Kudos to Twin Cities leaders for not offering the kitchen sink to Amazon, as it seems the company had New York and Washington in mind all along. In the time it took for Amazon to decide what city (cities) to build its new HQ2, the Twin Cities added nearly half of the jobs it would have gained from landing Amazon. It does beg the question – what are we doing to attract future employment and talent to the Twin Cities? And do we need Amazon anyway? A quick back-of-the-napkin calculation (I order my napkins and pens from Amazon) reveals the…

Hands-down my favorite part of downtown Minneapolis this past summer was the pianos on Nicollet Avenue. Not necessarily a new idea, to be sure, but I was struck by the talent of seemingly random players and the joy it gave passers-by. Any given morning on my walk from the train to the office I’d pass the piano in the City Center doorway to hear someone pounding out some excellent blues. Most striking was the day I passed a homeless man camped out under his usual spot below a skyway on 7th Street one morning only to find him playing an…