local

There is a memorial service down the street in honor of the 38 Dakotans executed during the Dakotan Conflict as I sit here at a bagel shop in downtown Mankato. There are a good number of people in attendance and police are directing traffic. You can read about it here.

The largest mass execution in United States’ history happened here. It’s been 150 years and there is going to be a new monument. It’s a 20 foot scroll with 38 names located across the street from the execution. A public library and a few statues sit on the actual execution site while a bridge leaves the site in its shadow.

The monument is an island. You can check out the Google Streetview here.

Riverfront Drive, a major arterial road, cuts on the north side of the site. All the decorative lights and flower planters in the world won’t help improve the joy of walking along Riverfront Drive, which hasn’t been connected to the Minnesota River in 5 decades. It should be called Concrete Wall Front Road. The new statue, along with the statue of the now-locally vanished American Bison, is wedged between this busy road, an industrial railroad track and a concrete retaining wall protecting the City of Mankato from a 200 year floods and from good, scenic views.

The monument is an island, and it’s practically located under a bridge. It’s not exactly hidden, but it certainly doesn’t have a prominent location or good civic location.

Unless you knew the local history, you’d never know it was an execution site. Maybe that’s intentional? By virtual of its location, it is a “drive by” statue. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people will experience the monument by automobile. I bring this up because I think it effects how we relate to our history.

I lived in Edinburgh – a city with an exciting (but tremendously violent) history. It’s hard to walk a few hundred yards without seeing an execution site, unmarked grave or an advertisement for a haunted catacombs tour (where countless anonymous black plague victims were tossed). These tragedies are part of Edinburgh’s history – and they are embraced. And by the way, this brief paragraph doesn’t even begin to describe the historical atrocities that occurred in and around Edinburgh’s city walls.

I can’t say whether or not the Scottish people are embarrassed by these tragedies, but I can say that they have embraced them. It’s not just Edinburgh, but violent histories have been accepted so much that they even play into the realm of marketing of place. There is a pub across the street from a public execution site in Edinburgh that, as the marketed history goes, gave a free pint to the soon-to-be executed. The execution block still stands, as does the pub. The last public execution there was on the site: June 21st, 1864 (FYI: the Mankato Mass execution: December 16th, 1862).

The difference is that those hung in Edinburgh’s public square were likely criminal, to what severity I do not know. Mankato’s victims, while many may not have been innocent, were victims of a much wider and complex set of scenarios (Listen to the This American Life episode titled, “Little War on the Prairie”). Minnesota doesn’t have a long history, so maybe that makes tragedies things stick out? Of course, what community wants their claim to fame to be “Home of the Largest Mass Execution in United States History”?

History is written by the victorious. In the United States, we have a history of tearing down our history – just look at our built environment. I feel that holds true more often than not, but destructing the Dakotan Conflict execution is seemingly more difficult. We acknowledge that it happened, but we don’t fully embrace it. We’ve built monuments to the event, but we place them practically under bridges.

The best of 2012 - Local Urban & Transportation Style! You voted. We wrote it all up.

The first couple 'best of' have already been posted:

• Best Mid-Late 20th Century Enclosed Shopping Mall
• Best Late 20th/Early 21st Century New Urbanist Simulacrum of Main Street
• Best Surviving 19th/Early 20th Century "Main Street" in a Former Railroad/Interurban Town
• Best Pedestrian Shopping Street

It's not every day you get such a specific 'best of' opportunity. I wrote on New Urbanism's Excelsior and Grand and it's victory as the best simulacrum of Main Street.

That isn’t to say Excelsior and Grand isn’t without criticism, but it’s the best we’ve got. In fact, it’s hard to take other Twin Cities New Urbanist projects seriously. Arbor Lakes? No real residential. West End? Same problem, but with too much parking and it’s half-empty. Burnsville’s Heart of the City? I’m really happy they are trying. Woodbury Lakes? You can’t be serious?

I had this college summer internship that paid me too much money to basically drive aimlessly around the metro. Coming from a small town and moving directly to an walkable, urban-university setting, this internship was the first chance I had to experience suburbia. I’d drive from suburban office complex to strip mall to industrial park, and repeat. One day pre-ubiquitous GPS systems, I remember coming off Highway 100 while coming down from one of Blaine’s excruciatingly depressing industrial parks. I made a wrong turn and somehow bumped into Exclesior & Grand.

I remember thinking it was a mirage, an oasis in the suburban desert. This place couldn’t be real?

