*** News Flash *** #2

The top story is the Saint Paul City Council's recent decision not to go ahead with restrictions against chain stores along Grand Avenue. Instead, they adopted much weaker size restrictions on new buildings.

But whether rents and taxes would be affected by capping building sizes is debatable.

"I don't think that a size cap is going to make the problem worse; I just don't know that it's going to make it better, either," said Stacy Mitchell, a land-use consultant with the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

She also said a 25,000-square-foot cap is hardly limiting — many well-known chain stores could fit in that size building.

"In San Francisco, where they're doing this in a number of neighborhoods, a lot of the limits are 4,000 feet or 6,000 feet," Mitchell said.

[PiPress]

Last year the City Council, along with the Summit Hill Association had discussed a much more stringent limitation of "formula businesses" or chain stores along the Eastern portion of the street. While it might make some corporations unhappy, such a move would have been very popular among residents and small business owners along Grand Avenue. It's only speculation, but a chain store restriction might have had the additional benefit of actually doing something to limit property tax increases while also maintaining some of Saint Paul's retail divserity and localism for the forseeable future.

But apparently the City Council didn't have the votes or willpower to again strong-arm the Chamber of Commerce (who would have been against such a plan). Instead, we get a zoning restriction that's largely meaningless.

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A similar kind of zoning issue is taking place up in Maple Grove, as their City Council is debating whether or not to limit new construction of townhouses.

The proposed rule would limit townhouses to just 10 percent of any housing development.

It would affect much of the city -- areas zoned for lower density housing of 1 to 3.5 units per acre -- but not those zoned for medium- and high-density.

Thousands of townhouses have been built in Maple Grove in recent years. Over the last 10 years, when 7,200 housing units were built in city, 46 percent were detached, single-family homes, while 54 percent were attached townhouses. But in the past four years, 68 percent of new housing has been townhouses.

[Strib]

I don't often talk about the suburbs (because I usually hate them), but one of the few nice things to have happened out in the burbs in recent years is townhouse construction. People seem to like them, and they make a lot of sense given that most people don't live in nuclear families any more.

So seeing some sort of reactionary move like this gain such traction is kind of disappointing.

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On the other hand, the Strib reported on this far-seeing move by the city planners in New Brighton and Arden Hills . . . they're planning ahead for transit.

It’s still early in the process, but the cities are trying to preserve about a mile of rail line with 24 acres of surrounding right-of-way for a future transportation corridor.

"Now's the time to incorporate planning before the areas get totally developed," said Matt Fulton, the former New Brighton city manager who recently became the Coon Rapids city manager.

[Strib]

I haven't heard the New Brighton/Arden Hills/Roseville area mentioned in regard to a possible LRT line, so this is thinking pretty far into the future.

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Meanwhile, out in the wide world, oil is at an all-time high, according to this story on the Bloomberg wire.

I just filled up the car I'm borrowing and it cost me $44. If I were to do that regularly, I might have to get a real job . . .

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The Bunge grain elevator, the Dinkytown landmark where my firefighter friend had to drag away the body of a fallen teenager last year, was sold for housing a few weeks ago.

The Cabrini Partnership and Project for Pride in Living will build affordable housing on the site at 13th Ave. SE, reports Elizabeth Cook in The Minnesota Daily. The development will feature rental apartments as well as five Habitat for Humanity homes and other single-family housing.

Construction is scheduled to begin in September or October and should be completed by the end of the year.

[MplsObserver]

Combining affordable housing, historic preservation, and getting a notoriously dangerous spot off the radar is a lot of birds with one stone. I wonder if there was any city money involved in this?

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The Hiawatha LRT is having some maintenance done this weekend, and will be closed on Saturday night until Sunday morning, according to this story in the Strib.

I don't understand why whoever plans the LRT hours doesn't take into account the fact the people at bars might want to ride it to their houses (or parked cars) after the bars close. Why do the work on Saturday night instead of Sunday night, when many fewer people would be using it?

For that matter, why does the LRT stop running right before the bars close, instead of right after? Aren't they aware that the Warehouse District is a popular late night spot?

