Quincy Street NE: Who’s it for?
Analysis by Josh Blanc, Clay Squared to Infinity
The city of Minneapolis held a two-day listening and engagement session about Quincy Street NE on Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 16 and 17.
It was the kickoff event to get feedback from the artists, businesses and residences of the community that spans from Quincy Street, to Tyler Street and all the streets from Broadway to 18th Avenue NE. The Solar Arts Building, Q.arma Building, Highlight Center, Northrup King Building, Waterbury Building, Architectural Antiques and many other businesses are on those streets. More than 500 artists work in those buildings in this densely concentrated area — almost half of the artists in the Arts District.
The city says it needs to upgrade the infrastructure under the cobblestone streets to repair the main water pipes and other issues. The city says that the cobblestones cannot be put back as the main road but can be considered for a parking area. Parking quickly became the hot topic over the two days of conversation.
There are 824 parking spots on Quincy Street itself. Overall, there are under 2,000 parking spots (counted on Google Maps Aerial View) in the area where the city is going to fix the streets. This count includes Tyler and Van Buren Streets and 12th,14th and 15th Avenues.
Most of the parking on Quincy St. is privately owned by Hillcrest, The Keller Building (owned by Chicago-based R2 Companies), and Solar Arts. Most are paid lots, but many are not available to the masses of people who come to Quincy St. The remainder are coveted by the art businesses along the street.
The artists and business owners fought tooth and nail to convince the city that they need dedicated parking and access for deliveries for each of the art buildings. Many of the businesses on Quincy get deliveries for supplies that require large semis and regular trucks that bring in thousands of pounds of clay, wood, metal, beer, food and ice for the restaurants and event centers.
City Council President Elliott Payne said, “The city is reluctant to have dedicated parking because it would set a precedent that other parts of the city would want the same.”
Jonathon Query, owner of the Q.arma Building, said, “For this project to truly succeed, the city needs to see artists and arts buildings as partners with a shared interest in each other’s long-term health and viability.“
It is not clear why the city is focusing on Quincy Street now. It had many opportunities over the past three decades where it was in the same poor condition. But now the stakes are huge and contentious. The city must decide if it is fixing the roads for the businesses and the artists that work there or are they remaking it for the future for other businesses.
A Public Works employee who has jurisdiction over where curb cuts are made said future businesses were more important than the current ones and this is how the city must think about the area.
The city designated the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District; why not prioritize the existing businesses instead of catering to potential businesses that don’t even exist?
Query said, “More appropriate would be for the city to assume that artists will be in these old buildings indefinitely, and that it would be in everyone’s best interest to develop a cooperative partnership, for the city to draw on the deep pools of resourcefulness and creativity engendered in the arts community, and give artists the tools and voice to help craft a vision where developers, creatives and the city work together for a shared future.”
Quincy St. has quietly been a major hub of art business over the past 30 years, with Q.arma, Solar Arts, Architectural Antiques and Sign Minds buildings leading the charge. The street infrastructure has been in disrepair for more than 30 years. In the past few years, many new businesses have moved in and it has become arguably the hottest street in Minneapolis to see and be seen. Lamborghinis, BMWs and Teslas crawl and roar down this very beat-up cobblestone street.
In 2012 The Solar Arts Building was the first to have an event center hosting weddings and music events while having artists on the second floor. Now there are three breweries and two other event centers that have appeared over the past five years. The crush of events beyond Art-A-Whirl is straining the street.
Walking, biking and driving are all dangerous sports while visiting Quincy Street. Many cars drive way too fast on the street, there is no sidewalk, pedestrians must walk in the street behind cars backing up and swerving back and forth around the potholes. Bikers must dodge all of them.
Quincy was never intended to be an entertainment street, it was an industrial one and during the day, it still is.
