Decorative pillars along I-35W criticized for color, design, cost

The new limestone pillars that serve as gateway monuments to Minneapolis, Richfield and some of their freeway neighborhoods along Interstate 35W and Crosstown Hwy. 62 are drawing a chorus of scorn.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) added the amenities as part of landscaping and aesthetic improvement efforts. But everything from the size of the pillars to the shade of their blue signs is drawing sharp criticism in Minneapolis.

"The colors are like, the '80s called and they want their colors back," said Melissa Summers, who lives near a sign at the E. 46th Street exit. "It looks like the color my prom dress was back in 1981."

"It just looked like these things were designed by committee and nobody knew what anyone else was doing," she said.

The 19 vertical or horizontal monuments at 12 freeway intersections were installed this fall at a cost of $953,000.

Mark Danielson, of the Lynnhurst neighborhood, called the pillars a lost opportunity. "Someone on Twitter said they look like they belong at a suburban water park," he said.

But not everyone is gushing with criticism. Tim Price was one of the Field Regina Northrop neighborhood's representatives who helped state officials shape the design.

He said that MnDOT has been responsive to neighborhood input. And when he noticed that one pillar at 46th had a tilt, Price enlisted city officials to get the agency to rebuild it.

Price and department spokeswoman Bobbie Dahlke said that the orientation of arms sprouting from the pillars to denote neighborhoods is problematic.

They're supposed to show which neighborhood a passerby is entering, not point to that neighborhood, Dahlke said. But some residents take them as pointing to neighborhoods, so the department will reorient them next spring.

Some have questioned the cost of a project that came in nearly double the initial $500,000 budget.

Dahlke said the project is paid from money the department allocates to aesthetic and landscaping improvements. The pillars follow trees and shrubs installed earlier as part of the otherwise long-completed Crosstown Commons project, a massive reweaving of 35W and 62.

That puzzles Pat Thompson, a St. Paul graphic designer. "Rocks and boats don't go together," she said.

Another critic, Chris Steller, said the pillars "didn't seem like this century or the urban setting." He designed a parody version featuring actress Mary Tyler Moore, whose fictional TV show was depicted in Minneapolis.

In several cases, the pillars repeat a role other signage already plays in welcoming residents. In Richfield, the more horizontal monument on Penn Avenue sits about 20 paces from a smaller city road sign welcoming visitors to the city.

In the Kingfield neighborhood on E. 42nd Street, the monument is across the street from a traffic-style sign the neighborhood installed in the 1990s.