Given current momentums, the blank walls will continue to spread, even in the most exemplary of cities. Such as Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is the blank-wall capital of the United States. You would not expect it to be. It is a most habitable, attractive, and friendly city; it has one of the most resourceful and effective mayors in the country; its Lowertown redevelopment is of an eminently human scale and has a fine street presence.
Blank walls are tough to fight because no one is for them. There are no civic debates whether to have them or not. There is often no recognition that they have become a problem at all. Their growth is too incremental. They are the by-product of other causes, many seemingly good – separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, off-street circulation, and such. Given current momentums, the blank walls will continue to spread, even in the most exemplary of cities.
Such as Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is the blank-wall capital of the United States. You would not expect it to be. It is a most habitable, attractive, and friendly city; it has one of the most resourceful and effective mayors in the country; its Lowertown redevelopment is of an eminently human scale and has a fine street presence. St. Paul also has one of the most complete skyway systems in the country, and it is probably the best designed of all of them.
It is paying a steep price. In a striking example of the Gresham effect, skyway level has led to the blanking-out of the street level. The result is as drastic as if shop fronts and windows had been decreed illegal. There are few to see. The experience is so dull that to walk at street level is to do penance for not using upper level. Block after block is a blank wall. Occasionally, there is a break to indicate what might have been—like the trompe l'oeil windows on the wall of a parking lot.
It is not entirely farfetched to prophesy that one day St. Paul might embark on a rediscovery project to uncover its buried street level. Atlanta made a tourist attraction of its old underground streets; so did Seattle of its Skid Row. But prime shopping streets are a much greater treasure, and the fact that they have been concealed should make their reappearance all the more dramatic. Disneyland merchandises a simulation of a street. But cities have something even better: actual streets. Right under their noses.
Tom Weber: Tell me your thoughts especially here for the Twin Cities, we have a very unique aspect, the skyways.
We have these second floor walkways so that you can walk between buildings, so that in the winter you don't have to go out in the freezing cold in the snow. There's a lot of debate about the effects on the economy if you don't have those street level businesses there. Where do skyways fit into the 8-80 model?
Gil Peñalosa: The skyways are absolutely horrible. They should be ... The best thing that could happen, if God was generous, is to come up with an earthquake that would only affect skyways and nothing else.
The skyways really work like a gigantic vacuum that sucks the life out of the city. The skyways are like commercial shopping malls, elevated, where they don't want the poor people, the don't want the youth, they don't want anybody who's not going there to shop.
And also you don't have enough people to have them on the skyways and and on the street. You see, I have many many photos of the streets here where there are skyways. On the street level they are empty. They are like ghost towns. There are blank walls. And as soon as you enter the skyways, life flourishes. All of a sudden you start having flower shops, coffee shops, and so on.
Of course I know that there is winter in the Twin Cities. But you only really have about 15 horrible days of the year. And in addition to the 15 horrible days, you have another 60 or 70 pretty lousy days. But you have 250 nice days in the Twin Cities! So when we build the city around the 15 horrible days, we mess up the other 350. My advice to the city is let's build the city around the 250 really nice days, and then the 60 pretty bad or 15 horrible days are not going to be as horrible.
[A vibrant streetscape underneath the Minneapolis skyways.]
[Basically the problem is that the best source of Saint Paul streets & sidewalks news is the Highland Villager, a very fine and historical newspaper. This wouldn't be a problem, except that its not available online. You basically have to live in or frequent Saint Paul to read it. Until this newspaper goes online, sidewalk information must be set free. See also: Three Reasons Why I Re-Blog the Highland Villager.]
Headline: Mayor pushes for more public safety spending; Rampant gunfire has made this year St. Paul's deadliest in almost three decades
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: People are shooting each other with guns. There are debates about how policing should be done. Police are very expensive.
