twin city sidewalks

2019-08-26

After 58 Years, J.W. Hulme Disappears from West 7th and St. Clair

[The old West 7th factory.]

Last year, I was happy to finally lead a bike tour of "factories" along St. Clair Avenue, which I'd been thinking about for quite a while. It's a street that boasts a surprising number of manufacturing institutions, both large and small, and it was fun to visit a bunch of these places in an evening.

Well as sometimes happens with my tours, they can be a bit of a "kiss of death." Businesses, bars, or institutions occasionally disappear right after I bring a group to visit them. In the case of the St. Clair tour, it was J. W. Hulme, a leather bag manufacturer that had been on the corner of West 7th and St. Clair since 1960. They announced they'd be closing their factory last October, right after the tour. They stayed open for a few more months, but the building has been in mothballs for the last half a year.

Here is some info about J.W. Hulme that I'd found out in my research:

The company was named after John Willis Hulme, who started his first business in 1905 in downtown Saint Paul making a bunch of different canvas items. The company specialized in canvas awnings and tents.
The building on West 7th was built in 1960 when J.W. Hulme expanded. As a publicity stunt to celebrate the new factory the to camp out on the roof of the building for a weekend using Hulme material whenever possible.
In 1988 a bookkeeper “swindled” $33K from the company.
In the 1990s through the early 2010s, Hulme specialized in high-end canvas and hunting gear that was made specifically for Orvis, the fly-fishing brand.
J.W. Hulme was bought by an awning and canvas company guy named Gary Buermann in 2002. In 2005, a new CEO named Jen Guarino a former brand manager turned around the company. They received a boost when a couple of very influential people promoted the bags, and they were sold at places like Barneys Department Store in New York. With lots of debt, a private equity firm bailed them out in ’09.
As recently as last year, they employed dozens of highly-skilled sewers making their leather goods.

Sad to see a Saint Paul business close! It was a good run for J. W. Hulme, though. You can still visit their retail location on Grand Avenue, though their bags are now made elsewhere.

[Historic clippings follow.]

[Want ad, 1954.]

[c. 1960.]

[Want ad, 1978.]

[Want ad, 1998.]

[Ad for Orvis equipment, c. 1990s.]

[Current Grand Avenue shop.]

2019-08-22

My Study on Public Space in the Rondo Neighborhood is Now Available

By now, you might have heard of the Rondo land bridge project, the efforts by people in Saint Paul's historic Rondo community to build political momentum, and raise funds, for a one-mile-long "freeway cap" over I-94 in the central part of Saint Paul.

Thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation, I was able to put together a study of how the I-94 freeway has affected public space in the Rondo Community, and how a land bridge might change the neighborhood. It took me quite a long time to gather historical information, present-day quantitative data about things like noise and air pollution, and to write up the report, but I finally am able to share it with you. I'm happy with how it turned out.

The report has dozens of historic and present-day photos of public space in the Rondo community, some analysis of what public space is and why it's important, lots of historic info about the neighborhood, and some thoughts and data points about how public space might be impacted with any future changes to the freeway.

I'm excerpting the introduction, and you can download the entire thing at the link below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qXnJM-7I76y1SwHqVIPQ6MQty7-CpMky/view?usp=sharing

[Introduction follows.]

Chapter 1: Introduction

Who’s street?

On the evening of Friday June 17th, 2017, a group of people gathered at the edge of Saint Paul’s historic Rondo Avenue neighborhood made a collective decision that challenged social assumptions about public space in Saint Paul. Protesting the police shooting of Saint Paul resident and school worker Philando Castile, a group of demonstrators marched down the Dale Street onramp and onto the Interstate 94 right-of-way, “blocking” the movement of cars traveling through Saint Paul’s Rondo neighborhood for a few hours.

In a bit of tragic irony, the controversial demonstration on the freeway that evening took place on precisely the land that was once old Rondo Avenue, the diverse heart of Saint Paul’s African-American neighborhood. Decades prior to that night, the contested ground for the demonstration was literally seized for “public purposes” during the freeway construction era of the 1950s and 1960s, when thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses in the heart of Saint Paul.

Apart from raising awareness about systemic police brutality, the demonstration, which led to a police stand-off and criminal charges that were later dismissed, illuminated key questions about the relationship between free- ways and public space:

What exactly is the difference between a public sidewalk, a public street and a public freeway? Do governments and public institutions have responsibility to redress the wrongs of the past?

These questions lie at the heart of the issue of public space in the United States. Everywhere in American cities, freeways have blended into the background of everyday life. These infrastructures allow thousands of cars to speed past the homes, businesses, walls, and trees of historic urban communities. The effects of the freeway blur into a vague urban landscape. For many people, these massive pieces of public infrastructure become almost invisible, the sounds of the cars almost inaudible, the speeding traffic to and from the freeway ramps almost insensible. And yet the presence of freeways, frontage roads, noise walls, pedestrian bridges, on- and off-ramps, and tens of thousands of cars that rely on them, continue to make a material difference in the lives of people who live near them every day.

As always in urban life, individual and collective well-being rely on quality public spaces for sociality, mobility, and recreation. In an era when governments are beginning to examine freeway infrastructure more closely, look- ing at impacts on public space should be an important step in the process of reconsidering and rethinking the historical and present-day relationship between freeways and nearby communities.

