One of my earliest memories is riding the bus downtown with my grandfather. We’d leave my grandparents house on Burton Lane in Minneapolis, and walk a short block to the bus stop to catch the Route 20 to head downtown. Mass transit and tall buildings - urbanism at an early age.

Why take the bus downtown? Actually, my grandfather didn’t want his Oldsmobile scratched or dented in a parking ramp. I must confess to a mixed family history with regard to mass transit. My great grandfather slipped and fell on a trolley track in the 1930s, breaking his hip and developing pneumonia, which killed him a month later. In 1960, my grandparent’s home (my mother was 12 at the time) was taken for one of the Twin Cities’ first interstates. Undeterred, I like buses and trains; I’m sure because of fond memories of my grandfather and I.

I’d get the window seat, and together we’d gaze out at the leafy Minneapolis neighborhoods, now and then catching a glimpse of the skyline as we approached. Once downtown, after passing under the Washington Avenue railroad trestle, Grandpa would let me snap the cord indicating we’d like to get off at the next stop, and together we’d exit the bus at Nicollet Mall, my little hand in his big, strong, wrinkled one.

We typically headed first to the IDS tower’s 49th floor. There, we had access to the Regency Room, which, if memory serves me right, was a perk of my grandpa’s credit union membership. He’d get coffee and I’d get an orange pop, and we’d sit together, eating cookies and gazing out at our city. New at the time, the IDS was quite magnificent to me, and still is.

Next stop was Woolworths, which occupied a basement space in the IDS. I could typically talk Grandpa into buying me a Matchbox car there - that kind of rounded out the day for me.

The orange pop and cookies at the Regency Room didn’t last long, and thus McDonald’s was a prerequisite for lunch. We’d head there through the skyway system, in the words of The Replacements, “high above the busy little one-way” streets below, through the former Donaldson’s, J.C. Penney and Power’s department stores.

The skyways began to appear in Minneapolis during the 1960s as downtown Minneapolis tried to fight retail flight to suburban malls. More on that later, but ploughing second-story “sidewalks” through existing buildings created some interesting quirks. I’m not sure how, but Grandpa and I one day discovered a very unofficial skyway access to McDonald’s. By passing through the ladies lingerie section on the second story of Powers, you could climb over a half wall and through an unmarked doorway and voila, you were in the second story of McDonald’s! I’m sure it was a temporary, construction related quirk of some sort, but as a 6-year-old, it felt like espionage.

I fondly remember discovering the big city with my grandfather - the streets, the bus, the tall buildings, they were wondrous to a little boy.

Why do I reminisce about this urban experience? Well, my wife Jen and I are the proud parents of Ellis Joseph Newberg, born June 20, 2006 in Minneapolis. Call it a case of Newborn Urbanism, but needless to say, I have plenty of urban plans for Ellis.

The Regency Room, Woolworths and that particular McDonald’s are all gone, but like any city, the memories remain. I look forward to taking the train downtown with him, just like my grandfather took the bus with me. We’ll visit the new downtown library and see a baseball game at the new Twins stadium. Together we can explore the city, and discover our own Regency Room or secret passage to McDonald’s (hopefully some other restaurant, but you get the point).

But it won’t stop with Minneapolis and St. Paul. There’s Chicago, Denver, London, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Dublin….

Sometimes a real estate development project opens and seems to have the hopes of an entire city wrapped in its prospects for success.  The new Midtown Exchange in Minneapolis is one such project, and how do I put this…it is fantastic!  Besides being such a big and impressive public/private project, I have high hopes that all goes well with it, so that years from now we can look back and say it was worth it.

I hope it works because it is a great project.  By that I mean 1.2 million square feet of renovated art deco greatness, with 88 condos, 219 apartments, 370,000 square feet of office space, including the 1,000-plus employees at the headquarters of Allina Hospitals & Clinics, and the 71,000 square foot Midtown Global Market, all of it under one roof in the renovated Sears department store building that dates to 1928.  Newly built as part of the project are 52 affordable condos and a 136-room Sheraton Hotel.

I hope it works because the neighborhood needs for it to work.  The surrounding area has struggled for years as an inner-city neighborhood with a lot gone wrong, but also a lot of hope.  The Midtown Exchange should be a big nudge in the right direction.

I hope it works because the city of Minneapolis, Ryan Companies, Sherman Associates, Project for Pride in Living, Allina and others have invested a ton of money in it - $190 million worth.  Most of all, Allina chose to consolidate its headquarters there, bringing a lot of employment to the area.  They could have chosen another, simpler location elsewhere, but they believed in the project and the neighborhood.  For this, Allina should be applauded.

I hope it works because the Midtown Global Market is so cool.  Part farmers market, part flea market, part upscale ethnic grocer and delicatessen, the Midtown Global Market brings all faces of the city together.  Where else can you buy meat from a Mexican butcher, pizza, gyros, tortas, Caribbean body oils, flowers, Middle Eastern art, and specialty Asian groceries, all under one roof?  The market opened earlier this month, and represents all that is exciting about Minneapolis right now.  It is the place to go for coffee, lunch, groceries, or to buy food for a dinner party.  Take that, Mall of America!

I hope it works because somebody is paying $1 million for the three-story penthouse unit, with its sweeping views of the city in four directions.

I hope it works because it is located along Lake Street, the only true commercial street that crosses the entire city.  It is also located along the Midtown Greenway, a bicycle trail and possible transit route that will cross the city when finished later this year.  The Midtown Exchange will be served by several modes of transportation right in the middle of the city, connecting the chain of lakes, Uptown, and Lyn/Lake to the west with Bloomington and Lake, the light rail line and the Mississippi River to the east.

I hope it works because it deserves to.  It is a public/private partnership that came out of several possible iterations for former Sears store, and was a massive project to undertake.  The building sat vacant for a decade.  Demolition was one possibility, replacing it with big box retail (gasp!).  Patience won the day, and the result is much better for the building, and in the long run for Allina, the residents, the business owners, the neighborhood and the city.

I hope it works because the sheer diversity of people and uses makes it the single most exciting place to be created in Minneapolis in some time, if ever.  It should genuinely make Minneapolis proud.

For those of you in the Twin Cities, go there now.  And the rest of you, perhaps it’s time for a visit!

Check it out online at www.midtowncommunityworks.org and www.midtownglobalmarket.org.