Headline: Plan to narrow Ayd Mill Road continues to generate debate; Lanes to be restricted as Summit bridge is rebuilt
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: Neighbors are concerned about traffic. A city-owned quasi-freeway might not be paved to be as wide as it once was. A bridge over the road is being replaced, and that is expensive. The construction is reducing the size of the quasi-freeway road in a fashion unrelated to the future plans. Article goes over the Mayor's proposed road reduction plans, which involve a bike path and new signals. Article has a picture of cars. There have been meetings at neighborhood groups. [I heard about one neighborhood group committee just today, which voted 26-0 to support the Mayor's plan. The only question they had was how to improve the public realm.] Some people want the construction period to be a change to study the two-lane configuration for the road. [Here's my BOLD PREDICTION -> I am predicting that, in the future, whatever happens here, there will be traffic congestion during rush hour. It will be caused by the people driving alone in cars.]
Headline: County's winter safe space becomes year-round homeless shelter
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: People will be able to sleep in a big area in a County building this winter.
Headline: City may ease up on residential design standards in wArd Three; Local homeowners asked to help draft ordinance
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: A while ago the city tried to create rules for people building new homes or making additions to their homes, but only in the wealthy part of the city. "Much of this area is established neighborhoods..." said a city planner. [A terrible term, of course.] Variances to the rules are expensive.The city might tweak the rules to reduce variances about things like setbacks or walls. Some people do not like large blank walls, for example. [I find it hard to care much about this.]
Headline: Ryan seeks variance to height limit on Ford site development
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: The company doing the development work on the former Ford factory wants to build higher buildings closer to the river. There are rules about the riverfront area in particular, set by the state. They are called MRCCA. [Whenever I see that acronym, I think MRSA.]
Headline: St. Paul to hire out to improve access at snowy intersections
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: The Department of Public Works is going to hire people to shovel out intersections that are especially difficult for people to walk or get around at in the winter.
Headline: DAR to honor more veterans at monument along riverfront
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: There is a bronze tablet with names on it by the side of Summit Avenue.
Headline: Summit-U neighbors plead for more affordable housing in Alatus project; District council asks city to withhold public subsidy without more affordability
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: A vacant lot might become apartments. Some people want the apartments to be cheaper.There might be a supermarket. There might be 226 apartments and 180 parking spaces. There might be some designated affordable housing but might not.
Headline: County updates agreement for Riversedge project in downtown; Four dramatic towers would rise on old jail, West site along river
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: A empty space where buildings once were along the river downtown might have new buildings on it sometime soon. It is a huge project. There are plans for office towers, a hotel, condos, retail, and at least 500 parking spaces. It is unclear how much subsidy from the County and City would be required, but it would be a lot. The plans might include a pedestrian access from the city street down to the river, bridging the railroad tracks and [unnecessary] freeway. County Board guy is quoted saying "at this point it looks good." The county owns the land right now.
Headline: Capital City Bikeway is still taking shape
Author: Jane McClure
Short short version: The plans for bike routes though downtown from a while ago are still not dead yet. The city is not as far along as they would like on planning and building it. Article does not really lay out a timeline for the next construction phases. [Not soon enough, is the answer there.]
Last night, there was a meeting at the Jerome Theater about parking in Lowertown, Saint Paul. I wasn't there, but (as always) dogged Pioneer Press reporter Frederic Melo attended.
He tweeted thus:
Parking is a big deal, for lots of reasons. It's something I've beenthinkingabout more and more these days, and I'm not alone. Last night's meeting is not unusual in local city politics. Ask any elected official. Parking is near the top of what people complain about in everyday city life.
But accommodating parking comes at a high cost, in terms of both city budgets and urban fabric.
Here are the problems as I see them:
[Two Costanzas.]
Problem #1: Parking cars in downtown Saint Paul can be frustrating. Last night's meeting is Exhibit A. (Meanwhile, others find it easy.) This problem will only get worse as more businesses, residences, and activities locate downtown. Picture driving around for 20 minutes looking for a spot, turning down one-way streets, cursing. Picture a city of Costanzas.
