Some huge questions about The Yard remain unanswered (the latest stadium legal challenge notwithstanding). The Park Committee met on January 9 to begin fleshing out a vision for The Yard. The committee has made a good start by identifying prioritization of year-round activities (note, activities year round is different than year-round activities – a skating rink, for example is seasonal), the idea that active uses attract passive, and balancing daily uses with major events. This is all well and good, but I can’t help but think that now more than ever is the time to engage more professional assistance in thinking about…

The Yard must be an active urban space, regardless of design. During the Park Committee meeting last week, co-chairs David Wilson and Tom Fisher went around the room asking people about their favorite park. Examples given included Hyde Park in London, the High Line in New York and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. The most common attribute given, and a common denominator, was because these parks were “active.” That said, as the Park Committee moves at lightning speed to come up with a vision and begin fundraising for The Yard, it seems reasonable that the vision be more rooted in how…

The Yard is the name of the 3.4-acre open space proposed as part of the redevelopment of five blocks of Star Tribune land adjacent to the new Minnesota Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis. With all the attention being given to the stadium and secondarily to attracting Wells Fargo as a major office tenant in the project, it is easy to forget the park itself, by far the most important piece of this project. Let’s not lull ourselves in to thinking that a place called “The Yard” can be just a casual place to gather with grass and trees. It has…

The Stadium Implementation Committee meets July 18 and several more times in to September to advise on key design decisions related to the new Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis. This post is primarily concerned about the relationship of the stadium to its surrounding urban environment. In late May Oslund & Associates presented the landscape plan for the stadium, and the following are my questions, concerns and recommendations about this plan. I hope the Stadium Implementation Committee considers the following. Pedestrian access. A common complaint about the Metrodome is for 30 years it has been a pedestrian barrier in downtown East. The design for…

The great mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, likes to say “there is no reason to build anything that won’t add to the beauty of the city.” Inspiring words. It behooves the Mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, to take those words to heart. After all, the mayor is the chief planner for the city. So you could imagine my concern last week, at the unveiling of the plan for Downtown East, when the first words out of his mouth were that the key to this plan is the parking. It took Rick Collins of Ryan Companies, speaking after Rybak, to point…