This study uses public space as a lens to think about the past, present, and possible future relationship between freeway infrastructure and public space. As government and institutions weigh the costs and benefits of potential changes to freeways for future generations of city dwellers, it is important to consider how changes might impact the parks, playgrounds, streets, and sidewalks on which communities rely. The focus here is on describing the importance of public space for a community, examining narrowly the 1.25 square mile historic Rondo community surrounding the Interstate 94 corridor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The goal of the study is to look at the size and quality of public space within the study area, both before and after the construction of the freeway that dramatically and irrevocably transformed the neighborhood over 50 years ago.

Chapter 2 describes the overall purpose and methodological approach. This part of the study focuses on key reasons why public space is important for neighborhoods, outlining the connection between quality public space and physical, mental, and social health. Secondly, this chapter describes the mixed qualitative and quantitative methods that are used in this study to examine public space, both in the past and in the present-day.

Chapter 3 describes in general terms how this study defines public space. Here it describes the typology of categories, the difference between formal and informal public spaces, and the fundamental role that streets and sidewalks play in the landscape of public space for an urban neighborhood like Rondo.

Chapter 4 looks specifically at the historic landscape of the Rondo Community Study Area (RCSA), how public space might have existed before the freeway construction period radically transformed the neighborhood. Drawing on historic documents and accounts, this part of the report describes the different types of public space that might have existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Much of this public space landscape was informal in nature and, in many cases, relied on bottom-up institutions such as social clubs, businesses, or individuals to fill important roles in the community. Meanwhile, streets and sidewalks were largely oriented towards local uses, as opposed to regional users and traffic patterns that emerged after the freeway was built.

Chapter 5 examines the neighborhood’s public spaces in the present day, specifically focusing on size, type, and some specific measurable qualities. These include noise pollution, air pollution, and a basic proxy for safety and comfort along the street and sidewalks within the area.

Finally, Chapter 6 offers a few conclusions based on potential changes to the freeway infrastructure. Here, the study attempts to think about how changes to the 94 freeway corridor might affect public spaces in the future, largely in positive ways.

The goal of this report is to focus closely on the role that public space plays for the health and well-being of a community. Specifically, this study tries to look at the how construction of the I-94 freeway system and related changes that occurred during the construction years impacted everyday public spaces. Using public space as lens, it is compelling to think about the past, present, and future of public space, and the history of stability and change in the historic Rondo Community. Hopefully this report is the beginning of a larger conversation around the relationship between urban communities, historical inequity, and publicly-owned freeway infrastructure. No matter what happens next, no matter the future of the historic Rondo community and the freeway that divides it, public space will play a critical role.

I hope you enjoy the full report.

2019-08-20

Open Letter to the Saint Paul City Council about Ayd Mill Road

[Rendering of one possible design for Ayd Mill Road, from the Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition.]

As someone who grew up next to Ayd Mill Road, and have been using it my entire life, I was thrilled to hear that Mayor Carter and the city’s Public Works Department are going to commit to reduce and reconfigure Ayd Mill Road when they repave it this year. I believe this decision reinforces and reaffirms many of the city’s values, puts Saint Paul in a better place fiscally, and will not create major traffic problems on Saint Paul’s streets.

For those reasons, I think you should support this decision.

First, a key criteria for deciding the future of Ayd Mill Road has to be costs versus benefits. Ayd Mill Road is a 100% city-owned street, and city taxpayers are on the hook for any long-term maintenance of this infrastructure. This makes it very different than other freeways or major traffic arterials, and for a sixty-year-old road with deteriorating surface conditions, we should think carefully about how best to spend precious city dollars.

As you know, the long-term maintenance picture for Saint Paul streets is a bleak one, and when opportunities arise to downsize overbuilt streets and roads, we should seize that chance. This unique street, a four-lane divided roadway that connects with walkable city streets on one end and a freeway on the other, is a the most obvious of these kinds of projects. Reducing the road’s footprint will save the city millions of dollars in both the long- and short-terms.

Second, I believe the traffic impacts will be minimal. A grade-separated two-lane road with few intersections can actually handle a lot of daily traffic, and in cases like these, reducing lanes affects speed more than overall volume. The problem with Ayd Mill Road has always been its intersections with the regular street grid, rather than any congestion problems on the road itself. I would encourage you to keep an open mind about how this transition might work out well for all parties involved.

Finally, this decision reflects our shared values, especially those in the draft Climate Action Plan. Facing the existential problem of climate change, the Climate Action Plan lays out the ambitious goal of reducing city vehicle miles traveled by 2.5% each year. If we hope to achieve meaningful action on climate change, reducing and reprioritizing space given to roadways is an absolutely necessary step.

Ayd Mill Road is a decades-long saga, the kind of “third rail” that few political leaders want to address. Debates over the road began in the 1940s and continued vehemently throughout many lifetimes of political leaders, neighbors, and advocates. In 2002, the decision to “connect” the road to 35E was done as a “test” by then-Mayor Kelley with very little public input. On the other hand, the most recent Council action was the 2009 vote to adopt the current proposed configuration.

This is to say that Mayor Carter’s bold action on Ayd Mill Road reflects a long-process of deliberation and indecision over the future of this valley. I am thrilled that, at long last, the City of Saint Paul will be taking steps to transform this polluting liability into a public space that reflects and amplifies our shared values.

Please support this process as it moves forward this fall.

Thanks,
Bill Lindeke
Chair, Transportation Committee of the Planning Commission