«MDBO»"Used to be, you could look down from the IDS roof and see everything. Sometimes you saw girls sunbathing on the roofs below. They might have been topless, you couldn't tell, they were so far down. Nowadays, there's too much shadow. Too many other buildings."
«FR»Onetime IDS Tower
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Remember that old «MDUL»Walt Disney Presents«MDNM» stopgap film of a seed sprouting, growing, and breaking into blossom, all in 10 seconds? Imagine what the Minneapolis Historical Society would do with a similar film of the growth of the city of Minneapolis from the 1820s through to 1990.
From a bare riverbank to a village, to a farm capital, to the 20th century. Suddenly, up shoots the Foshay Tower, Northwestern Bell building, City Hall, and Dain Tower. Whoosh, whoosh, boing. Then, with the 60s, the buildings of the Gateway Project adjoining Washington Avenue -- the library, health building, the Fed, the Sheraton Ritz, NSP, Northwestern National Life. Voot, voot, veet. Then with the 70s, zreeow, an IDS Tower, vroon, Hennepin County Government Center, City Center, the Loring complex, Pillsbury Center, Lincoln Centre, International Center.
As the city banks into the late 80s, the pace picks up. Imagine laser visual effects as, one by one, a score of new towers and city projects pop into being, bigger and more lavish than what went before -- Norwest Center, "IDS II," "Opus II," International Center II and III. A grand new convention center, a refurbished mill district, a surprising new riverfront park, an arena for the new professional basketball franchise.
Slow down the film and what do you see? Many bundles being carried with antlike purposefulness, by people at many levels, from developers to city planners to corporate types to bond-buyers to politicians to the people who carry the biggest bundle of all, taxpayers -- a city engaged in the building of itself.
Throughout its history Minneapolis has been a city on the move. Sometimes the motion has been slow to the point of imperceptibility -- building between the Foshay Era and the Gateway project of the '60s was at a standstill. Other times, as now, the motion is a blur of things seen and unseen, things real and things imagined.
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* The LaSalle Plaza project is definitely off, says a Minneapolis architect. That's news to me, says a city planner -- I've seen the signed contracts.
* A trolley line across the river will cause a wave of weekend traffic, says one developer. Provided they get financing, says another.
* The project's third stage is just a question of when, says a builder. I can't be more definite about our plans this morning, says a real estate executive -- could you call back after lunch?
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Minneapolis, once the most earthbound of American cities -- home of lakes, mills, and a river -- has taken itself to the brink of abstraction today, as a city almost uniquely dedicated to the pursuit of paper, via education, high technology, financial services and the arts. A city of liberal political bent, its success flies in the face of neo-liberal economic thought -- that production precedes paper, that the service sector can never be sufficient, that Midwestern muscle derives from billowing blast furnaces, and little else.
The facts suggest otherwise. While Minneapolis proper has been losing population the past 20 years (434,000, 1970 to 360,000 today), the metro area itself has growth to 2.3 million, 16th largest in the country. Ranked against other cities, the Twin Cities together have the seventh most Fortune 500 Industrials (Pillbury, Honeywell, MEI, International Multifoods, Honeywell, Minstar and Bemis in Minneapolis alone), ahead of Houston and Boston (Kansas City and Denver boast but one apiece).
Of course, Fortune 500 companies are a meaningless measure of real prosperity -- that New York outnumbers us 121 to 7 does not mean we are 5.7% as well off. But large corporations do provide a foundation for smaller companies to cluster around, and a base of employment for Minneapolis' thriving service companies. «MDUL»Inc.«MDNM» Magazine ranks Minneapolis fourth among cities for fast-growing, publicly-held companies.
Minneapolis is host to such household names as Cray Computer, IDS Financial Services, Inc., Graco, NAL (Northwest Airlines), Northern States Power, Diversified Energies, Inc., and Munsingwear. And to a pair of fair-sized bank holding companies in First Bank System and Norwest Corporation -- bank monies exceed 19 billion in Minneapolis alone.
Some of the positives in the growth picture are mixed positives. To be sure, low-paying service jobs in the restaurant/copyshop stratum account for a part of the growth. As a high tax state city, Minneapolis has its share of government employees, and then some -- almost 15 percent of the job force -- which many people consider the least value-adding of all human endeavor. In addition, at 15 percent, Minneapolis must have the lowest manufacturing-jobs-per-total-jobs quotient of any major city outside the District of Columbia
How does the Minneapolis pie slice up? Service jobs get the big bite, 29 percent; followed by trade, 21; manufacturing, 15; government, 15; finance/insurance/real estate, 11; transportation/communications/utilities, 6; and construction 3% (1985 figures).
But it would be a flat-out error to ascribe Minneapolis' good job numbers to "service economy slippage." The city can boast an average household salary 17 percent above the state average and 22 percent above the national average.
Since 1980, the population of the city has fallen 2 percent; whereas the city's labor force grew by almost 4 percent. The area of greatest growth has not been corporate -- indeed, companies with over 1,000 employees typically declined in the number of employed, in the name of competitiveness or as a result of recession. The increase has occurred in the small to medium-sized employer, many of them conventional producers of goods.
In particular, jobs have been created in the computer and computer-related industries, in biotechnology and other offspring of Minnesota's "Medical Alley," in printing/graphic arts, and in good old-fashioned machine-shop production and assembly.
