.

But Minneapolis is getting ready to roll back the last of those three changes to city code, says council member Gary Schiff, who chairs the city council's zoning and planning committee.  

The council approved commercial LED signs in neighborhoods as part of an overhaul of city ordinances last year, but without realizing what so-called "dynamic" signs really were, says Schiff.

"Now we have a year's worth of these signs in place," says Schiff, citing an Uptown hardware store as an example of the new wave he's hoping to stop. If every store in a neighborhood commercial zone were to convert to a digital sign like Frattalone's, he warns, it would be a "drastic change for the character of the neighborhood business districts."

Schiff wants to prevent what he observed recently in Mankato, where "every bank, every church" has a digital sign, creating a "mini-Las Vegas."

The city planning commission will hold a public hearing on removing the provision that has allowed electronic signs outside businesses, varying in size with the amount of street frontage the business has. If approved, the measure would then move to Schiff's committee and the full council over the next few months.

Source: Gary Schiff, Minneapolis City Council
Writer: Chris Steller

In another era, the handsome but diminutive Music Education building on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus might have disappeared without a voice being raised or a fuss of any kind.

But the 1888 sandstone structure survived into the 1990s, when along with other buildings on the Knoll (now the Old Campus Historic District) it got a last-minute reprieve from then-president Mark Yudof.

Nearby masonry heavyweights such as Nicholson and Pillsbury Halls got updated for continued use, but the tiny building on the hairpin turn of East River Parkway just outside Dinkytown proved too small for the 21st century. The university began knocking it down this week after 15 years of trying to find a new use or a new owner.

Over that time, says James Litsheim, historic preservation architect for U of M campuses statewide, the university spent $500,000 to keep the structure in decent shape. It needed $2 million more of work but the university offered it for one dollar. There was some interest, but no takers, says Litsheim. No one knew quite what to do with a Richardsonian Romanesque miniature that has no more than 3,000 square feet over four floors, divided into "a rabbit warren" of music practice rooms.

"It's hard to lose this one," Litsheim says, fearing for other small buildings around the state as the university downsizes its space needs in step with reduced state funding. The university is salvaging decorative elements and sandstone facing. The site is so small that the university's master plan calls for it simply to become green space.

The building began as home to the Student Christian Organization. Its last occupant in the late 1990s was a lone researcher, famed inventor Otto Schmitt, in the last years of his own life.

Source: James Litsheim, University of Minnesota
Writer: Chris Steller

Minnesota's population became much more diverse from 1970 to 2000, but over that time most of the people working in development in communities of color had one thing in common: They were white.

People from within those communities could use a leg up to join and diversify the local professional-development ranks. That was the impetus behind a yearlong training program that Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC) began in 1997. Since then 110 developers have graduated from the Careership program, with as many as three-quarters going on to work in the field of community development.

This year, 12 people are taking part in the program; as many as 70 apply annually. They earn a stipend $12,000 while putting in 15 hours each week at a sponsoring organizatio --usually a nonprofit but sometimes a government agency or a for-profit developer. There, and at monthly seminars and consultations with an executive coach, they learn the ropes of building community through development work.

For about 35 percent of the participants, that development work is the bricks-and-mortar sort, says senior program officer Barbara Jeanetta. Housing and commercial development has remained a core activity for students and graduates of the program. But people from communities of color and immigrant groups understood that "it was not just about physical development," Jeanetta says. "They innately knew it was much more integrated." That means that many work on building more intangible kinds of community assets--employee training, youth development, and home-buying, for example.

Careership is especially helpful for people who lack a college degree and have "spotty" work records due to time spent caring for a parent or child, Jeanetta says. These people often don't have a professional network, but they start to build one over their year at the Careership program.

Source: Barbara Jeanetta, LISC
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

A system of tunnels that at one time provided the the Pillsbury "A" Mill with all the power it needed, thanks to the Mississippi River's 50-foot drop at nearby St. Anthony Falls, may soon serve as an energy center once again.

A Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant is paying for a new study to determine if the tunnels below what was once the world's biggest flour mill can once again harness hydropower in one form or another, or perhaps be a staging area for tapping into the earth's moderating temperatures for geothermal heating and cooling.

Energy created would be used not only for the 1881 "A" Mill once it is redeveloped, but for a massive proposed complex of new and renovated buildings across a three-block stretch of the Minneapolis riverfront.

The tunnels were part of the greatest direct-drive waterpower complex ever built but fell into disuse with the advent of hydroelectric power generation and the slow exodus of grain milling to cities such as Buffalo, N.Y.

"Given their age, they are in remarkably good condition," says Kathryn Klatt of development firm Schafer Richardson.  The tunnels, or millraces, brought water from above the falls into the "A" Mill via headraces, let it fall down vertical tunnels called drop shafts, then delivered it back to the river by way of two tailraces. Those enormous openings can still be seen at the base of the riverbank in Father Hennepin Bluffs Park.

The $7,000 scoping study for the tunnels complements a $30,000 separate study into the feasibility of engineering for such a project that's already underway.

Source: Kathryn Klatt, Schafer Richardson
Writer: Chris Steller

Work is underway on building the Central Corridor light-rail transit line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. So how soon will construction start on the anticipated wave of transit-related development projects along the University Avenue route?

At the northwest corner of University and Hampden Avenue in St. Paul, the answer is: It's done. The Lyric at Carleton Place, a 170-unit apartment building, has seemed ahead of the curve, rising even as the lingering recession has kept other projects on the drawing boards.

The Lyric is a rental companion to the Carleton Artist Lofts, a renovated condominium building next door, both developed by Johnson Brothers Liquor Company, a major local distributor of wines and spirits. (Johnny's Lounge, a bar that formerly occupied the site, is commemorated inside the Lyric with a namesake gathering space.)

Yet the coming Central Corridor LRT line is not the main selling point for The Lyric, which is located between future stations at Raymond and Fairview avenues. Instead, The Lyric boasts artist-friendly amenities like a gallery, an amphitheater, and an outdoor movie-screening space.

The developer's effort to build a community at the Lyric extends beyond physical features. "The company has gone out of its way to incorporate social media" such as a Lyric-specific social-media site and an iTunes channel, says Christopher Lower of Sterling Cross Group, a public relations, marketing and web design firm working with property management company Dominium.

Lower says there's movement afoot to re-brand the Lyric's South St. Anthony neighborhood as "Mid-City" -- appropriate, considering the skyline view in either direction from the Lyric's rooftop deck.

Source: Christopher Lower, Sterling Cross Group
Writer: Chris Steller

"Brick House" was the nickname for Memorial Stadium, the predecessor at the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus to TCF Bank Stadium, the new home of the Golden Gophers football team.

Now an actual house near the stadium--wooden, not brick--has been renovated by the University District Alliance, a community organization formed in the stadium's wake to strengthen ties between the university and surrounding neighborhoods. It's the first of three houses located in target areas near the new stadium to hit the real estate market after purchase and renovation by the Alliance.

When Minnesota legislators approved state funds for construction of TCF Bank Stadium, they were also motivated to mitigate negative impacts of the mammoth campus on adjacent residential areas. A special aim was encouraging home ownership in neighborhoods where the pace of conversion from family to student rental housing has accelerated in recent years.

The Alliance--made up of resident associations in three neighborhoods of Southeast Minneapolis, the university, and the City of Minneapolis--decided that renovating houses for sale to new resident-owners was the best way of spending the bulk of $750,000 the state allocated to demonstrate how local projects could keep campus-area neighborhoods stable and sustainable.

"Initially there was the hope to at least break even, but that's not going to happen," says James De Sota, Southeast Como Improvement Association coordinator, whose group pushed the Alliance to use green building materials and methods in the renovation work.  Still, he says, efforts at cooperation by local groups, the university and city government are off to a "nice start."

Source: James De Sota, Southeast Como Improvement Association
Writer: Chris Steller