There are a few elements that put Excelsior and Grand ahead of the competition. The location is aided by its proximity to Minneapolis. That, and it’s surrounded by a partial traditional street grid. The strip malls nearby are old by strip mall standards, but they look quaint relics of the bygone years when compared to the expansive Power Center Strip Malls of the late 1990s and early 2000s. In a way, Excelsior and Grand is still surrounded by suburbia, but a humble suburbia in its first generation. The type of suburbia that still had some traditional patterns and acknowledged that Minneapolis, the big city, actually existed.

Excelsior and Grand is not an island (a criticism I have with all the other NU projects on the list). It’s connected to the neighborhood to the south and the few apartment / condo buildings to the north. As long as those walking are willing to brave Excelsior Blvd. The pedestrian connections aren’t that bad and walking within is a pretty pleasant experience. The project doesn’t feel too out of place either – it’s as if it is less than 10 years old, but already part of the neighborhood.

The retail currently occupying Excelsior and Grand is doing well. My only complaint is that the businesses are boring (CVS, Panera Bread, Starbucks, etc.). This isn’t a bad thing for most people. Eventually, as rents and markets change, businesses will come and go. That’s part of how a these things operate and I’m confident the Panera Breads of the world won’t stay forever. I’m just glad that we’ve got a place with good bones – even if the shops are bland.

If you're looking to see the rest of the "best of" series - you can find it here on Streets.MN.

Who would want to live by a football stadium? It’s virtually empty or seriously under-utilized 355 days a year and chaotic for the other 10 days a year. That sounds miserable.

A recent Star Tribune commentary asked the question, “Vikings stadium: Good neighbor or not?”.

Historically, the answer has been not; and based on all the renderings I’ve seen, the answer will continue to be not. Actually, I take that back – the stadium won’t be either a good neighbor or a bad neighbor. Why? Because it won’t really have any neighbors.

While not the final design, the most recent building renderings resemble nothing more than Metrodome version 2.0 – (it looks like someone sliced the dome’s roof to let in some air and then added a glass facade). North of the stadium, there are three city block sized open surface parking lots. To the west of the site, there are what appear to be two blocks of undefined plaza space. There is some green space and a few small building on the east side of the site, but since this space is currently an interstate highway, it’s not really clear what will happen there.

The only neighbors it would inconvenience are those who are already currently inconvenienced by the stadium. It’s likely the new stadium won’t spark new neighbors either. Do Stadiums Bring Development? Usually not.

I’ve written about this and shared these images a lot over the past year, and I continue to do so because I believe they are powerful in visually showing how little stadiums actually help.

If we build it, they will come? This argument doesn’t hold up under even the most modest of scrutinies. The Twin Cities own experiences should serve lesson that large sport and convention center venues do not create a catalyst for development.

[Minneapolis, Minnesota - 1991, 2002, 2009]

Notice the development around the Metrodome? Neither did anyone else. North of the Metrodome, near the Guthrie Theater, residential development has occurred, but little of which can be attributed to proximity to the Metrodome. The Mississippi River, cultural amenities and other forces play a larger role in redevelopment.

St. Paul has had similar results with the Xcel Energy Center.

[St. Paul, Minnesota - 1991, 2002, 2009]

The taxpayer-subsidized arena was supposed to act as a catalyst for development in St. Paul. Ten years later, there isn’t much to show for it besides renovated pubs along West 7th Street. All of which are fantastic (McGoverns, The Liffey, Eagle Street, Tom Reid’s), but the success of these local watering holes is hardly worthy of hundreds of millions dollars in taxpayer subsidizes.

Stadiums prompting development in the immediate surrounding area of new stadium construction certainly sounds like a plausible argument as large infrastructure projects do typically yield private development. However, sport stadiums appear to be the exception to the rule.

[Indianapolis, Indiana - 1992, 2007, 2010]

The new Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis is pictured above. Notice the RCA Dome in the 1992 and 2007 images. It’s a now a convention center – a non-private sector development.

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 1992, 2002, 2011]

Philadelphia’s sports district has seen little improvement in two decades. Sports stadiums seemed to beget only more sports stadiums … and open surface parking lots. A similar story exists in Phoenix, Arizona, where not even the seemingly omnipresent speculative housing subdivisions of Phoenix desired proximity.

[Phoenix, Arizona - 1992, 2003, 2011]

Even urban success stories of the 2000s (such as Denver and Pittsburgh) with large influxes of people clamoring for downtown and inner-city real estate struggled to fill in the empty surfaces surrounding their sport stadiums.

[Pepsi Arena, Denver, Colorado - 1992, 2002, 2011]

[Coors Field, Denver, Colorado - 1993, 2003, 2011]

[Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 1993, 2004, 2010]

Is Minneapolis the exception to the rule? Will we somehow beat this stadium vacuum? It’s unlikely. When a large building fails at creating a lively mix of retail, residential, commercial and civic space – it creates an isolating space not worthy of the public affection. Developers, unless enticed with subsidizes, will likely avoid these places.