Minneapolis has been at the forefront of both a compression factor in 1980s healthcare -- the formulation of new, "megamerged" hospitals and health maintenance organizations -- and an expansion factor in the area of biotechnology. The compression has cut hospital service and administrative duplications, and reduced the number of jobs. But reductions have been offset and then some by biomed corporations in the city and near suburbs. Medical Alley, the trade association for the new industry, forecasts the production of 5,000 new jobs statewide annually, about a fifth of them in Minneapolis.
The Minnesota Technology Corridor, lying geographically along the Mississippi on Washington Avenue, hopes to be for hightech what Medical Alley is to biomed. High tech in the metro area is split, as biomed is, between the cities and the suburbs, with the outlying areas claiming most of the corporate headquarters. Still, Minneapolis has a high card or three to play with names like Honeywell, Cray Research, and the Minnesota Supercomputer Center. Plus, having first shot at "captive" University of Minnesota engineering and technical graduates helps. No group has put a number yet on how many jobs high tech is creating annually in Minneapolis, but if the stock market is any indication the city rates as at least a silicon subcenter.
A few of the major financial corporations are poised for significant future growth, like IDS, which is talking about 3,000 new jobs before the milennium. But that will not be the heart of Minneapolis' growth -- Norwest Corporation, stalled the past two years with corporate reshuffling and banking cutbacks, has been relatively stagnant in overall growth, and First Bank System has also moved to cut back the overall size of its central banking operations, including First Bank Minneapolis. Northwestern National Life has been tearing at its seams as well, and its new building -- its third Minneapolis building -- will house several hudnred new employees.
Which leaves hard manufacturing. Industrial development per se doesn't rate much ink in a city dominated by vague, paper-moving "services" such as accounting, banking, and insurance. But Minneapolis has maintained a progressive albeit low profile in the area of industrial work. The city has concentrated its industrial development into a handful of parks, typically remote from passing traffic, which helps create the illusion that the only town in town is the downtown.
These areas include: the Mid-City Industrial Park abutting Roseville and St. Anthony (featuring Dayton's Warehouse, Bureau of Engraving, UPS, and Nationwide Papers); the North Washington Industrial Area (Turnquist Paper, Pioneer Plating, and Graphics Unlimited); Northeast River Industrial Park (site for a new $17 million Honeywell R&D center); and Northgate Industrial park, Kasota Industrial Park, and Seward South Industrial Park, each housing a number of mid-sized manufacturing plants, distribution centers, and job shops.
A compelling reason exists for the lack of development news at these areas, namely that they are all on-line and booming. High-profile projects usually take the form of a rescue operation (how many times can IDS "save" downtown Minneapolis?), and Minneapolis's quietly thriving industrial centers are in no need of a rescue.
Given the evident prosperity of the city, and success despite the conventional program for growth seen in cities like Houston, Tampa, and Phoenix -- build today, worry tomorrow -- it is still not the easiest phenomenon to explain.
Chamber of Commerce brochures stress the livability of the place, gleaming skyscrapers, great park system, good schools, marvelous work ethic, entrepreneurial mentality of its managers and location just a paddle-stroke from walleye country.
Outside analysts write it off as a service economy city that has had a lot of luck. Some folks say it's the weather -- if you don't work here the winters are pretty hard slogging. Others have credited the Twin Cities' geographic remoteness as the key to its success, funneling off the undiluted talent of the uncitied spaces of the Upper Northwest.
And one analyst, city commentator Barry Casselman, has described the city as "the biomagnetic center" -- one of those peculiar and momentary capitals of good fortune through history where good things just seem to happen, like 5th Century Athens. A minority opinion, but it does explain things.
It didn't have to be like this. There was a time when, from the capping of the Foshay Tower in the 1920s through the 1950s, not one single new building went up in the downtown area.
In the 1950s, a few steps were taken as the phrase urban renewal began to take hold across the country. Minneapolis businesses, looking down Nicollet Avenue toward Washington Avenue -- the city's old Gateway district -- saw a slum on the verge of encompassing the city's downtown. Bums sleeping on the sidewalks, abandoned buildings, broken glass everywhere -- a city on a hill it wasn't, and businesses rallied to tear it all down and string up new steel -- Northwestern National Life, the Federal Reserve, a handful of public buildings and NSP.
But the Gateway was only a beginning, and to many not a particularly auspicious one. Don Risk, who was on the city council in those years, and who today peddles the real estate portfolio for the city's Metropolitan Community development Agency (MDCA), sees three recent crises which could have mean curtains for the city, but haven't.
In Risk's view, opportunity in Minneapolis has always been propelled by crisis. The three great crises of the '80s have been in office, retail, and parking. "It was a shock to Minneapolis in the late 1970s when its most illustrious resident, Pillsbury, threatened to up and move away from Minneapolis' southeast neighborhood. The enemy by that time was not just urban decay but revived competition from the interstate strips to the north and south, especially Bloomington's I-494."
In Risk's mind that was a turning point -- had Minneapolis let Pillsbury get away, it would have been an irrecoverable blow. The city didn't, of course, and in fact worked on Pillsbury to consolidate at the downtown Pillsbury Center. Lutheran Brotherhood also agreed to build, and soon the current boomlet around the Hennepin County Government Center -- the Piper Tower, the Turner building, International Center, and Lincoln Centre had together made, almost overnight, a new identity for downtown as "the place with all the office towers."