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Finally, the recent problems with the Big Dig in Boston point to the difficulty inherent in large engineering projects. Admittedly, the Big Dig is the largest urban engineering project in history, but doing anything at the street/building/freeway scale is difficult. It would be no small task to cover up I-94 at Nicollet Avenue, to connect Eat Street with downtown . . .

The Strib [Hearts] The Burbs

In their attempts to appeal to suburban readers the Star Tribune does a lot of things which, from my point of view, seem stupid. But their recent article in defense of cul-de-sacs really takes the cake.

Here’s a representative sample:

Like many suburban families, the Aasens prize how quiet and child-friendly their lollipop-shaped street is. But not everyone shares that affection. In Minnesota and across the nation, concerns about traffic congestion and increased road maintenance costs are causing a growing backlash against these icons of suburban life.

Local governments across the country, including some in Minnesota, have passed zoning ordinances to limit cul-de-sacs. In Oregon, which embraced "smart growth" land-use concepts decades ago to combat sprawl, 90 percent of the state's cities have ordinances limiting new cul-de-sacs.

Minnesota cities are more permissive, but some are also taking steps to limit new ones. City councils in St. Cloud and Northfield, for example, prefer to routinely deny new cul-de-sacs unless there is a physical necessity for them.

The problem with this quote is that it really soft-pedals the criticisms of the cul-de-sac. The Strib claims that “Smart Growth” advocates don’t like the dead end streets because it’s hard to plow them.

An oft-cited concern with cul-de-sacs is that they often result in overly congested connecting streets. All those cars from neighborhoods of dead-end streets have to go somewhere, critics say.

But traffic isn't the only concern. When Josh Tenney, a 27-year-old truck salesman, moved into his "sweet little" cul-de-sac in the northern suburb of Hugo two springs ago, he never once thought about winter.

"Where does all the snow go? Spread across all the yards," he said. "Where does the sand and salt go? Spread across the yards. Where do all the rocks, gravel, and winter trash go? You guessed it, spread across the yards."

While I appreciate the particularly Minnesotan cul de sac criticism, being hard to plow is just the tip of the snowdrift when it comes to culs-de-sac and their problems.

Here’s three big reasons:

1. They’re a pedestrian wasteland. Culs-de-sac, and the sprawling, disordered, difficult to navigate neighborhoods that follow them, are too non-linear to easily have sidewalks. Even if they had them, it would be too difficult to walk anywhere, and the lack of any commercial streets mean there’s nowhere to walk anyway. For a country facing an oil-induced energy crisis, this is a problem.
2. They can increase traffic congestion. Because culs-de-sac aren’t through streets, they force all the cars onto one or two main drags. Increased traffic levels often mean congestion, and without any alternative routes, there’s nothing PO’d drivers can do about it.
3. Culs-de-sac aren’t safer. At least one study has shown that the “quiet and child-friendly” cul-de-sac is statistically more dangerous. Parents, constantly forced to back out of their driveways, are very likely to back over one of their own (or their neighbor’s) children. In addition, the lack of regular traffic (or neighbor’s windows) on the street makes it more likely for a burglary to occur.

Next time the Star Tribune weighs in on sensitive urban planning issues in the Twin Cities, they should have a fewer quotes from the Toll Bros. marketing department, and more real information about why traditional neighborhood design makes sense.

For a much better article on the cul de sac, see this NPR story.

My Way or the Skyway

I’ve witnessed variations on the following conversation many times:

Warm State Dweller: “So. Where are you from?”

Minnesotan on Vacation: “I’m from Minnesota.”

WSD: “Minnesota? Isn’t it really cold there?”

MoV: “Yeah. It’s pretty cold.”

WSD: “How cold does it get?”

MoV [with some puffing of chest]: “Oh, you know. Twenty, thirty below zero. But we like it.”

Minnesotans traveling through Florida, California, or Arizona wear their winter like a badge of honor, and at the drop of a hat they’ll spin yarns of harsh, bitter winters, endless winter nights, and spit-freezing wind.

