If you want to visit a really great downtown, get yourself to Target Center in Minneapolis.
Then head southwest and keep going for 10 miles until you reach Hopkins.
You'll find a downtown that's the envy of every suburb in the Twin Cities: a walkable, shoppable, livable heart of the city. It's not some Disneyfied re-creation of a bygone era — or a place that has survived only by going the tourist route, giving itself up completely to coffee shops and antique stores.
No, Mainstreet (they spell it as one word) is a real, working downtown where you can eat a cheap breakfast, get a clock repaired, buy a refrigerator or a hammer or some baby clothes — then relax with dinner and a drink before taking in a play.
Other cities in the western suburbs — Bloomington, Richfield and Golden Valley among them — grew up as bedroom communities without traditional downtowns. Coming of age in the postwar era when the car was king, their development was automobile-focused: busy streets, strip malls and big-box stores, acres of parking lots. Today, those cities are investing time and money trying to create town centers with the sort of atmosphere that Mainstreet exudes effortlessly.
Hopkins, by contrast, was founded more than 150 years ago and for decades was the largest community in western Hennepin County outside of Minneapolis.
It developed at a time when life was slower and cities were destinations, not places to pass through on the way to somewhere else. The core business district dates from the 1890s, with structures added in succeeding decades representing different architectural styles.
You'd never call Hopkins cosmopolitan, yet Mainstreet features both Brazilian and Russian grocery stores, as well as Japanese and Middle Eastern cuisine. On a recent visit, a large, laughing group of Muslim students headed to lunch from the Ubah Medical Academy while an Asian couple carried on an animated conversation in their native tongue.
