Downtown Revitalization: Minneapolis
(http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/photos/3076484784_GzvRM2d-M.jpg)
Metro Jacksonville takes a look at the heart of the Midwest's second largest economic center: Minneapolis.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2014-feb-downtown-revitalization-minneapolis
Nice but to cold for my taste. Would certainly like to visit there in summer/spring.
That's a cool Target.
Nice CVS also.
Minneapolis and Milwauke are two of my favorite cold-weather cities not named 'Chicago'. Uptown is a great model for what North San Marco could become.
Like Keith-N-Jax says though, in the winter it is BITTERLY cold. You can see in some of Lake's pics that there are elevated walkways all over downtown so that workers can avoid walking on the sidewalk all together when the temps drop in the Zero degree range.
I remember being bummed that I had to go to a conference in Minneapolis because it sounded so drab...but it impressed me so much that it's one of my favorite cities. They just seem to "get it" ...and the light rail system is fantastic. Granted, I was there in August and it was 70' and sunny the entire time, so there's that.
I used to do a bicycle ride every summer from Minneapolis to Chicago every summer and I loved the time I used to spend in downtown Minneapolis. They have made it so there are a lot of housing in the area and the streets are full of bars and cafes.
Great piece Lake! Minneapolis is probably the most surprising city I've ever been to. Totally blew away my low expectations. The art museums are fantastic, including The Walker which is one of the better American modern art museums, and The Weisman which was designed by Frank Gehry. They've got a great ethnic food corridor called Eat Street, which isn't too far from downtown. Plus the downtown nightlife and theater scene is bustling. Having a huge university like University of Minnesota so close to downtown makes a big difference too. Imagine if UF or FSU were located in Riverside or St. Nicholas.
All the above said, the biggest thing that jumped out at me is how well they maintain and invest in their public spaces. The city is immaculate and the parks are gorgeous. Transit system is still a work in progress, but I'm sure will get better with the new lines they are opening. You can definitely tell that their local government knows how to make strategic capital improvements for the betterment of the city....
When I was in Minneapolis, I was very curious as to the DT residential population. I told myself it HAD to well north of 20,000 and 30,000 would not have surprised me.
I came across this today in another forum. It is even higher than I thought. It is nearly 10% of the total population in the city limits, and is increasing by about 1,000 residents a year.
According to the Downtown Council, there are now 37,526 downtown MPLS residents compared to 36,500 in 2012 and roughly 33,500 in 2010.
Minneapolis is only 55 square miles but has 393k residents. By comparison, it's less dense than Miami (420k in 35 square miles) but significantly denser than Atlanta (444k in 132 square miles). I'm sure the CBD also benefits from good transit/bike connectivity between it and the surrounding neighborhoods.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/18/4987648/charlotte-leaders-try-out-minneapolis.html#.U6KjCPldUwA (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/18/4987648/charlotte-leaders-try-out-minneapolis.html#.U6KjCPldUwA)
QuoteMINNEAPOLIS Charlotte's political and business leaders arrived in the Twin Cities on a civic fact-finding mission Wednesday and immediately declared one goal worth emulating: a network of public parks and bikeways so extensive that in one instance, officials deemed it possible to bike across the city faster than driving.
The Charlotte Chamber's annual intercity trip, aimed at finding new solutions for Charlotte's problems, brought about 130 leaders to Minneapolis-St. Paul, including key leaders in city and county government as well as major corporations.
Michael Tarwater, head of Carolinas HealthCare System and this year's chamber chairman, said the Minneapolis region was picked this year because it boasts some of the country's highest rankings on a well-known fitness index.
Minneapolis' bike push
Part of that, Minneapolis officials suggested, has to do with their aggressive expansion of bikeways and parkland. Lisa Bender, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, said the city expanded its bike lanes from 45 miles to 81 from 2011 to 2013.
With 6,400 acres of public parks, she added, no resident is more than six blocks from a park.
She and other local officials credited some of the expansion to a $28 million federal grant for a pilot project aimed at boosting biking and walking. She said the effort has been a success, and showed slides of a 5-mile "bike highway" that runs from one end of the city to the other, parallel to an often-clogged major road.
"You can absolutely cross town faster now on a bicycle than by transit or by driving yourself," said Bender, adding that she bikes to work at City Hall. "It's become really cool. ... Everybody wants to get on the bicycle-riding bandwagon."
Members of the Charlotte delegation tested it out themselves, with City Council members, Mecklenburg commissioners and business executives hopping aboard bikes and Segways for a tour.