The second crisis has been the rapid deterioration of the Nicollet Mall as a retail center, due to inattention and the fire that turned Northwestern National Bank into "The Hole" at Seventh and Nicollet. What had been hailed in the 1960s as the wave of the future, the avenue inextricable joined with the happy image of Mary Tyler Moore flinging her tam high over the bus exhaust, had by the '80s and the closing or rumored closing of Powers, Young Quinlan, Penney's and Donaldson's, become a wave at the past.
Rather than let up or rest on its laurels, Risk said, Minneapolis movers and shakers cemented deals for the Conservatory, Saks Fifth Avenue, and a new Norwest Plaza which together comprise "one of the most incredible and most beautiful downtown development complexes, along Nicollet Avenue, as any city in the world can boast."
Crisis three, less romantic than the other two, but nonetheless critical, was parking. "With all the new people coming in to work all day downtown, there was simply nowhere to park. Thanks to Larry Irwin, the previous planning director for the city of Minneapolis, plans already existed to convert flatlands just north of downtown to ramps, with shuttle buses moving workers in and out of the core downtown throughout the day."
Ramps are being built along 5th Street now, with a 7th Street ramp to begin construction any day. Parking and the high cost of parking will continue to salt the daily bread of downtowners, but in fact spaces will come on line to keep pace with the 4,000 new employees to come downtown every year. And a third crisis has been mitigated.
If it sounds sometimes as if Minneapolis officials mean downtown when they say Minneapolis, that's almost the size of it. Since the days of the Gateway project, city planners have held to a single guiding principle for Minneapolis, that of the core downtown, and that principle is variously designated as «MDUL»synergism«MDNM». According to Jay Jenson, director of neighborhood development for the MCDA, synergism means that a strong downtown helps ensure strong outlying neighborhoods, and vice versa.
"If neighborhoods nearby are weak," Jenson says, "no way is a major corporation going to put its headquarters downtown. And it goes both ways -- without the strong downtown economy, neighborhoods most likely deteriorate to disinvestment levels."
Synergism -- and the thing it seeks to combat, disinvestment -- are words that crop up again and again in discussions of Minneapolis. Syngergism is what this city has that other cities -- Kansas City and San Antonio, for instance -- lack, says Jim Moore, director of downtown development for MCDA. "Kansas City's downtown is all parking lots and bombed out buildings, and San Antonio has renewed itself by annexing its own suburbs," a kind of municipal auto-cannibalism, leaving a dinky 2-story downtown encompassed by a scattered ring of faraway office structures. "Both cities enjoy relative prosperity and good growth -- but neither has achieved balance to go with growth. Minneapolis has."
Jan Hively, aide to Mayor Don Fraser, draws a parallel between the prosperity of a city economy and the way people live their lives. "We talk about roads and bridges, but an important part of a city's infrastructure is the spirit of a community. Are we healthy? Are we happy? That's where the neighborhoods create the downtown, not the other way around. If there is chronic unemployment, if there are problems with crime, drugs, etc., business will stay away just as if you had no streets."
The balance between the downtown and the city neighborhoods is a fragile one, and it often appears that the downtown swallows up much of the city's wealth, never to be seen again, and creating irrecoverable problems for the neighborhoods to endure as payback.
Richard Varda, director of design for Ellerbe & Associates, and author of such projects as the Supercomputer Center, International Centre's Phase II, and current projects at the Milwaukee Road Depot and the new State Theatre project along LaSalle Avenue, worries about how the city can survive its excess of success.
"I worry what will happen to the city outside the downtown area, how the increased density and congestion, the overloaded freeways and noisy airport [and the city's recently announced status as the nation's 6th most air-polluted metropolitan area] will impact upon the quality of life. I see the neighborhoods facing mounting pressure, which will translate into votes, and finally into new policy. Government ultimately responds, but by the time it responds to this kind of aggravation, it may be very late."
Mayor Fraser himself, while presiding over the golden age of Minneapolis development ("The main reason for the city's renaissance has been its excellent mayor," he deadpanned) is himself controversial for his efforts to maintain a balance between economic growth and a commitment to fight poverty at the lowest level.
Indeed, the temptation is great, surrounded as the city is with diadems of success, to imagine that this is what destiny has in mind for it, that it is unavoidable, that Minneapolis is doomed to growth and prosperity.
That view overlooks a host of reservations people must logically have about moving to or building in Minneapolis, none of which involve our mystical winter cold.
To begin with, there's already stuff there. To build in Minneapolis, as opposed to, say, Eden Prairie, you have to tear existing structures down, which means that to build the building you do want you have to: first buy the building you don't want, pay a higher premium for that building and land, pay higher taxes because that's the way it is, file expensive and time-taking environmental impact statements, and consult with all the people you hope to kick off the property.
And then, when it is time to build, you can't build sideways, which is cheaper -- you have to build upways, which costs about two to three times as much. And you're never quite free to attend to your own vision -- the city's vision, as declared by the city planning department and implemented by the MCDA, comes first. If your vision meshes with theirs, hey, go for it. And welcome to the city of closely monitored dreams.
