Judith Martin thinks that the Central Corridor light rail line, set to open for service between downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul in 2014, isn't really about trains.

"It's not a people mover," says Martin, who directs the urban studies program at the University of Minnesota. "It's an economic development scheme for Saint Paul that you get the state and feds to pay for. It was clever for St. Paul and Ramsey County."

Whether or not you go along with Martin's slightly Machiavellian view, there's little doubt that the Central Corridor Line's most critical connections won't be to the two downtowns. Enthusiasts and skeptics alike say the most innovative developments are set to happen�and are already happening--off the rails.

Connections: Physical, Economic, Political

The pleasures of taking the train around town remain exotic in the Twin Cities, with a single light-rail line--the Hiawatha, built in 2004--running between downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America in Bloomington.  (A more recently completed commuter line, the Northstar, links Minneapolis to its northern exurbs via heavy freight rails.)

But with the Central Corridor, decades of study and delay will at last give way to a revival of the kind of system that spread across the metro region and beyond a century ago, spurring development from the St. Croix River on the Wisconsin border to far western suburbs that today still constitute a many-laked Gold Coast.  

Planners hope to connect overlooked neighborhoods along the route to the Central Corridor and connect them in turn to a local economy that habitually overachieves but still leaves some areas under-resourced. The first test of that hope will be an urgent one: bringing existing businesses, many of them small and struggling, through the ordeal of a light-rail construction season (or two).  

And already--years before physical connections will come into play--government, citizens, businesses, and other organizations have been forging and flexing connections in the process of planning and building the Central Corridor. Opting not to hand over the responsibility for managing this massive urban addition to a centralized bureaucracy--there's no "Central Corridor czar"--has meant putting the civic infrastructure of St. Paul in particular to the test.

The Grassroots Get Busy

That decision, says Nancy Homans, policy director for St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman's office and the mayor's point person for the project, was partly born of necessity. Though most of the Central Corridor route runs through St. Paul, city government simply didn't have the resources in recessionary times to take on an overseer role. Still, Coleman recognized a responsibility as mayor to see the project through. He cited unfinished work on the Central Corridor as his main reason for not making a run for the governorship this year.

Besides, says Homans, relying on existing civic infrastructure was one way to honor what she terms "the ethics of sustainability. Why build something new?" Indeed, St. Paul already has neatly knit neighborhood-level governance into its municipal political system. The city's district councils wield real power, bridging the gap between citizens' street-level concerns and policymakers at City Hall who take a broader purview.

Those district councils formed the first of several collaborative groups working to make the most of the direct and indirect impacts of the Central Corridor project. The purpose of the District Councils Collaborative of St. Paul and Minneapolis is "to put more teeth into neighborhood review," says Carol Swenson, executive director.

Neighborhood Clout Equals Stations

The collaborative steered engineers to put electrical substations in places that made sense to neighbors. Most significantly, Swenson says, the District Councils Collaborative pushed for the addition of three rail stations where planners had determined residents would have to be satisfied with watching trains roll by.

When federal funding rules shifted early this year, allowing those three stations to be added, "there were a dozen groups that could publicly take credit for that decision," says Homans, the city's representative to another organization, the Central Corridor Business Resources Collaborative.

That's evidence of broad-based community buy-in that a dizzying network of collaborative organizations has been building, ahead of the actual start of Central Corridor construction this summer by the Metropolitan Council, the regional government body. Their common goal: to tie Central Corridor communities and businesses to the benefits expected from light rail.

A shared template for all these groups is the Central Corridor Development Strategy, the product of internationally renowned planning firm Urban Strategies of Toronto, whose work in St. Paul won awards in Canada and Minnesota.

"The work beyond the rails is fairly innovative," says Jonathan Sage-Martinson, coordinator at the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, which focuses on affordable housing, economic development, place-making, and collaboration. "There are 80�100 stakeholders involved deeply in economic development and equitable development."

Can the Mom-and-Pops Survive?

That means helping small businesses clustered along the east end of the route stay afloat during construction, via loans from the Funders Collaborative's Catalyst Fund, and technical assistance from yet another long-name group, the University Avenue Business Preparation Collaborative (which, helpfully, goes by "U7").

U7's Isabel Chanslor leads an on-the-ground effort to help storefront businesses survive two long construction seasons. In one-on-one meetings, she says, her team asks small-business owners, "'Are you prepared to lose 30, 40, 50 percent of your business? What are ways you can cut costs?'" So far, 60 businesses have taken U7 up on the guidance the group offers in marketing and financial planning.

"I live in the area and I never realized how many beauty salons and barber shops there are," says Chanslor. U7 aims to get these businesses get through the construction period by, among other things, helping each one carve out a distinctive image, including a color palette. It's a challenge for the designers on the U7 staff, and a worry for Chanslor: "I had a nightmare about going down University Avenue. All of the shops looked the same."

A more likely doomsday scenario that U7 wants to avoid is what happened along Lake Street in Minneapolis in the immediate aftermath of a massive street rebuilding project there. Businesses held on through construction only to fail when it was over. Chanslor says she hopes hard-nosed financial counseling and bridge loans will help University Avenue's stock of "immigrant, refugee, mom-and-pop stores" avoid that fate.

Will Redevelopment Force Out the Poor?

But the focus of the broad-based community planning effort along the Central Corridor goes beyond short-term challenges. Some see the very nature of this section of the urban core, or the east side of the metro area, at stake --with a light-rail line sparking critical long-term change. (There's plenty of precedent here: residential neighborhoods like Prospect Park in Minneapolis and St. Anthony Park in St. Paul sprung up as streetcar suburbs still within city limits.)

A rebounding economy will, in five to ten years, bring strong redevelopment pressures to bear, especially near light-rail stations. That will be welcomed in the less-populated western end of St. Paul's stretch of University Avenue, where there is room for big new housing developments like The Lyric. But Sage-Martinson says groups are bracing for a boom on the avenue's eastern end, where residential neighborhoods crowd close to University Avenue. Community planning efforts to preserve affordable housing--or build it, as with the new Frogtown Square development--are at an earlier stage than the more pressing issue of small-business survival.

Part of a Bigger Picture

Homans of the St. Paul mayor's office doesn't dispute Judith Martin's assertion that the city is counting on a shot in the development arm from Central Corridor. "It's huge," she says. "This is our big imprint on the city."

But Homans points out that the project will eventually be part of a broader network. "A regional transit system is developing quickly," says Homans. Were the East Metro not included in that, as it will be via the Central Corridor, she warns, it would be disastrous.

"We're planning for several decades out," she says. A million more people are expected to move to the Twin Cities in the next few decades, and Homans says they'll need additions to the current bus system like Central Corridor light rail transit.

Martin sees the same system coming, even if in her view this line isn't in the best location. "Central Corridor is arguably not in the place that will most reduce congestion: a freeway. But 25�30 years out, it could be part of a system. A system in all directions."

Chris Steller is development news editor of The Line.


Photos, top to bottom:

Artist's rendering of the planned Capitol East station on the Central Corridor line.

Work has begun at Jackson and Fourth Street for the line's downtown Saint Paul stretch.

The Lyric, a new housing development along the Corridor.

Another view of the downtown digging.

The Spruce Tree Center at University and Snelling, which has been retrofitted in several ways to conserve energy; Green initiatives are a major part of Central Corridor development strategy.

All photos by Bill Kelley