It doesn’t help that these stadiums aren’t cheap – taxpayers usually end up taking on the initial bill, and all the risk. Stadiums and their surrounding districts are the new “Bilbao anomaly”, are the new urban mall, are the new downtown casino, are the new urban renewal.

Following up with my Dead Malls article, I felt it was only fair to visit some of them.  I trekked over to both the Knollwood Mall and Bandana Square  (okay, admittedly it wasn’t a trek, I work near Knollwood and live in St. Paul).

Knollwood Mall [St. Louis Park, Minnesota]

It’s unfair to label Knollwood a “dead mall” – it is very much alive. While not thriving, there is activity over the lunch hour and some suburban retail staples exist (e.g.: Applebees, DWS, AT&T Store, TJ Maxx and the Home Goods store). To survive, Knollwood has done what a handful of other struggling malls have done, they’ve turned themselves inside-out.

The exterior, which isn’t connected to the mall, has a healthy existence. The Cub Foods draws a crowd and small shops include typical strip mall additions, such as Subway, Leeann Chin and Caribou Coffee. The inside has a few tenants, but is eerily empty as you walk further away from the main entrance.

There is some action by the Kohl’s clothing store, but the emptiness clashes with the glossy wide-open interior corridors. The space isn’t in disrepair. The mall is in good shape, minus the empty spaces. I’m not sure if Knollwood will ever be the mall it used to be in the traditional sense, but with a location like St. Louis Park, I’m positive there will some redevelopment.

Bandana Sqaure [St. Paul, Minnesota]

This is a more peculiar case. I’ll let an author on DeadMalls.com explain it:

This would be one of the coolest malls in Minnesota – if only it was still a mall. Bandana Square was an early twentieth century railroad station converted into an enclosed shopping center with a historic feel. Somehow it didn’t go over very well – perhaps because it is far from the freeway in St. Paul’s industrial Energy Park. [Link] [See also]

 

The buildings are phenomenal. The arched windows, the historic brick facade and even the tree layout make Bandana Square a beautiful place (minus the countless empty parking spaces surrounding it). The DeadMalls.com poster is 100% correct: for a mall’s sake – the location sucks. It’s not just that it is away from the highway system, but it’s surrounded by similar style suburban redevelopment industrial parks and 1980s large-scale apartment / condo buildings.

By the way – this might be the most confusing skyway in the Twin Cities. It connects the back parking deck to the main Bandana Square building by bridging a gap over a surface parking lot. It’s hard to imagine that anyone thought this was a good expenditure of money?

At the end of the day, Bandana Square is a magnificent building that has adopted to a life outside of retail. It has a lot of really good tenants, including a hotel, numerous small businesses and a good-sized medical clinic (Aspen - who gave me great help when I couldn’t breathe out of my left nostril – thanks by the way).

There is a larger narrative here, and one that I hope to touch on in the future. That is the story of adaptive re-use. For anyone interested in the topic; here’s a reading recommendation. And here, too.

There is something great about experiencing an election with a group of strangers over a beer in a public place.

Unlike the last Presidential election, I stayed in this year. It was quite the juxtaposition to 2008 and 2010 (read: Sweeny’s Pub, plenty of ale and countless mini-corn dogs). Last night I enjoyed my girlfriend’s delicious Midwestern-style dinner of chicken and biscuits and a nice, relaxing night in – yet, it didn’t quite rival the excitement of experiencing election results with a large group of strangers over a pint. There is something excellent about being surrounded by people from both parties, cheering for different candidates, all in the same space.

We need to create built environments all over this country where these interactions can happen more often. It’s one reason that I stress our need for more quality “third” places. Twitter is a good place to communicate, but a great third place is tough to beat.

While it'd certainly be fun to be surrounded by like-minded supporters, I can't help but think there is something missing at single-issue / single-party campaign party get-together. You'll expirience one emotion at these places: joy or despair. But, when sharing a space with a diverse group of people, while you might not get the extremes, you'll hopefully have a relatable expirience with the person of opposing viewpoints. It makes your political opposition human and relatable when sharing a place in close proximity.

Well America – that was fun, but can we please get back to upbeat television ads about fast food, laundry detergent, beer and shiny electronics?

__
You may also enjoy:

Streets.MN: Do Sidewalks Make You Vote Democratic?
Strong Towns: What's the plan now? [if you've read this, just fast-forward to the Twitter image]