Scott Anderson, marketing director for Twin Cities architectural firm Hammill Green & Abrahamson (HGA), cites the crowning weakness of the Minneapolis dream -- vacancy rates. At Lincoln Centre, which was built with no anchor tenant in mind, the rate of committed rental space is zero percent; at Plaza VII, the new complex across 7th Avenue from City Centre, 40%; at Norwest Center, which has a dandy anchor tenant and two co-anchors, 85%. Some of the projects proposed have no anchor tenants lined up -- some may go ahead without renter guarantees, others will doubtless collapse like an office tower of cards.
"Not to mention the vacancies caused when Class B tenants vacate those premises for the new class A projects," Anderson says. "Ending the glut at one end will mean creating one at the other. Minneapolis is simply overbuilt, period."
People in private planning and construction think much of the blame for the Minneapolis spectacle -- the aggressive creation of a city of semi-vacant office-towers and estivating retail complexes -- belongs with its corps of public implementers, the MCDA. "They're a bunch of pie-in-the-sky guys, grand schemers," says one design firm professional who, hoping to work again in the city of Minneapolis, wishes to remain anonymous.
"It's not their fault necessarily. They're a political body reporting directly to the city council. But they don't know the meaning of the word 'risk,' or give a moment's thought to what if this whole plan goes kablooey, what if Minneapolis overbuilds till it's one big glittering tower of sludge."
Jan Hively, aide to Mayor Fraser, takes the Alfred E. Neumann attitude that vacancies and developers' risktaking isn't the city's problem -- not the city's proper, at least. "That's the developers' problem," she says. "The net result for the city, at least in the short term, is a wonderful buyers' market, making the city more desirable to those wishing to expand or relocate, not less."
To Hively, the vacancy rate is a sign of health, and a temporary one at that. In the longer term, she acknowledges the need to find ways to keep the city from miring down in its own growth. "The main points are transportation, accessibility, and parking. If we can't guarantee those three things, we're in trouble. That's one reason why the mayor is pushing for LRT [light rapid transit]."
Anderson at HGA expresses confidence that the good news of Minneapolis' growth will remain good news as the years pass. "But it's important to recognize the cyclical nature of this sort of growth," he says. "Minneapolis has an average absorption rate of 700,000 square feet of office space annually, and we are facing an obvious oversupply, which will mean underabsorption. It would be unrealistic to expect a new spate of growth to follow on the heels of this one. We have to catch up to what we have before we run on ahead."
The bad news rests mostly with developers, Anderson says. "If your project promised $20/sq.ft. net and the market can yield only $18, you've got a shortfall to handle. Some can wait till things straighten out. Others can't." Some, he said, go the way of the passenger pigeon, south.
Howard Bergerud, who is a developer, having crafted renovation efforts at many Twin Cities sites, and working now on the Milwaukee Road Depot, Whitney Hotel, and Mill District renovations, thinks most of his kind will survive success. "Downtown provides many conveniences, but it also poses many problems. We as developers need to become more sophisticated in our offerings in order to compete with one another. We're not overbuilt at this moment, I don't think. What we are is «MDUL»almost«MDNM» overbuilt." And as one developer put it, How do you know how many you need till you've got too many?
MCDA's Jim Moore feels that the greatest single weakness of Minneapolis is coping with its own success. Too many things happen seemingly overnight, he says, and the consequence has been sky-high expectations and a stunning degree of impatience in just about every quarter. Recent newspaper articles highlighted the relative lack of development in the area around the Metrodome. Moore's attitude is, What do you people expect? Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will we be.
"People have a hard time with the fact that, five years following a project's onset, the changes that were projected to occur have only begun to take place," Moore says. "I suppose it's part of the price we pay for raising expectations, and for toying with the psychology of a given economic district." From a We-I-give-up attitude, where no one is reinvesting in an area, he said, people move very quickly to Aren't-we-there-yet?
«MDBO»«MDNM»Hively asserts axiomatically that the thrust of economic development is «MDUL»not«MDNM» to lure out-of-state companies into Minneapolis for relocation. "That approach may be the best alternative available for other cities. But we've discovered here that our best bet lies in fostering growth we already have."
As proof, she cited the city's two trendsetting growth models -- Northwestern National Life and IDS. "Today Northwestern National is building its third building, which may still not be enough space for their needs. And IDS is talking about IDS II, IDS III, and so forth. So our first rule has to be, Be good to what you've got. We can't let General Mills slip out of town ever again."
Besides that, the MCDA and other city boosters need to address the weaknesses of the city to determine its strengths. The day is probably past when a major self-contained corporation can locate itself in Minneapolis -- or any core city -- from scratch. The suburbs, with unlimited unbuilt acreage, will repeatedly ace cities out of such projects. Minneapolis will never compete for a Saturn-type project.
But corporate fashion is still on the side of the inner city in that quality business services are typically contracted out, rather than nurtured within. This dynamic concedes the future to business service centers -- banks, consultants, accountants, data processors, «MDUL»downtowns«MDNM» -- that the suburbs are hard pressed to mimic.
"Even if a company is located in the suburbs, it still looks to the downtown for that centrality of outsourcing," says Hively. So the idea of downtown is far from a discarded husk. And Minneapolis is above par for «MDUL»that«MDNM».
