Published Thursday, December 26, 1996

Seven things downtown Minneapolis needs to be more livable

Linda Mack / Star Tribune

Downtown Minneapolis is the state's cultural capital and economic hub. But it also should be Minnesota's living room, a place to sit and smell the coffee.

While Minneapolis leaders aim to keep the economy humming and the culture coming, they also should think about softening a downtown more geared to business than pleasure.

Here are seven things downtown Minneapolis needs to make it more livable:

Places to sit -- outside, inside and especially in the IDS Crystal Court.

Downtown Minneapolis is like a living room without furniture. The city encourages indoor atriums such as those in the Pillsbury Center or First Bank Place, but, lacking benches or chairs, they become spaces only to pass through as quickly as possible. The same is true for many streets.

The greatest travesty is the blank floor of the Crystal Court. The traditional Christmas tree is up, but it still looks empty. It's a blight on downtown's friendly image. The city needs places to stop, sit and relish the sun, both indoors and out.

Places to park and run a quick errand.

Just try to drive downtown, park for 15 minutes and drop off a camera for repairs or pick up new glasses. The choices are an expensive and inconvenient ramp, a more convenient surface lot charging $3 a half hour, or, if you're lucky, a 15-minute meter watched over by a hawklike meter attendant.

No wonder small businesses have trouble surviving. It's clear that businesses must rely on people working downtown and already in the pedestrian system. But making it work also for those passing through could help downtown feel more like an old-fashioned Main Street.

Green spaces and trees.

For a city known for its parks and lakes, downtown is sadly devoid of parklike spaces. Peavey Plaza is a summertime mecca; Nicollet Mall is a sort of linear park; there's a vest-pocket plaza or an outdoor arcade here and there.

But vast stretches of downtown are unrelieved gray corridors of buildings and sidewalks or, worse, surface parking lots "landscaped" with rotting wood railings.

Minneapolis has a swell skyline, but people experience a city through their fingertips and the soles of their feet. In downtown Minneapolis, the small scale needs civilizing.

A sense of history.

The cycles of renewal that have made Minneapolis such a dynamic city have obliterated layer after layer of history, from the Victorian 1889 Metropolitan Building to the classical 1912 Great Northern Depot to the green glass International Style Minnegasco Building, which will be demolished soon.

If any more older buildings get leveled, the city risks losing its soul. The rebounding demand for downtown office space threatens yet another group of buildings -- the two- and three-story early 20th-century commercial "blocks" such as the Handicraft Guild Building on 10th St. and Marquette Av. S. This building has a particularly rich history as home of the Handicraft Guild, which nurtured women artists, and the structure's small scale, dark red brick and lovely lines make it a perfect urban building.

The more flamboyant Lafayette Building at 1100 Nicollet Mall probably isn't in danger at present -- it has become home to a lively street life, with a Bruegger's Bagel Bakery and Caribou Coffee. But the Beard Art Gallery building at 10th St. and Nicollet is equally lovely, and it's likely to be flattened to make way for an office tower for Target.

These buildings will not survive on their own. Preserving them doesn't make economic sense to owners. City policy will have to help.

An artistic touch.

Unleash a handful of the city's talented artists to embellish downtown. Minneapolis sports a crop of fine buildings and can boast of flourishing cultural institutions such as the Minnesota Orchestra and the State and Orpheum theaters. Too often the arts and artists are confined to institutions. Yet scores of artists here could add beauty and whimsy to dull city streets. Get the artists out on the streets, either through a weekly or monthly artists' market on Nicollet Mall or by allowing them a free hand to create delight.

An airport check-in desk and high-speed transit depot.

Imagine checking your bags somewhere near the Convention Center, getting on a quick vehicle, zooming down Hiawatha Av. S. and 15 minutes later stepping into the airport terminal, bag-free. Imagine visitors to the Mall of America being able to board a high-speed vehicle that would take them to the airport in five minutes and could take them to downtown Minneapolis in just 15 minutes more. This is a vision worth pursuing. It makes business travel easier (about a third of the trips to the airport now leave from downtown), and it gives the millions of visitors to the mall an easy way to branch out and explore downtown.

The state invested millions to build roads to the mall. Now some investment should get people going the other way.

A new downtown library.

Minneapolis prides itself on its culture, but you wouldn't know it from walking into the downtown public library. It is outdated, dingy and drab. Although Minneapolis may catch the national wave of stadium construction, it is missing the equally impressive wave of library construction. From small towns to prominent cities, libraries serve not only as economic and intellectual resources but as civic and cultural centers -- and they're worth the big investment.

Minneapolis needs one with a spectacular and inviting reading room: It could truly be the city's living room.

Crystal Court: Then and now

It's your turn

© Copyright 1996 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.