Problem #2: The city is already filled with expensive parking lots. The city and developers have already spent many millions on parking garages downtown. Historic buildings have been converted into parking garages. [Shudder.] There are lots of parking garages, and they're really expensive.
Problem #3: Large parts of downtown are ugly and unappealing to pedestrians. Walk around and see this for yourself. While there are a few really nice parts of downtown Saint Paul, many streets are lined with windowless concrete walls. (Usually, these are off-street parking garages.) The sidewalks are covered with litter, especially this time of year. Once you leave Lowertown or Rice Park, there aren't enough businesses, people, or street activity to make walking in downtown Saint Paul very pleasant.
These problems are interlinked. Solving Problem #1 comes at the expense of Problems #2 and #3. It seems an impossible challenge.
[Leave Lowertown or Rice Park, and lots of downtown Saint Paul is ugly and empty.]
Here's a rough sketch of a solution. Almost all of this is based on the work of the economist and planner Donald Shoup, the expert on US parking policy.
Step #1: Do a parking survey. Count the number of on- and off-street spots downtown. Also, get a rough measure of how "used" each spot is. What is its average occupancy throughout the day and week?
You'll probably find (as the city repeatedly says) that there are lots of parking spots downtown. You'll probably also find that a some of these spots are in very high demand. Most of these will be on-street surrounding prime attractions (e.g. the Farmer's market). On other hand, you'll probably also find that many spots have low demand, and sit empty much of the time. Most of these will be off-street garages, or in marginal locations.
Step #2: Set prices according to demand. Make the prime spots expensive and the distant spots cheap. This will ruffle a few feathers, but making prime spots expensive will encourage people to "turn over" the spots more quickly. Parking at in-demand locations will become easier but more expensive. This would eliminate "cruising" for parking, and end Costanza frustration. It's pretty straightforward: those who value convenience pay more, those who want to save money walk farther out of their way. The important thing is that all the parking gets used. We get full return on the investments that the city and developers have made over the years.
[You could hire way more people like this guy.]
Step #3: Take the added revenues and create a downtown Business Improvement District (BID). During recent discussions of downtown's future, some folks in the city have said they'd like to see a BID. This parking plan would provide a funding stream with no added property or sales taxes on local businesses or residents. How we spend the money would be up to residents, businesses, and the downtown Chamber. Some possibilities: streetscape improvements, ambassadors / people to pick up the ubiquitous litter, nicer bus shelters, bike racks... I don't know! How the money would be spent should be up to the people that use the space. Give those 100 people in that room a pot of money to fix their problem. If they want to build a parking lot with it, more power to them.
Step #4: Repeat as necessary. This might involve several iterations, as the supply and demand of parking shifts over time and prices need to be adjusted. Ideally, you could make this process automatic using "smart" meters. (This is what they are doing in San Francisco.)
That's it!
[They're doing this in San Francisco. They made an app for it.]
There are three benefits of this plan. First, parking becomes easy and transparent. We make an app for it. If you are looking for a spot on Mears Park, there will be one there for you. No more Costanzas. Never worry about it again. Second, it's far cheaper than any other solution out there. Parking ramps are very, very expensive, both in terms of dollars and in terms of opportunity costs. For every block of downtown Saint Paul that's a windowless parking garage, that's one block that won't have people in it, and that will be horrible to walk next to. This is way cheaper, and preserves the urban fabric. Third, it gives people some political control over their own destiny. What would those 100 people do with thousands of dollars per year to invest downtown? I don't know. I doubt they know either, but it'd be interesting to find out.
The bottom line is that parking in downtown Saint Paul should not be free after 4:30. Free parking might benefit a few lucky people, but causes lots of problems and frustration for many others. As long as parking is free on the street, nobody will use the thousands of spaces in the huge ugly garages we've spent millions to construct. People will waste countless miserable hours cruising the streets looking for the perfect spot in order to save $5 on their way to see the Wild, the Saints, Keillor, or whatever Scientologists do at night. Meanwhile, off-street garages will just sit there, underused. That's not a happy situation.