David Crosby, managing partner at Piper Jaffray & Hopwood, itself responsible for the kind of growth and development which has made Minneapolis prominent, offers a laundry-list detailing the glories of doing business in the City of Lakes.
"One reason Minneapolis is what it is is that it has no tradition, as the cities of the East do, of political patronage. We have traditionally had very good politicians, who have enhanced the development effort, not used it for their own purposes. Our commissioners are our greatest supporters. There are cities that can't say that."
Crosby doesn't blanch at the "service economy" stigma some slap on Minneapolis, that the most visible occupants of Minneapolis' downtown honeycombs are movers of paper, not steel or autos or even computers. "People outside ask me from time to time, 'Sure, you're successful, but what are you producing?' As if profits didn't matter, or jobs.
"There's a tremendous service sector working out of all these offices downtown -- bankers, accountants, lawyers, investment brokers, and others -- and the reason is that the supply of incoming businesses needing that support has kept coming," Crosby says. The reason for this prosperity? Crosby cites, for one thing, the fact that much of the community's money stays here for reinvestment. "People come back after college to begin their careers here, and they stay. We're not constantly losing our best people to some other city, such as New York."
Another reason Crosby ventures is the presence, just outside Minneapolis, of NWA, Inc. which began as Northwest Orient Airlines. Having a half-day travel time to either coast long ago put Minneapolis business people at an advantage in many kinds of dealings over the coasts themselves.
Other virtues? "We aren't even aware of them. Here it's routine, when your own business has performed well, to look for other businesses to invest in. What if this investment should turn into the next Cray Computer or Cardiac Pacemakers? Meanwhile the money stays in the system, Crosby says, and the local tide lifts local boats.
Crosby's still not finished. "We're honest. Honest. And people you do business with notice little things like not cutting every corner you come to. There «MDUL»are«MDNM» black lists to get put on -- when we do have a business scandal, it's usually a doozy -- but we're cleaner by disposition than many out there. And it pays off.
"If I had to say what was the one item inherent in the Minneapolis business community that is missing from Kansas City or Des Moines, or Milwaukee, I would say it is «MDUL»optimism«MDNM». We have an innate venturesomeness, a willingness to see what we can make together. Since we live here, we don't see it or appreciate it. Outsiders notice, though."
Crosby makes the most of his self-appointed role as shillmaster for doing business in Minneapolis. "I like playing the pitchman," he says, "but it's important to think well of where you are." It's dismaying to lose out on a deal just because the competition hails from New York or San Francisco, he says, so why concede the competition that advantage with a bad attitude?
Richard Varda is only slightly less varnished in his estimation of the city's strengths. "I agree that Minneapolis is different, but I credit local politics more than any other thing. We have a very active city council, with people that get involved in helping to stimulate growth and development. Then the business community itself is a major player, as seen through the Downtown Council, the Metro 2000 project, and the Chamber of Commerce."
The council has indeed been watchful, and surpisingly conservative. It has established a debt policy that the ratio of assessed property value to debt must improve over time. The policy has succeeded in weighting down some of the MCDA's lighter-than-air imaginings, and has prevented recurrences of the kinds of project failures and owner bailouts of the early '70s.
The council, whose members double as MCDA commissioners as of this year, is most serious when it comes to maintaining the city's cherished AAA bond rating, which in turn affects the city's ability to generate new private revenue. The council regularly sends MCDA the message that it will not squander its ability to generate revenue today for any amount of taxable new properties twenty years down the road.
"The decision by the council to take over as commissioners was one of the smartest things we ever did," says Tony Scallon, DFLer and confessed downtown booster. "You can't believe how much time the staff was wasting, making the same presentations two and three times. One fellow told me that a decision now takes 1 1/2 hours where before it took 15 or 20. People say it makes the MCDA more political, but has that been the result so far? I can't see it."
The policies have been largely successful for forcing a definition of downtown which will withstand considerable political upheaval, Scallon said. "We have guaranteed continuity of policy despite the changes that come with elections. I know I won't be sitting here in the year 2000, but I have a fair idea what the city will be doing then."
The function of the downtown is that it serves as a catalyst for the entire region, not just the city itself. "The downtown creates momentum that carries on to the suburbs, not the other way around," Varda says. "It's a case of success breeding success. And we're on a roll right now."
The good news, in a way, is that Minneapolis is enjoying such success these days that it can scrutinize potential deals with some dispassion, declining to participate in any but the most promising and most plausible. "There was a time when we couldn't buy a developer lunch," says Jim Moore at MCDA. "We couldn't get a nibble on Loring Park. Now we can walk away from that -- it's done, it's a success. And we're in the catbird seat."
Howard Bergerud, whose riverfront development projects have helped give the city its current topspin, says that the boom in development is part illusory. "If you're looking for cranes and excavation, there isn't as much going on at the site as there is on the page. There was actually more construction during the last boom, in 1979-80."
The riverfront appears to be the direction that the new city of Minneapolis is building itself. «MDNM»From time to time through its history, Minneapolis has waxed nostalgic about its early days as a mill town on the river. The next ten years will see a real turning back to the river. The momentum is there, with the Great River Road, Mill District work, Technology Corridor, and existing facilities at St. Anthony Main and Riverplace.