Charlotte's struggles
Making roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists has long been a sore spot in Charlotte, which has scored poorly on several national studies ranking the walkability of urban areas. There have been high-profile pedestrian deaths in recent years, including the 2012 accident on West Tyvola Road in which two young boys were hit and killed by a delivery truck. Residents lamented the lack of a sidewalk, but more than a year passed – and the truck driver was convicted – before Charlotte City Council finally awarded the construction contract for the project in January.
More recently, residents in the booming South End have complained that the pedestrian-friendly development flooding the area hasn't been accompanied by enough pedestrian-oriented safety measures on busy South Boulevard.
Michael Smith, head of Charlotte Center City Partners, applauded the Minneapolis bikeway system and said Charlotte needs to make a similar commitment to accommodate the more urban, pedestrian-oriented growth happening in the city's core.
But City Council member Claire Fallon said she wasn't sure about the Minneapolis approach to bikeways, which Bender said next will include a push to put more bike lanes on existing roads.
"If we did that here, they'd hang us," Fallon said, referring to Charlotte voters.
Earlier in the day, Michael Langley, head of the Minneapolis Saint Paul Regional Economic Development Partnership, told the group Minneapolis makes heavy investments in its parks and other civic assets, but residents pay more taxes for the "high-cost, high-quality" approach to city-building.
Frazier: 704-358-5145; Twitter: @Ericfraz
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/18/4987648/charlotte-leaders-try-out-minneapolis.html#.U6KjCPldUwA#storylink=cpy
Charlotte looks to Minneapolis' successful bid to win a Super Bowl, to help it's own chances.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/19/4990117/charlotte-as-super-bowl-host-citys.html
I think it is time that cities look deeper into what it takes to win a Super Bowl...look at the handouts and guarantees that Minneapolis is having to provide the NFL....why would Charlotte (or any other city) really want that?
If I ever had to move somewhere itd be minneapolis. Great people. Diverse. International. Great food. Lots of art. And girls can drink ya under the table. A great lgbt group. The cold...uggh.
Quote from: tufsu1 on June 20, 2014, 08:46:22 AM
I think it is time that cities look deeper into what it takes to win a Super Bowl...look at the handouts and guarantees that Minneapolis is having to provide the NFL....why would Charlotte (or any other city) really want that?
ego
For those thinking big scale national retailers are a possibility for DT jacksonville, such as Mayor Brown, this article has some sobering information. Minneapolis has 35,000 population in it's core, it still must be diligent
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/20/4992607/minneapolis-leaders-tell-charlotte.html#.U6WZMfldUwA
A summary of the lessons learned from the Charlotte officials visit to Minneapolis:
Quote
Last week, about 130 leaders from Charlotte's business, government, arts and philanthropic sectors traveled to Minneapolis for the Charlotte Chamber's annual intercity visit.
The goal was to find new solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our region.
It was a busy trip, packed with panel discussions and speeches on major civic questions including educational equity, paying for transit and encouraging entrepreneurship.
Here are some of my takeaways:
1. Meet the real big spenders. Charlotte taxpayers often feel overtaxed compared with neighbors from surrounding counties. But Charlotte's got nothing on the blue-state Minneapolis region, which has poured millions into pro sports stadiums and a sophisticated transit system similar to the one Charlotte wants to build – when it finds about $5 billion more.
All of that comes with high taxes and a higher cost of living than Charlotte. Still, Minneapolis' unemployment sits at about 4 percent, far lower than Charlotte's, thanks to Fortune 500 firms drawn by the highly educated workforce and strong quality of life.
That's the "high-cost, high-quality approach," said Michael Langley, head of the Minneapolis-St. Paul regional economic development partnership.
It seems to work for the Twin Cities. But with the latest tax hike rolling in on high earners, even Langley sounded as if he'd be happy if taxes don't go up any more.
2. Embrace green-friendly growth. For a city associated with frigid winters and snowstorms, Minneapolis leans heavily on its bikeways and greenway corridors to help spur redevelopment in the urban core – and on its light-rail system, too. I got a definite sense that those who support denser, more pedestrian-friendly development in Charlotte came away feeling validated and more determined than ever.
3. Stand together or fall apart. Twin Cities officials time and again stressed that they couldn't get big civic projects done without bipartisan and regional cooperation. Citizens fought over light rail for two decades there before a regional group of county leaders and a group of CEOs from major corporations pushed it through. After heated battles over whether to build a new $1 billion football stadium, the state chipped in $348 million.
4. Protect your past. Looking at beautiful old buildings sprinkled throughout Minneapolis' downtown, it seemed a shame that the Queen City hasn't preserved more of its architectural past. Many of the Twin Cities' older buildings had street-level retail stores in them, giving a random walk a sense of the kind of urban adventure you'd get in cities such as New York or San Francisco.