But what they don’t talk about is how much of their time they spend in indoor artificial environments, escaping from any sign that winter might be lurking outside. You see, back when people still ice fished while sitting on a bucket, winter might have been hard . . . but now we have deluxe, heated icehouses with multiple tip-ups. Back when the Vikings played outdoors at the Met and fans watched while huddling in blankets, winter might have been hard . . . but now we have the climate-controlled Triple-H Metrodome where it’s always 72 degrees and sunny. Back when people had to trudge for blocks down the street to go shopping, it might have been hard . . . but now people have dozens of climate-controlled, malls with indoor food courts.

The embarrassing truth is that Minnesotans have long been on the cutting edge of technological de-winterizing artifice. It’s no coincidence that retail pioneer Victor Gruen chose Edina to as his experimental place to design Southdale, the world’s first indoor shopping center. Minnesotans like winter so much, they want to escape it completely. And, during the many weeks out of the year when it’s very cold out, these climate-controlled environments can drag down our ability to enjoy fresh air and cosmopolitan crowds. But apart from aesthetic pulchritude, these indoor escapes are relatively innocuous. The same cannot be said, though, for the worst artificial environments in the Twin Cities. There is one technology that is singlehandedly holding back our downtown street life, and making it very hard to revitalize our core cities. And that is the skyway system.

Last month I read an obituary of Edward Baker, who was apparently Minneapolis’s visionary skyways pioneer. He built the first skyway in Minneapolis, and helped launch a competitive skyway bidding war between the two downtowns. The 50’s and 60’s saw a escalator escalation as each downtown area tried to out-modern the other, building new, antiseptically-controlled modern office buildings, and installing second-story skyway tunnels throughout their downtown cores.

The thought was that the downtown areas needed to modernize in order to compete with the fast-growing suburbs. This thought wasn’t uncommon. Cities across the country were in the midst of a frenzy of utopian renewal, and the Twin Cities were no exception. Both cities installed dozens of miles of six-lane freeways, while Minneapolis bulldozed the Gateway districts and remade Nicollet Avenue. Saint Paul surrounded its downtown core with freeways, and built a host of new office buildings in the center of the downtown. The thought of creating artificial, climate-free streets high in the air where office workers and shoppers could walk without worrying about weather, traffic, or homeless people had irresistible appeal.

But today skyways are unpopular across the country. Check out this article from the Cincinatti Courier-Journal, or this similar piece from the New York Times. Apparently, the Twin Cities (and Des Moines, Iowa) are the last holdouts in what amounts to a North American rejection of skyways and things like them (e.g. tunnels, downtown atria).

There are three main reasons why skyways are a problem. First, skyways are boring places where you don’t get any fresh air. Second, skyways are privately owned, and feature such amenities as “Hours of Operation” and “locks.” Third, because they are essentially another street suspended in mid-air, they split the pool of potential pedestrian consumers, and make it much more difficult for a business to attract customers.

This last point requires a bit more explanation. What the skyways do is split the pools of pedestrians in downtown Saint Paul into two groups: office workers and everyone else. The office workers exist in the second floor, and there are many retail spaces to cater to them within the skyway system. You can find film development shops, shoe shine stands, lunch joints and little else. All of these businesses close promptly at (or before) five o’clock, and are rarely open on the weekend.

On the other hand, there are a number of street-level businesses in downtown Saint Paul, which exist with separate entrances off the sidewalk. For the most part these are restaurants like Fhima or Mickey’s Diner. But there remain a scattering of other types of places in the downtown area, including a great candy store and a few miscellaneous retailers. These stores serve those few people that come to downtown during the weekends and evenings, and for the most part, the office worker don’t usually patronize these places.

I believe that the skyway system is the main reason why these two pools of customers have separate retail worlds, and if it didn’t exist, it’s likely that many more businesses would occupy the streets of downtown Saint Paul, catering to the shared needs of office workers, tourists, and residents. This increased pool of customers would allow for a greater diversity of businesses downtown, as well as increase the likelyhood of a Saint Paul office worker grabbing a drink or bite to eat downtown after work. Saint Paul's comatose night life might just wake up.

For Saint Paul, the skyway system is a particular shame, because, unlike Minneapolis, Saint Paul has managed to keep a great many of its historical buildings intact. I was in downtown Saint Paul just the other day, and I happened across a group called S.P.A.H. or Saint Paul After Hours. I think some coalition of businesses is funding them, but their goal is to invigorate Saint Paul’s night life. When I was there ther other day, they were throwing a concert in Mears Park downtown that had a decent scattering of attendees (though a tiny fraction of the number that will crowd Loring Park next Monday).