Bergerud speaks of a proposed trolley line carrying passengers across the old stone arch bridge from one side of the Mississippi to the others. The city expects to see bustling marinas where gravel pits stand today, and people on the river, boating and canoing, teaching sailing lessons -- trying to do here what Boston and Baltimore have done, make the river a part of the city once again. And citizens will finally be able to view the city's great primal resource -- St. Anthony Falls -- without having to climb three flights of Army Corp of Engineers stairs and gazing leaded glass over Lock and Dam No. 1.
The truly incredible feature of the Milwaukee Road project alongside the river, according to Bergerud, will be FREE PARKING alongside the Milwaukee Road project, a concept thought extinct apart from Monopoly boards.
As a sort of footnote, let's point out that riverfront development is not a brand new concept -- Pracna on Main, and the surrounding St. Anthony Main shopping complex, got the ball rolling, and Robert Boisclair's Riverplace development gave it additional momentum three years ago -- though Boisclair and his partners subsequently went bankrupt. Boisclair's reputation as a citybuilder has been permanently marred, and that bothers some, but not all.
Jim Moore of MCDA claims not to feel guilty when a pioneer like Boisclair -- who helped MCDA look pretty good in those years -- heads south. "You have to realize that it wasn't our mistake," Moore said. That's the nature of business -- it is risk, and the risk is theirs, not ours, as are the eventual payoffs."
Meanwhile, developers that do get into trouble, like Robert Boisclair, are big boys, he said -- they were not enticed into making the risks they made, nor did they roll over and play dead at the negotiating table when they came in.
Howard Bergerud, on the other hand, offers predecessor Boisclair a salute «MDUL»en passant«MDNM». "I'd like to give him credit for pioneering an interesting part of the city. His mistake was in getting caught at the end of a market cycle, building condominiums when the demand for them had subsided. We're all the mercy of market conditions -- you don't have to be stupid to get burned by them." And with the near-glut of office space in Minneapolis today, the residential market will probably take up developers' slack tomorrow.
The MCDA takes heart from the occasional Boisclair tailspin with the new risktakers who arrive to take their places. Texas developers, unable to break ground any more in that once-rich state, are camping out in Minneapolis -- Trammel Crow chief among them, but also including Vantage Corp. and Lincoln Properties. BCED, developers for the Conservatory and numerous other new projects in the city, hails from Canada. And Boisclair's replacements at Riverplace, Kajima Development Corp., are Japanese. Minneapolis development is too hot a cookie to eat all by itself.
Mayor Fraser, for his part, views the swirl of change with his usual equanimity. Minneapolis may not be 5th Century Athens to Fraser -- we elect philosophers instead of poisoning them -- but it's a real-life, prosperous American city. And cities, whether you're talking 5th Century Athens or 21st Century Minneapolis, are where the action of history takes place, he says.
"The ones that move ahead are the ones that diversify," Fraser said. "Minneapolis began as a mill town, in lumber and grain. We exported those products and imported everything else. Then we undertook to substitute locally-made products for imports, and our chances for success grew. Finally, we took to exporting those new products. Printing, recording, advertising, computer and medical technology.
"Minneapolis is one of the richest cities in terms of this diversity of production, Fraser says." The biomagnetic center has not lost its hum. And the business of citybuilding goes on.
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«MDUL»1. DOWNTOWN OFFICE SPACE«MDNM»
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"IDS II" - This is the working name for the new office tower to be built by IDS Financial Services, Inc. In April IDS confirmed the choice of the old Penney's site on the Mall, which the MCDA had fought to get, to preserve the core downtown -- a setback to Dallas-based developer Trammell Crow, which had its heart set on the less-central Normandy Inn site (evidence of the difference between city planning Minnesota-style vs. Texas-style?). The new tower, to rise higher than the first IDS tower, should contain the rapid growth rate of IDS -- 12-15% since it was acquired by American Express from Allegheny Corp in 1983. Employment is expected to rise from 3000 today to 7000 by 2000 -- the new tower will house that overflow, according to Dave Hubers, chief financial officer. In addition, IDS plans a $20 million computer center somewhere downtown, and a third major tower is even rumored.
NORWEST CENTER - Cesar Pelli's magnificent design for 57-story Kasota stone monolith 2 1/2 feet shorter than the IDS -- though Norwest will have six more floors, owing to lower ceilings. The complex's heart will be a seven-story rotunda rising 100 feet to Pelli himself has claimed that the Center will "gleam like a jewel" at the center of downtown. Besides Norwest Corporation, anchor tenants include accounting firm Deloitte Haskins & Sells and law firm Faegre & Benson. Topping off is scheduled for year's end, with occupancy beginning next summer.
150 SOUTH FIFTH AVENUE -- or "Opus Two," as some call it, due to be completed in October, 1988, is a 35-story office building developed by Opus Corporation and Beta West, the development arm of US West, the telecommunications gant. The 600,000 sq.ft. building will match the style of 100 South Fifth and will connect with the Northwestern Bell building across Second Avenue. Again, rumors of yet a third Opus Tower have been heard.
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE II & III - Ryan Construction, a builder-turned developer, is so pleased with the reception and rental situation at its International Centre I that plans are underway for a definite second and possible third. "It'll go," says John Strittmather of International Centre's third stage, "it's a question of when, not if." [sp?]