This solution is an outline. Details need to be added. But this would work. It'd be cheap, and in the long run, it would make some of the 100 people in that room yesterday happy. It would improve downtown Saint Paul as a place to work, live, and play. It would be a great stride toward making our downtown a "real city" once again.
I was first struck by this part of the city when I first came across it many years ago, around the year 2000. I remember walking into the "Market BBQ", a self-proclaimed legendary Minneapolis restaurant for 40 years...
Well, if it was so famous, how come I'd never heard of it?
Since then I've always been curious about this part of the city that seems so off-the-radar of the mainstream, so full of old remnants of the built environment, despite being a stone's throw from downtown.
With that idea in mind, I put together a tour. The Old Nicollet Walk (defined as between Grant Street and Franklin Avenue) this sprinter was a fun time for me, and more than most of the tours I put together, an exploration. I didn't quite know the story of this part of the street, and I hoped that in doing research for the walk and bringing a group of people together, I might learn about this part of the city that had always intrigued me.
Here are some themes that emerged. Thanks to everyone who came out and joined me on this exploration of a fast-vanishing and often misunderstood Minneapolis neighborhood.
Tourists and hostility
[The Convention Center is a wall around the neighborhood.]
One theme that came out of the walk was how "tourist downtown" was actively hostile to this part of the city, in both subtle passive design and active ways.
During the tour, introducing "Old Nicollet," I shared my theory why so many of the restaurants here seemed to me to be lost in time and off the radar. Eat Street, the north Loop, hell lots of other parts of south Minneapolis all seemed like places that I heard about regularly in conversation, that made lists of "places to go," but this stretch of Nicollet was never mentioned by anyone I knew. It was almost like a blind spot, Minneapolis downtown lacunae, the very essence of a marginal space crammed between the freeway and the edge of downtown.
My theory had been that it catered primarily to downtown tourists, and that's why I didn't know much about it. Thus the weird old restaurants like Pings, the (now shuttered) Japanese-Canadian place, Market BBQ, (shuttered) Jerusalem, etc.
But then one of the participants described a story they’d heard about downtown. At the big tourist hotels, the concierge explicitly tell visitors not to walk south on Nicollet Avenue, to go instead north along the “mall” area. As a result, this strange segment of Old Nicollet received relatively few downtown visitors, Jay Leno excepted.
Theory debunked.
Similarly, the massive multi-super-block Convention Center offers huge featureless blank walls along its south and western sides. All the doorways, public spaces, and activity are focused on the north, and instead of serving as an amenity for the Old Nicollet area, it detracts from the public spaces and social life of the neighborhood.
Jarring Disjunctures
[There's a massive metered parking lot here b/c of a street expansion / realignment.]
The "edge of downtown" is a strange concept, because if you go back and look at the photos and maps of the mid-century Minneapolis, there were no "edges" to downtown. Instead of hard lines, downtown slowly dissolved, transforming into a residential area as you got a few miles out. Back then, the city decreased in density gradually like a classic gradient -- often called the "urban transect." A hundred years ago, if you walked from the center of downtown into one of the residential neighborhoods around it you would find a gradual decrease in density and intensity.
Today, most of the middle ground along that spectrum has been demolished and replaced with vacant, freeway, or low-density spaces. (Stephens Square and Elliot Park are notable exceptions.) The vacant lots, apartment buildings, freeways, huge walls, and parking lots form a strange landscape within which oddities like the old Music Box Theater (formerly Loring Theater, currently a weird church from Eden Prairie) and 80s-era faded restaurants like Ping’s still cling on within the Minneapolis landscape.
[Bollards and freeways.]
Cultural Margins as Refuge
At the same time, the very isolation and marginalization of this part of the city has been, for many people over the years , a feature and not a bug. Because it is so isolated and economically neglected, what’s left of this part of the city has remained affordable and fine grained. Lots of important urban communities thrive in the margins in neighborhoods like this.