Saint Paul is not a lost cause, and has a lot of potential, but the skyway system will make it very difficult for future development to proceed. It’s no coincidence that the most popular areas of downtown Saint Paul, like Lowertown and Rice Park, are the areas without any skyways. The best thing that the Chamber of Commerce, SPAH, and Mayor Chris Coleman could do is plug up and tear down their skyways, and bring all the street life back to the street.

*** News Flash *** #1

Here are some news bits I've been saving up for a long weekend. I hope you have/had a nice 4th of July/Canada Day. I know I will/did.

***

I was listening to NPR's Science Friday this Friday, and they had two interesting bits on the future of the auto industry.

The first concerned a recent Supreme Court decision that agrees to hear a case about whether or not the EPA must regulate CO2 emissions. It's a great move, much needed, but the decision won't come out for about a yaer.

The SF guy interviewed a representative from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian "Thank you for Smoking" type of DC thinktank. My favorite of his quotes was when he said, referring to the decision, "This is just the front porch of the regulatory edifice that they want to construct.”

While this is good news, actual progress depends on the court case that won't be decided for another year.

***

The other story on Science Friday concerned the new documentary opening in NY and LA this week, Who Killed the Electric Car? It sounds like an excellent film about the forgotten potential of an all-electric car that was actually being produced by GM back in the mid-90s.

The director was interviewed, and he said that the story highlites the dependency of the entire auto industry (manufacturers, oil compaines, and repair/distribution) on the internal combustion model. I guess Detroit manufacturers are not yet willing to abandon the oil or repair/distribution companies just because it makes environmental (and ethical) sense.

Spoiler Alert: Some sort of California lawsuit killed the electric car when it rescinded/delayed implementation of the statutory Zero Emission Vehicle requirements.

***

And I have two bits to pass along about ethanol.

The first is a report I got from a friend of mine on whether or not ethanol is environmentally friendly. Apparently it all depends on the details, which is irksome for those of us who want fast, easy answers.

Then, there's an opinion piece in the European centrist paper, The Financial Times, on why we need to target results rather than methodology in the fight against global warming. It's nice to get a fresh perspective from over the pond.

***

And, for those of you who haven't been following Cape Cod NIMBYism, here's an update on the Cape Wind situation off the Massachusetts coast.

Cape Wind is a proposed wind farm that's been quite contentious amongst so-called Massachusetts liberals.

***

And in local news, Ed Felien, editor of the sometimes-readable Pulse of the Twin Cities, doesn't like Light Rail.

But the Met Council kinda likes it . . . and Congreswoman Betty McCollum really likes it.

And, last but not least, a reporter for the Whittier Globe doesn't like Segways.

***

In Minneapolis there's a debate over where city-owned security cameras should be placed . . .

. . . and the Strib had an article on whether or not downtown Minneapolis is "a theater of the obnoxious." My opinion? Sometimes, it can be. But it's heavenly compared to Cleveland.

The New Guthrie

Well, the last of the big four Minneapolis architectural projects opened last weekend when the new Guthrie Theater held public and private open houses. You wouldn’t know it from the press coverage, but most of people I’ve talked to consider the building to be the most controversial (though not the ugliest) of the four big Minneapolis projects (the others being the MIA expansio n, the Walker, and the downtown library). I’m not one to rain on parades willy-nilly, but hardly anyone I know liked the building.

“Look! A new Ikea,” said my girlfriend.

“It’s exactly like the Mall of America,” complained my architect friend.

“A bit blue, isn’t it?” asked my coworker.

“The Guthrie hasn’t been interesting since I was in grade school,” said an actor I know.

“The thespian death star has arrived,” was my only thought.

No, wait, I just thought of another . . . “It’s a 21st century melodrama factory.”

Granted, no matter what the architecture, the new Guthrie building is replacing one of the still-too-common surface parking lots downtown, and it’s a net plus. But I get a little tired of the Twin Cities media’s typically cloying attitudes towards local institutions (e.g. Target, MPR, any sports franchise).