CABOT CABOT & FORBES - a joint venture between the 614 Company and the law firm of Cabot Cabot & Forbes, this project is still in the proposal stage. The building would include its own oarking ramp, shoot up about 25-28 stories, and house 350,000 sq.ft. The project probably won't go unless, unless another tenant can anchor it. They need someone big enough to speak for 150,000 sq.ft.
LINCOLN CENTRE - at 630,00 sq.ft. and 31 storeys, this "speculative" office tower (meaning no anchor tenants have yet been contracted) stands completed as of August at the base of the Hennepin Center diadem. A second phase of the Centre has been projected for the remainder of the block, with 50,000 sq.ft. set aside as a leafy area, with oak and ash stands.
IBM - McGuire/Thomas Partners' had had a joint venture underway with IBM, but the deal, involving a multi-stiry office structure at the Builders exchange site at Second Ave. S. and Sixth Street, appears to have evanesced, with McGuire Thomas, which had built several building with IBM before, slipping out of town unobserved. "As far as we know now," the project is on hold," said Bill DuBois of IBM.
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«MDUL»2. CONVENTION CENTER
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Covering five city blocks and containing 350,000 square feet of exhibition space, the new convention center will cost $102.5 million. The existing center will be demolished in 1988, leaving the city convention center-less until the new center is ready in 1991. In addition to the new center itself, an 800-room, $111 million convention center hotel will be built by the A.P. Kellar/Hilton Corporation between Marquette and 2nd Avenue South and 10th and 11th Streets
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«MDBO»3. DOWNTOWN RETAIL «MDNM»
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CONSERVATORY - This 360,000 sq. ft. retail project faces the Nicollet Mall from 8th to 9th Streets, and will include Harold's, a 45,000 Dayton-Hudson owned women's shop and 23,000 sq. ft. Mark Shale, a Chicago menswear store, Banana Republic, casual sportswear, Ann Tyler, the New York Women's clothier, Doubleday Books, and Orvis, a Vermont-based sporting goods operation -- it is already 75% filled. The complex will connect to Dayton's via skyway and tunnel. Open in October of this year.
PLAZA VII - This just-completed $103 million part of the City Center complex features 354-room Radisson Hotel, 354,000 sq. ft. of office space, 5,000 sq. ft. of retail area and a 330-space underground parking ramp. Developer is the Radisson Group Inc., a unit of the Carlson Companies.
SAKS FIFTH AVENUE - The Saks store, leased from BCED, Inc., which acquired the property at 7th and Nicollet from Oxford Properties, will be four staories tall and contain a 114,000 sq. ft. of retail space. Construction to begin in 1987 with completion in spring 1989. Saks is expected to to serve as harbinger for an entire new wave of elite retail outlets.
LA SOCIETE GENERALE IMMOBILIERE - will create a $299 million retail complex covering 3 | blocks, centering at 10th and Nicollet. LSGI is Europe's largest developer and retail manager. Tenants to include a major grocery store and two department stores.
LA SALLE PLACE - A $116-million mixed-use project adjoining East Hennepin between 8th and 9th Streets will include a renovated State Theater, six-screen cinema, 500,000 square feet of office and 60,000 square feet of retail, plus a new YMCA building to go with a remodeled older YMCA building. Developer is HTPG Associates Limited Partnership, with construction commencing in 1987 and taking three years to complete. Can the project talk Broadway impressarios into making a revamped State Thaetre a regular off-off-off Broadway stop? Go or no-go? Depends on whom you talk to.
NBA BASKETBALL ARENA - The NBA did it -- went and awarded Minneapolis a number on the new franchise waiting list, for 1989. Local developers Marv Wolfenson and Harvey Ratner have already stated their intention to build a basketball/hockey arena behind East Hennepin Ave. between Glenwood and 6th Street North and 1st and 2nd Avenue North, also to include a health club. A political hotcake, with objections raised from St. Paul and Bloomington, where existing facilities would be compromised. Project to be completed in 1990.
THE PAGEANT ON HENNEPIN - This project would undo the infamous E Block of East Hennepin, with Ray Harris Company developing a retail/office/entertainment complex on Hennepin between 6th and 8th Avenues. opposite the La Salle Project. Will the Orpheum Theatre be restored a la the State across the street? Who could use it? Stay tuned.
LAUREL VILLAGE - Connecting Hennepin Avenue development with the city's Loring neighborhood, this $120 million mixed-use project features 1,050 housing units, stretching from 12th to 15th Avenue along Hennepin. Will also include neighborhouse businesses and a new Loring post office.
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«MDBO»5. MILLS DISTRICT«MDNM»
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GREAT RIVER ROAD - Running along the west bank of the Mississippi from Plymouth Avenue on the North side to St. Anthony Falls at Portland Avenue, this $8.9 million scenic parkway will open this once landlocked area to development. A second phase will include development of a Mill Ruins park at the near edge of the Technology Corridor.
MILWAUKEE ROAD DEPOT - Bergerud Whitney psans to develop this landmark property for reseidential, commercial and office use. Construction should begin this year. The Milwaukee Road project includes housing, retail, office space and a hotel linked to the downtown via skyways and tunnels to the rest of the city via the Great River Road. Tenants to include a major grocery store, shops.