Many city staff and the hired landscape architects who put on the two-day event clearly had empathy for those who work on the street and have written its history. The impending reconstruction to meet current street design standards is tentatively scheduled for 2027. But what becomes apparent is that city zoning will become a powerfully oppressive force on this development and has the potential to create city-induced gentrification. Once the first cobblestone is pried from the street, it will be subjected to all the modern details of zoning that will dictate so many challenges for those people working and playing on Quincy.
Those who will most likely benefit from the updates will be developers as their buildings will instantly become significantly more valuable with a brand-new street, allowing them to sell with higher profits and in turn raising taxes for everyone on Quincy St. That is a key component of gentrification. The arts buildings’ needs should be the main focus. The artists should be rewarded for their ingenuity, inventiveness and the creation of culture for the city, not thwarted and dismantled.
Query said, “I believe we are at a critical juncture with the city and its plans for Quincy.” He wants the art community to stay ahead of the process proactively rather than stumble along behind their plans, reacting with too-little-too-late to something that will have deep and long term consequences, “not just for our little patch of the arts scene, but with the … Arts District as a whole.”
Keep Logan Park Industrial weird
Analysis by Seth Stattmiller, Recovery Bike Shop
Last month, Minneapolis city planners held back-to-back community engagement sessions for the redevelopment of the Logan Park Industrial (LPI) area streets. These are the signature red bricks around Northrup King: Quincy, Tyler, 14th, etc.
What we said on Monday was activation, walking, vibrancy, character.
What was delivered on Tuesday was parking. Gone are the red bricks. Gone is walking in the street. At risk is the vibrant event center of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District that has fostered so many great businesses.
I do not envy the job of the Minneapolis city planner. The loudest voices tend to be the least happy. And no plan can make everyone happy. But LPI has something we just can’t get anywhere else in Minneapolis and the sheets of fresh asphalt and reams of formal parking spaces will throttle the energy and the vibe and the pull that this area has for customers and residents. This plan will reduce the value of the neighborhood for everyone, even the people that will only visit if there is access to convenient parking.
Today, LPI has almost no pedestrian infrastructure and so, people simply walk in the streets. This is fine because the neglected streets’ red bricks and potholes force cars to drive at safe speeds. This deterioration has helped foster a vibrant, activated commercial district with thriving businesses like Indeed, Centro, BŪCH and Bauhaus. This is the heart of Art-A-Whirl®. It is one of the few commercial spaces in Minneapolis where it feels safe to be a pedestrian.
Smooth asphalt will increase the speed of cars and change the life and character of Quincy and Tyler that feeds these local businesses and makes LPI a jewel in our city.
It will be another half-century commitment to cars.
We should keep the historic brick. This is the industrial brand of these old streets. The road surface should be leveled and raised six inches. This will eliminate the curbs and communicate to drivers that they are entering a public walking space. The presence of pedestrians and the texture of the bricks will keep traffic slow and safe as it does now while still allowing access for drop-offs and deliveries.
The edges of the right-of-way need concrete sidewalks (tinted red to match the bricks) for accessibility.
That’s it. Access for walkers and drivers and rollers and deliveries and residents and customers and patios and workers and all.
All that is needed is slow cars. It’s all that Quincy and Tyler have now. And it has made these streets thrive.
Truly slow cars. Streets DESIGNED for 10 mph speed limits give commercial streets the opportunity to have it all.
We live in a city that recently dropped speed limits from 30 to 20 mph on all municipal streets. Has anyone noticed? Speeds still average above 30 mph. This is because signs don’t slow traffic. Minneapolis streets are designed for faster speeds.
The current conditions of Quincy and Tyler simply won’t permit driving above jogging speed unless drivers are willing to risk damage to their cars. This is how street “design” works.
These are vibrant activated streets only because they have not been brought up to the city standard, which favors lifeless car throughput over activated commercial corridors.
One fear from local property owners is that parking = customers. This is a completely rational fear. Most of us use our cars to access businesses. And we all prefer to park as close as possible to our destination. Convenient parking makes a business more attractive. Parking increases the DRAW that a commercial district has (or any destination).