I want to discuss the pros and cons of the new building, because I think it’s the most outrageous and interesting of the new projects. Furthermore, I think it’d be helpful to take a look at all the big new “public” building projects in the Twin Cities, and ask whether or not they work to make our town’s streets more interesting, livable, and vibrant.

Strength #1. Building as Billboard

From a distance, the Guthrie looks good. It has two “smokestacks” that serve as changeable message signs, a la Jenny Holzer. Though, so far they’ve only displayed the name of the next play and a pixilated image of some playwright’s profile. (The Guthrie could learn a thing or two from Target’s endlessly fascinating downtown headquarters, which changes it’s colored lights almost randomly). The building’s yellow-tinted windows glow from the inside. The building serves as a giant billboard for the Guthrie Theater, in much the same way as the next-door Gold Medal Flour Grain Elevator’s rooftop neon sign advertises its flour.

The building is also a rather sly comment on the Mill District aesthetic. Its Eastern wall is solid and unbroken, and towers over the street in exactly the same way that the next-door flour mills do (albeit more bluely). And, from across the river, the Guthrie fits nicely into the line of large industrial era buildings along the river – the Whitney Hotel building (now condos), the Ceresota mill condos, the Mill City museum, and the Gold Medal Flour mill (also condos).

As part of the Minneapolis skyline, the Guthrie strikes a modern pirouette in the long-abandoned Downtown East area. I’d say that it fills the giant Metrodome-shaped gap between the city hall and Gehry’s Weisman Art Museum, and for that we can be thankful.


Strength #2. Views of the City

Coverage of Minnesota in the national newsweeklies is rare, so I guess we should be happy that the Guthrie headlined Minneapolis’s mention as part of “The Design Dozen.” According to the magazine, French architect Jean Nouvel persuaded reluctant Guthrie officials to build the theater fifty feet off the ground by lifting them up in a cherry-picker so that they could see the prospective river perspective.

Perhaps he also threatened to throw them from the upraised basket unless they agreed to his plans, but somehow the new Guthrie stage is indeed elevated fifty feet in the air, and features the largest escalator in the state.

After one escalates up, one can saunter out onto the Guthrie’s House on the Rock-style cantilevered bridge, and the views of the city and the river are wonderful. If it were a public space, it would make an excellent firework vantagepoint, a good stroll locale, or a nice place to make out.

The building also gets points by orienting itself toward the river It’s curved entrance beckons people toward the riverfront, and the famous Stone Arch Bridge, and it marks one more big step toward turning the Minneapolis riverfront into a much-needed public, green space. Now, all we need is to get rid of the Lock and Dam.

Strength #3. Uniqueness

Even if you hate the building, there’s no denying its uniqueness. Though metallic cladding isn’t really unusual (e.g. Weisman, Walker), a building this dark and blue is something new. Not only that, but the large design is chock-a-block full of gimmicks like the bridge to nowhere, the dual LED smokestacks, protruding upside-down terraced theater seats, and the yellow-tinted windows that remind me of a space-age Lego set.

Given today’s tight competition for the entertainment dollar, having such a distinctive building is a real asset for the theater company, and the city. It will no doubt be featured in many more magazines and industry rags.

Weakness #1. In-Human Scale

Theater, as oppose to the movies, is all about intimacy. Theater lovers often claim, rightly, that nothing can match the personal connection of live performance. This is particularly true for the Guthrie, whose trademark is its thrust stage that puts the performers right in the middle of the audience. That’s why it’s so strange to see a great behemoth of a theater, towering hundreds of feet into the air.

Large theaters are nothing new. The golden ages of vaudeville or movies had their giant theaters, some of which still exist along Hennepin Avenue. The Goodman Theater in Chicago is really big, and, like the new Guthrie, has many different theaters inside one building.

But, to me, the new Guthrie building is just too big. It’s like the mega-mall. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s a theater factory, storing performances of The Christmas Carol for shipment to audiences all over the world. It’s so big, it blocks out the aforementioned Gold Medal Flour sign from most compass points, rendering the last historic remnant of the Mill District useless. What could possibly justify a twelve-story theater? Is Paul Bunyan one of their actors?

