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 City of Minneapolis is promising to spend a lot of money on some critical pieces of downtown infrastructure. The new Vikings Stadium and Downtown East area, Peavey Plaza, Nicollet Mall all are being considered for major capital investments. With Nicollet Mall, take one look at the people using the street and you can see that maybe the answer doesn’t lie in fancy infrastructure and world-class designers, perhaps the key is the social realm. What’s more is it’s already happening. We need look no further than food trucks, the farmers market and the Piazza on the Mall for proof. Earlier this week…

On our way to the ceremony unveiling the plan for the five-block Star Tribune property in Downtown East, my son Shaw and I got off the train at the Downtown East/Metrodome station and I was asked directions by an older couple. They were looking for Periscope, the ad agency, at 10th and Washington. Obliging, I agreed to walk with them from the platform across 4th Street, where I would point the way to Washington and bid them adieu. We stood waiting for the Walk signal to get across 4th Street and I detected a murmur from them as nothing was happening;…

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…

If we get the streets right, good things will follow in downtown east. Much hand-wringing is occurring over whether or not there will be good development around the new Minnesota Vikings football stadium in downtown Minneapolis. When we look backwards 30 years at why development hasn’t happened since the current Metrodome stadium was built, we find three main reasons. One reason is some property that remained zoned industrial until very recently. A second obvious reason is five entire blocks of land owned by the Star Tribune blocks didn’t get developed in part because the newspaper was using them and didn’t want to…