MILL PLACE CENTER - The Washburne-Crosby Mill complex will likewise be transformed into office/commercial/residential use, and will feature a museum for the historic milling industry, by Industry Square Development Company.
CROWN and CERESOTA ROLLER MILLS - To be developed by the Hayber Development Group into a commercial/office complex in 1987.
WHITNEY HOTEL - 100-room luxury hotel, opened this April, returns the Mill District to a position of primacy in Minneapolis development, and serves as a bellweather for coming Mill District development. Developer is Bergerud and Whitney.
RIVERPLACE II - projected years ago by Boisclair and other riverfront developers, this second stage will likely never take place. It was to have -- was to have remodeled the Coca Cola bottling plant and the Marquette site at University and Central. Perhaps riverfront development on the west side of the river will give the east side new impetus.
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«MDBO»6. MINNESOTA TECHNOLOGY CORRIDOR«MDNM»
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The Minnesota Supercomputer Center, which opened last August, will be joined along Washington Avenue between downtown and the University by the FMC Corporations's $26 million research and development facility. top house 550 FMC employees and genberate $1 million yearly in property taxes.
A planned second stage in several years could double these figures. Also for this are is a planned second phase for the renovation of the Thresher square and for the Muse 10 project, a renovated 3-story on 10th Ave, South, housing various technology-related firms, plus a third building renovation for the Minnesota Crime Council. The three projects will add 134,000 sq.ft. to the Minnesota Technology Corridor.
Together with the widening of Washington Avenue and the removal of the Chicago Ave. rail overpass, connection to the University area will be expedited.
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«MDBO»NORTH LOOP«MDNM»
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STAR & TRIBUNE PRINTING PLANT - 350-000 sq.ft. facility, reportedly built at the polite request of the MCDA ("You want us to build a $110 million plant over behind the warehouses? OK."), will keep 500 jobs in city and generate $1 million in property taxes yearly. The first papers will roll off the presses in May 1987.
ITASCA BUILDING - This renovated structure, hidden for years behind the same phalanx of warehouses along Washington Avenue N., features condominium living, retail shops, restaurants, office space, and an indoor river -- Bassett Creek, which passes visibly through the building at a key interval in its dark meanderings from Medicine Lake to the Mississippi.
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«MDBO»NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT«MDNM»
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The idea that industrial/commercial development away from the downtowns is of no consequence to the city draws lots of heat the the MCDA. Jay Jenson, director of the agency's neighborhoods division, has a long list of neighborhood projects that they're involved with -- and just as long a list of areas doing fine without their help.
«MDUL»Lake and Hennepin«MDNM»'s Calhoun Square parking ramp, for instance, is the most-used parking facility anywhere in Minnesota. And the «MDUL»West Bank«MDNM» is going ahead on its own to make Cedar Avenue into a theater district. The city doesn't get too involved in plans involving the «MDUL»University«MDNM» neighborhood, and has no idea what might be going on regarding the vast tracts of litte-used rail yards running up the city's spine.
«MDUL»Franklin Avenue«MDNM» is the most active of the seven neighborhoods targeted by the MCDA, with the 13,000 sq.ft. Phillips Works factory going in beside the retail center between 10th and 13th Avenues, on the old Franklin Fruit Market site. The Phillips Works is a manufacturing facility that will do contract work for Honeywell and anyone else needing assembly and other light manufacturing work. Part of the same site wil be developed for a 4,000 sq.ft. office and warehouse expansion for Honeywell Protection Services«MDNM».
At «MDUL»Chicago and Lake«MDNM», Ray Harris has a 160,000 sq.ft. retail center proposal on the table that would complement a lower back clinic proposed by the Rockhampton Partnership, to be used by Abbott-Northwestern Hospital physicians.
Along what has been a particularly bleak stretch of the Northside's «MDUL»Plymouth Avenue«MDNM», several developments are taking shape. A roller rink has beenm transformed into French Accent, a bakery, and the moribund Plymouth Avenue Shopping center has taken on new life under a new name, King Shopping Center. This, plus building of a new 4th Precinct Police Station, and the upgrading of the Estes Funeral Home at Plymouth and Penn, give this area a fresh outlook for the 90s.
When «MDUL»Nicollet Avenue«MDNM» was vivisected along Lake Street ten years ago, it signaled a downturn for the entire southside. With Kmart and Supervalue galvanizing the cul de sac, however, new commercial interests are making inquiries, including Frank's nurseries and Highland Superstores, a retail electronics outlet.
Most interesting of all neighborhood projects may the old «MDUL»Grain Belt Brewery«MDNM» along the river in Northeast, where plans are underway to transform the now-gutted historic structure into a center for the area's sound recording industry. Current owner Irwin Jacobs would be pleased to unload this untouchable white elephant.
At «MDUL»27th and Lake«MDNM», Brown Institute's new building is up and humming, and its previous building is now a Walgreen's Pharmacy store. Walgreen's has additional plans for the other Brown sites along Lake Street. Worth noting, too, is the final upgrading of Hiawatha Avenue to the airport, cleansing it of its defunct silos and asphalt yards, widening it into a true parkway -- the first view in-flying visitors will get of the new Minneaposlis.