Not only is the theater too big, the parking lot is just as large. And its placement between Washington Avenue and 1st Street erects a large barrier between the theater and the surrounding community. It would have been nice if the Guthrie could have found room in their budget for underground parking, and retained the space on the adjacent block for residential and commercial development.


Weakness #2. Inward Focus

It’s likely that, if you turn around inside the new Guthrie, you will be met by a well-stocked bar. Or, perhaps, a café … or at the very least, a gift store. That’s because, much like the Mall of America or the international airport, the new Guthrie is a self-enclosed retail environment. The famously long escalator deposits you in a consumer paradise, and you are delighted to spend your entertainment dollars within its confines.

Granted, the Guthrie’s new M. O. is hardly different than other Twin Cities artistic establishments. I’m thinking of the Guthrie’s Wolfgang Puck franchise, the Prairie Home Companion retail store, or even a hot dog at the new publicly subsidized Twins stadium.

The real problem is that the Guthrie wants nothing to do with its neighborhood. When one goes there, one parks in the blue-clad Guthrie parking lot, takes the Guthrie skyway over to the theater, enjoys a glass of Guthie merlot and a Guthrie-cooked meal before walking across the Guthrie cantilevered bridge to view the distant city. The entire project displays an inward focus, directing its patrons inside the building in much the same way that the Mall of America intends shoppers to spend time at what was formerly called Camp Snoopy. Perhaps theatergoers will be tempted to stop by Grumpy’s Bar on Washington Avenue, or visit one of the new restaurants in the now-booming neighborhood. But if they do, it will be despite the best intentions of either the architect or the marketing divison.

In my worst moods I start to think that, with MPR leading the way, Minnesota has set the industry standard in sell-out artistic endeavors. It seems like every cultural institution in this town needs to embrace the most middling form of capitalism in order to pursue some sort of Machiavellian growth strategy. In bad dreams, this new theater factory along the Mississippi portends an aesthetic apocaplypse.

Weakness #3 Uniqueness?

As much as I credit Mr. Nouvel for his originality, the Guthrie has all the subtlety of a daytime soap opera. Instead of one scrolling LED smokestack, the new Guthrie has two. And one of these smokestaks features a blinking red light – to ward off airplanes? In addition to elevating the theater 50 feet into the air to garner a good view, the new Guthrie features a protruding bridge that resembles the “skyways to nowhere” that poke out of each downtown’s forgotten office buildings. In addition to being gargantuan, the new Guthrie is clad in dark blue metal, through which bright yellow plastic windows lite up the night.

OK. I get it. The architect is French! The building looks like some science fiction warship you’d see threatening Scott Bakula on the UPN. If it were small and blue, lost a smokestack, and got rid of either the yellow windows or the cantilevered bridge, it might be tasteful. But the new building is nothing short of gauche.

Verdict: Good for theater, not that helpful for Minneapolis’s city life.

Minneapolis has always had an unhealthy obsession with futurism. One could argue that it hearkens back to the city’s name – that silly fusion of the Greek polis and the Ojibwe minne, with a helpful “a” thrown in for readability. The new Guthrie takes this breakneck idealism to its utmost, one-upping not just the Walker, but the actually revolutionary Weisman just across the river.

One could argue that classical art forms like the theater, the opera, or the symphony are slowly dying at the hands of convenient electronic entertainment. One could argue that these bits of culture need all the help they can get to compete in today’s marketplace, and if that marketplace demands a blinking, doodad-filled, Godzilla-sized metallic whatsit, then that’s the price of cultural capitalism. Meanwhile, those of us that know better will keep going to the Jungle or the Southern, or the Red Eye theaters to see better plays, in neighborhoods and buildings that better fit the human body. I’d bet that because of the size, scope, and exclusivity of the new Guthrie building, the surrounding Mill District won’t see much of a benefit from having the Guthrie in its midst. That doesn’t affect my excitement at seeing parking lots transformed into new, dense residential and commercial spaces. But it does leave me with a tinge of disappointment.

On the other hand, maybe I should go see a play there sometime . . .

P.S. Fun Fact!

Guthrie architect Jean Nouvel also designed the Bobby & Steve's Auto World on Washington Avenue.

Super Update:

Apparently, the New York Times likes the Guthrie more than I do!