Draw is the reason to visit a place. It is the pull of the products or experience we expect when we arrive. Draw is why we go.
And it’s enough to support plenty of businesses. Home Depot has enough draw (and convenient parking) that it is self-sustaining. The same Home Depot and parking moat works in community after community.
But Home Depot scores very low on DWELL. Dwell is the amount of time people spend. It is the feel of a place. It is the energy of the street. It is the intangible thing that makes you leave one store and drift down to another one nearby. Dwell makes it easy and pleasant to stay. And the longer a customer stays, the more money they spend.
It’s no fun to stroll the parking lot to see what else is available. And the next destination is so far away, it hardly catches our eye and draws us in.
This is the bargain we make with parking. Drivers are more likely to go to their destination, get what they came for, and leave. That’s what we do at Home Depot. There are 22 businesses at the Quarry (not counting the Amazon lockers and Tesla charging stations). After visiting Home Depot or Target, how many do you walk to? How many can you name?
Very few of these businesses benefit from the throngs of customers that are drawn to Home Depot or even the convenient parking. Parking lots inspire us to complete our errands and move on. They don’t inspire us to stroll, to continue shopping.
We may have other errands to run at the Quarry and we may combine trips by also grabbing what we need at Target. But this is not the same as spending leisure time walking over to Famous Footwear to see what’s in the window. It’s not the same as wandering down Quincy to get an unplanned cone at MN Nice Cream after dinner at Centro. Or sticking around to have a beer at Indeed because another friend is headed that way.
Maybe Centro and Indeed have enough draw that they don’t need to share customers with Architectural Antiques. But why give those customers up? Parking lots push destinations away from each other and decrease customers’ desire to walk to the next shopping opportunity.
Convenient parking gives businesses a little boost of draw. But it destroys dwell.
Parking lots and traffic actually divide Quincy into THREE distinct shopping districts that help each other out but are not getting the full benefit of dwell because of the space and cars that separate them. Indeed and Centro anchor one of those districts. BŪCH and MN Nice cream carry another. And then right across Broadway is little Uncle Franky’s, just steps away from MN Nice Cream. But Uncle Franky’s might as well be a mile away. Broadway keeps Uncle Franky’s from getting the full benefit of the energy and the vibrancy of Quincy because Broadway is so hostile to pedestrians.
Cars are great, but their presence makes us want to spend less time (and less money).
Draw and dwell within the LPI project area are strongest during Art-A-Whirl. They are strongest when destination and activity density (pop-ups and open studios and food trucks) are the highest and easy parking evaporates entirely.
Quincy and Tyler are at their best when cars have almost no access and people are everywhere. The more places there are for customers to visit, the more customers are drawn to an area and the longer they stay to shop.
When Indeed has a show or Francis Fest jams up the street, a driver still has plenty of access to free parking. And the walk is no more than the length of a Home Depot parking lot.
This is how life is for the businesses on SE Main Street or in Dinkytown. Parking sucks in these neighborhoods. But the customers still come. Because customers aren’t parking.
So keep the bricks. And keep the cars. Just keep them under 10 mph. Let the people keep the street and the businesses keep the customers. This is working now. Don’t “fix” it. Tell Ward 1 City Council Member Elliott Payne and City Planner Katie White you want to keep Quincy weird.
And ride your bike and carry your helmet when you shop so that businesses can see that customers aren’t cars.
Advocate for thedevelopment you want
The moment has arrived for artists and Northeast residents to project their voices and ideas. Your involvement is imperative to help improve the Arts District. Most of the time, when a developer has a plan, the public gets wind of it after it has already gone though zoning and planning. The city process includes public input. Use it.
Elliott Payne, Ward 1 Council Member, is also the President of City Council. Email: elliott.payne@minneapolismn.gov
Katie White is the senior transportation planner for Minneapolis Public Works, staff liaison for this project and the person scheduling meetings about it. Email: katie.white@minneapolismn.gov
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