At a time when the younger generation is longing for walkable streets filled with shops and restaurants, uptown Charlotte is hamstrung by the fact that the bank towers that dominate its streetscape weren't built to include street-level retail space. Uptown leaders are working to change that, but the eclectic vibe you find along some of downtown Minneapolis' streets suggests much remains to be done.
5. Anticipate your future. U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis earned a standing ovation with a speech in which he urged the Charlotte group to deal with not only today's challenges and opportunities but to anticipate tomorrow's as well. Borrowing a sports metaphor from hockey great Wayne Gretzsky, he told the group to approach Charlotte's challenges like a hockey player who skates not to where the puck has been but to where it is going to be.
"Read the ricochet," he said.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/06/23/4999165/charlotte-chambers-minneapolis.html#storylink=cpy
I came across this article on Minneapolis today, and while most of the article concerns their apparently very successful alternative to land filling garbage, there was also this tidbit which I found interesting regarding the use of incentives.
Quote
Half a century ago, the state of Minnesota faced a problem still beguiling parts of the country today. Whereas states now compete for business by undercutting each other with ever-greater incentives, so too did the myriad cities and counties within Minnesota back then—creating a zero-sum economic competition that hurt the region more than it helped. The state Legislature's answer to this race to the bottom was to essentially put into motion the sort of plan that goes by one, politically suicidal word today: redistribution. (Or, if you'd prefer to stay true to the state's Scandinavian roots, you could opt for the synonym with more positive connotations: cooperation.)
As a result, every local government was forced to pitch in nearly half of their commercial tax revenue growth to a collective pool to fuel regional growth and ensure that the region around the Twin Cities didn't break apart into a world of haves and have nots. The legacy of that shared wealth is evident today in Minneapolis-St. Paul, home to the headquarters of 19 Fortune 500 companies, the city that online real estate listing service Trulia recently named the most affordable in the country, and which a study this month found was the fastest-growing home to tech jobs nationwide, outpacing even traditional powerhouses like California, New York and Washington state.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/minneapolis-trash-incinerator-121570#ixzz3kUeqd1FZ
In addition to the interesting incentives strategy, it is pretty damn impressive that this city is home to 19 F500 corporations, has the fastest growing tech job base and YET is extremely affordable at the same time.
Based on the reading I have done over the years and my own visit to MSP, I swear there doesn't seem to be a city that has it's act together better than they do. If there is, I haven't been there.
Quote from: vicupstate on September 01, 2015, 09:50:11 AM
I came across this article on Minneapolis today, and while most of the article concerns their apparently very successful alternative to land filling garbage, there was also this tidbit which I found interesting regarding the use of incentives.
Quote
Half a century ago, the state of Minnesota faced a problem still beguiling parts of the country today. Whereas states now compete for business by undercutting each other with ever-greater incentives, so too did the myriad cities and counties within Minnesota back then—creating a zero-sum economic competition that hurt the region more than it helped. The state Legislature's answer to this race to the bottom was to essentially put into motion the sort of plan that goes by one, politically suicidal word today: redistribution. (Or, if you'd prefer to stay true to the state's Scandinavian roots, you could opt for the synonym with more positive connotations: cooperation.)
As a result, every local government was forced to pitch in nearly half of their commercial tax revenue growth to a collective pool to fuel regional growth and ensure that the region around the Twin Cities didn't break apart into a world of haves and have nots. The legacy of that shared wealth is evident today in Minneapolis-St. Paul, home to the headquarters of 19 Fortune 500 companies, the city that online real estate listing service Trulia recently named the most affordable in the country, and which a study this month found was the fastest-growing home to tech jobs nationwide, outpacing even traditional powerhouses like California, New York and Washington state.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/minneapolis-trash-incinerator-121570#ixzz3kUeqd1FZ
In addition to the interesting incentives strategy, it is pretty damn impressive that this city is home to 19 F500 corporations, has the fastest growing tech job base and YET is extremely affordable at the same time.
Based on the reading I have done over the years and my own visit to MSP, I swear there doesn't seem to be a city that has it's act together better than they do. If there is, I haven't been there.
^I know why . . . It's because of their Scandinavian blood lines ;) Think about it . . . the Scandinavian countries have some of the highest quality of life (according to rankings) in the world. And Minnesota, largely populated by Scandinavians, is one of the states with the highest quality of life (again, according to rankings that I've read but don't feel like looking up again and posting).
All kidding aside (or maybe there is some truth to it), I have enjoyed every part of Minnesota I've been to. Duluth is a very cool small city, and Northfield just southeast of Minny is one of the nicest little towns I've been to in the US.
^I visited MSP for the first time this past summer and wrote about it in these forums. Was very impressed! Was supposed to go to Duluth as well but last minute our friend we were going to visit there actually moved away to NY. I'll be back in a few weeks to attend a wedding in Northfield, actually.