A pocked, patchy stretch of SE. 4th Street will be rebuilt, a Minneapolis City Council committee decided Tuesday.
Minneapolis to overhaul SE. 4th Street near TCF Bank Stadium
The $4 million project is part of an effort to improve areas near light-rail station.
January 18, 2017 at 11:46AM
The $4 million project is part of a larger effort to make the blocks around the Green Line's Prospect Park station more appealing from TCF Bank Stadium to the Surly brewery and restaurant complex.
The city's portion of the project includes tearing up the street and rebuilding it with better sidewalks, lighting, bike lanes and on-street parking from 25th Avenue SE. to Malcolm Avenue SE., in an area north of University Avenue where several hundred new apartment units are planned.
"For the last six or seven years, the community has been trying to re-imagine the redevelopment of Fourth Street as a street that will unlock the value of all the properties north of that street," Dick Gilyard, a Prospect Park neighborhood leader, told the City Council's Transportation and Public Works Committee.
Construction will start in April or May and should be mostly complete by Thanksgiving.
The city will issue $2.8 million in bonds for the project. The University of Minnesota is contributing $283,000. The rest will come from special assessments: $744,000 for street construction and $208,000 for lighting.
"I know that sometimes these can be a hardship on the businesses there," said Cam Gordon, the council member in whose ward the project is being built. "But I also think when it's done everybody's going to be very glad and think it's worthwhile and will help the area."
Additional improvements to the corridor, which sits in the shadow of the old ADM Meal Storage Elevator, will be paid for by $485,000 from Hennepin County and $1 million from the Metropolitan Council.
Those features, which won't be paid for by the city, include stormwater collection, green space at the corner of 4th Street and 29th Avenue SE., trees, social areas with furniture such as picnic tables and pedestrian-level lighting rather than large overhead streetlights.
Adam Belz • 612-673-4405
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