Through the orange cones, through the construction dust, through the honking gridlock, Minneapolis businesses are open for business.
Massive road projects tied some of the city’s liveliest neighborhoods in knots this summer. Work crews moved in, ripped up, blocked off and rerouted great swaths of Uptown, Midtown, Dinkytown, Northeast Minneapolis and probably your neighborhood, too.
Lanes closed, roads closed, sidewalks closed. Neighborhood shops and restaurants opened anyway. Their customers needed them; they needed their customers.
It took Yana Pietras and Ian O’Neill more than a decade to build up their business. It took the Hennepin and First roadway improvement project six months to cut their sales in half.
To reach Moth Oddities — their wonderful, welcoming vintage shop, filled with handpicked finds the couple sourced across Italy and the U.S. — customers must first run the Northeast construction gantlet: orange cones, blocked lanes, rumbling construction equipment where parking spots used to be, barricaded sidewalks that force pedestrians to dart from one side of the street and back like a high-stakes game of Frogger. Keep going. Shops like these are worth it.
“It’s been disheartening and exhausting trying to do business amidst all the construction the last six months,” Pietras wrote to the Minnesota Star Tribune. She and O’Neill met at the University of Minnesota College of Design and bonded over a shared love of vintage in a world of fast fashion. Moth Oddities started in 2014 as an online shop and a single rack of clothes in their tiny studio apartment. In 2021, they opened their first storefront. Last year, they opened a studio space next door to their shop at 13 5th St. NE, hosting everything from workshops to classes to gallery shows.
And then came the first “Road Work Ahead” signs. Customers slipped away. Debts mounted. Neighborhood businesses hoped the city might treat the disruption like the disaster it felt like and step in with aid for struggling businesses.
“Shops like ours — and the neighboring locally owned restaurants, cafes, bars, boutiques, ice cream shops, artist studios, wellness studios, fitness clubs, salons, etc. — are what make the city of Minneapolis special. I wish the city could recognize this and provide better support during such disruptive times,” Pietras wrote.