Most notably for this part of town, so close to Loring Park, Minneapolis’ crucial GBLT community has been centered here for generations. The 19 Bar, Minneapolis’ finest dingy gay bar, is a block away.
And two women who came on the tour shared a story of how they’d moved to the area in the 1970s and discovered a DIY lesbian-centered “coffee house” that began in a space in the Plymouth Congregational Church. It was a heart of the Minneapolis lesbian scene for many years, and one woman described an ongoing play about a fictional town called Toklas, Minnesota that had been performed in the coffee house for years.
[The Very Best of Fancy Ray.]
I personally recall how the massive Nicollet Village Video store served as a place for punk and queer kids to hang out all day and night, while also offering one of the two or three best selections of obscure videos anywhere in town. Similarly, the old Flame Bar and Grill, a strange country-western / R&B hybrid joint, once offered refuge for kids from all over the region.
Here’s a story about a girl from the North End who became a Flame fixture for years:
“Mr. Torp of Torp’s Music Store (also on Rice Street in St Paul) was a friend of my parents; he said country singer Ardis Wells was looking for a lead musician who could sing. I wasn’t 21, so we went over and met with her and Mr. Perkins who owned The Flame and they said ‘We don’t care if she’s not 21 as long as she doesn’t drink, we’ll take care of her, don’t worry about it’.””
Ardis was a female wrestler who rode elephants in the circus. “The floor would rise up with the push of a button and become a stage. Ardis Wells and The Rhythm Ranch Girls worked the front lounge of The Flame, our stage was up high above the bottles (see photos). Ardis would perform a trapeze act in The Flame while we sang, but the City Of Minneapolis shut that down because it was too dangerous. The Flame was the home of the $3.25 16-ounce steak. I still have their menus!”“
Similarly, the one or two old blocks of the southern stretch of Old Nicollet has some of the most diverse and eclectic restaurants anywhere int he city, including East African, West African, and Tibetan restaurants, all of them solid. (There used to be Vietnamese and African-American food here too.)
[At the Flame, they were playing and dancing ON TOP of the bar.]
Changing Quickly
[Old Nicollet vacant lot; note the old hospital in the background.]
Over the years, this part o the city has been under severe pressure from city planners, civic boosters, and entropy. The freeway, Convention Center, road re-design, big government housing projects, and parking lots have taken their toll. But in the midst of it, a stretch of the old urban fabric has remained in tact.
But it doesn’t seem like it will last long. After a half-century of benign neglect, the real estate market on the fringe of downtown has begun to overpower the past, and when the 1940s-era Market BBQ building comes down, the remaining continuity of the old city is going to erode beyond recognition. There will still be an old building or two, but I fear the idea of the old street, visible in the historic photos, will be impossible to conjure.
So tour it while you can!
[50s-era office building updated for the modern age.]
[The all-night diner with new construction in the background.]
[The elective early 20th century buildings (note the weird roof!) along Old Nicollet.]
[Construction, formerly the site of Jerusalem Restaurant.]
[Old Nicollet Village Video, now a Spanish-language daycare.]
[Old clock at Market BBQ.]
[Door handle at Market BBQ.]
[Tin ceiling at Market BBQ. The ceiling along with the massive wood bar (shipped from San Francisco) will be saved and replaced into the new building.]
[Market BBQ booth.]
[The old building, not long for this world.]
[The old and new housing stock along Old Nicollet.]
[Already shuttered, and forgettable, Ryan's Pub.]
[Subsidized affordable housing on the north end of Old Nicollet.]
I was on the public committee that worked with the consultant on this project. We met a handful of times to go over critical decisions like "what color should the logo be" and "do you like biking past an on-ramp." All in all, it was one of the less meaningful public engagement experiences of my life, somewhere in the "tokenism" rungs of Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation. But at least I got to learn a lot about the challenges of creating an off-street bike network in downtown Saint Paul, one of which is certainly parochial businesspeople who freak out about on-street parking in a walkable downtown.
