Downtown 2010 report is part forecast, part wish list

Published Sunday, December 22, 1996

Downtown 2010 report is part forecast, part wish list

Kevin Diaz / Star Tribune

The long view on downtown Minneapolis in the year 2010:

Wide, tree-studded sidewalks connect parks and plazas to create green space amid a busy commercial center of office buildings. Pretty store windows, cafes and restaurants line the ground floors. There's updated landscaping. New buildings maximize the warm rays of summer sun and block the cold, biting winds of winter.

Glass skyways connect the shopping and office district east of Hennepin Av. to the growing entertainment district to the west. A shiny new retail and entertainment complex fills up the parking lot that is now "Block E."

The north end of Nicollet Mall -- once the city's gateway, now mostly parking lots -- sprouts a civic plaza serving a six-block office center in the tradition of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

There are people all around. High-speed commuter busways connect this thriving commercial center to important suburban destinations, particularly the airport.

Delusions of the Minneapple?

Maybe, but those are the goals -- part forecast, part wish list -- offered by the city's new 15-year plan, a general framework called "Downtown Minneapolis 2010."

Developed by the Minneapolis Planning Department and the Downtown Council, the plan has been circulated in recent days among civic leaders and City Hall officials as a guide to growth in downtown Minneapolis, described as the "image maker" for the region.

"The overall intent was not to be too aggressive or 'out there,' " said Rebecca Yanisch, executive director of the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA), the city's semi-independent development arm. "They tried to be visionary, yet realistic."

24-hour city

The 64-page document is part urban plan and part marketing strategy to get people thinking of downtown as a "24-hour" place that's safe, convenient and a good place to shop and do business.

Its authors acknowledge that much of the vision hinges on three critical challenges: maintaining transportation access to the city's business center, fostering a healthy downtown residential atmosphere and, most problematic, ensuring the survival of downtown retailing, which has had its ups and downs.

Projections for growth on all three fronts are based on a record of success in the 1980s and '90s, especially in comparison to the downtown areas of other U.S. cities.

Since 1980, Minneapolis has seen its skyline transformed with 12 million square feet of new office space, serving 30,000 new workers. Nicollet Mall was renovated; a new Convention Center was built; the Metrodome and Target Center opened, and professional basketball came to town.

Downtown maintains a 40 percent share of regional office space. New upscale residential developments, particularly along the Mississippi riverfront, have brought more than 2,000 new residents downtown.

Currently, the MCDA identifies 20 large commercial and residential projects downtown involving about $800 million in private investment that have either been proposed, are on the drawing boards or are in some state of construction. That includes the development of Block E and a downtown Target store.

With the rapid growth of the 1980s ebbing, and the glut of office space finally catching up with demand, here are the forecasts for the year 2010:

About 35,000 new workers, creating a demand for about 9 million square feet of new office space. (Plans for at least two new office towers are underway).

Between 3,500 and 4,000 new downtown residents, adding to the sometimes-overlooked residential community that already forms a part of downtown, turning downtown into a 24-hour city.

About 6,550 more cars and 175 more buses during the afternoon peak hour, creating demand for 14,650 additional parking spaces.

"All forecasts are basically your best guess, but they are reasonable," said Richard Johnson, the project manager and principal author of the 2010 report.

But the vision of the future is not just numbers. It is also a combination of hopes, interests -- and concerns.

City leaders believe that with a unified marketing approach, those numbers can translate into an active urban focal point offering a "complete package" of amenities -- including theater, museums, restaurants, symphony orchestra, nightclubs and, yes, major league sports.

"The plan calls for downtown to be the economic and entertainment capital of the Upper Midwest," said Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton.

A revolution

The competition isn't far away.

The city's first downtown plan, in 1959, was written at about the same time the suburbs were taking hold and the nation's first enclosed shopping mall, Southdale, was built in Edina. At the time, downtown had about 100,000 workers (40,000 fewer than today) and 26,000 residents (7,000 more than today).

"The Central Minneapolis Plan" of 1959 recognized the challenge and called for skyways and the creation of Nicollet Mall. That was five plans ago.

Today Bloomington is home to the largest mall in the country, and the concerns of downtown boosters and planners are the same: maintaining market share in office space and retail.

During the 1980s, downtown saw four new retail centers built: City Center, Gaviidae Common, Gaviidae Two and the Conservatory. The Conservatory is now slated for demolition, and the upper floors of the Gaviidaes largely have been converted to office space.

Downtown Council President Sam Grabarski says that if downtown is going to face down the competition for people, it needs a unified strategy, just as suburban mall merchants market themselves jointly.

"We're essentially involved in a revolution, a kind of economic war," he said. If so, Downtown 2010 is a sort of battle plan.

It calls for the expansion of the downtown business improvement district, a zone of enhanced services -- clean-up, landscaping, snow removal and security -- paid for with a special levy on affected properties.

While that might be a tough sell to downtown property owners who already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, Grabarski considers it a critical component of downtown's future success.

Downtown 2010 also calls for zoning that supports the plan's mix of office, retail and residential spaces, with particular emphasis on street-level retail to bring life to the city's sometimes sparsely populated sidewalks.

But while Downtown 2010 is billed as a document that builds on the city's past successes, it differs from previous plans chiefly in its greater emphasis on creating a more attractive physical setting at the street level, where most people experience downtown.

"We've built a lot of stuff downtown," said Johnson, the report's author. "What we have to pay attention to now is what we put between the stuff."