[Typical downtown Saint Paul sidewalk experience.]
The key point is that downtown Saint Paul has two big urban design problems, and lack of parking is not one of them. First, while the downtown has some wonderful pockets of lively streets, shops, and parks, in between these hot spots sits a bleak landscape of blank walls, parking ramps, and empty asphalt. There are very few places to walk or bike comfortably through the skyway-centric hostile parts of downtown, and nowhere to do so in a comfortable, urban, engaging way. (4th Street is one of the few east-west streets with any promise on this front.) So people view downtown as fragmented and fractured, with Lowertown seeming like its miles away from Rice Park, which in fact they're quite close. (Trust me, I drove a pedicab in downtown Saint Paul for a year.)
[Does for downtown what Midwest nitrogen does for the Gulf shrimp industry.]
The other big problem is that downtown Saint Paul is separated from the neighborhoods on nearly every side by a large, almost impenetrable moat of dangerous high-speed roads. Though you can see downtown Saint Paul from the Cathedral steps or the West Side Bluffs or Mounds Park or the State Capitol, you can't get there from here, at least not very comfortably. (West 7th Street is the one, vibrant exception that proves the rule.) Connecting downtown to all the wonderful neighborhoods that surround it with safe, comfortable bike paths is a wonderful goal. If done well, these links will certainly help the downtown economy.
Despite what the Key's Café lady will tell you, rules for businesses downtown differ from those in Roseville strip malls. People come downtown because it's a vibrant, unique place. Nobody comes downtown for convenient parking.
Anyway, here's my letter to the City Council:
Dear City Council:
I'm writing today to let you know that the Transportation Committee of the Planning Commission passed a resolution yesterday unanimously in support of the interim bikeway treatments along 9th and 10th Streets downtown. We are on the record as being very excited about this project, that fulfills the commitments and ideals laid out in many of our long-standing city plans.
Speaking for myself, I believe that connecting downtown Saint Paul in ways that make it more walkable and bikeable will only boost the downtown economy, which has been uneven, fragmented, and struggling for as long as I can remember.
In my opinion, one of downtown Saint Paul's big problems is that it has long been isolated from the rest of the city around it. The freeways and dangerous, high-speed roadways that ring our downtown form a kind of asphalt moat that prevents people from easily walking, biking, or accessing the downtown from anywhere else in the city. This harms local businesses and prevents downtown Saint Paul from being the economic and tax base asset that it can and should be.
The Capital City Bikeway is intended to help fix this problem by linking all parts of downtown. This connection is both an internal one within the thriving pockets of downtown, and external one with the neighborhoods around it. The 9th/10th leg is a critical connection that will bring people into the city and alleviate perceived and actual tensions around parking for drivers. I am very enthusiastic about the future of a downtown Saint Paul that is gracefully and safely connected to the east, west, north and south.
Please support the 9th/10th bikeway by voting to lay out a welcome mat for people to easily get into and out of downtown, and help downtown Saint Paul streets, businesses, and communities thrive.
Thanks for your support, and I hope you are staying safe and healthy.
It's worth pointing out that debating this project during the stay-at-home shut down triggered by COVID-19 adds an extra layer of tension here. As CM Prince stated, she was worried about the loss of parking "further stressing these businesses" during the pandemic.
But I would suggest that the pandemic actually shows the critical importance of biking and walking infrastructure. When restaurants do re-open, the ones that are linked to biking and walking paths will be the most successful. This goes double for breweries, which have long thrived when they invest in bike parking and locate near bike trails. Here's hoping downtown Saint Paul comes out of this crisis better than ever.
At the same time, the very isolation and marginalization of this part of the city has been, for many people over the years , a feature and not a bug. Because it is so isolated and economically neglected, what’s left of this part of the city has remained affordable and fine grained. Lots of important urban communities thrive in the margins in neighborhoods like this.
