[via Strib] Plans for locating light rail service and a station area in the Washington Avenue trench have focused attention on the long-deferred challenge of reconnecting Cedar-Riverside and the West Bank to Seven Corners and downtown Minneapolis. In its current state, Washington Avenue cuts a barren path through land located between two of Minnesota’s most productive places – downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota.
I never knew the Seven Corners area until the ’80s, long after urban renewal and 35W had changed the neighborhood’s landscape. (I count only four “corners” now.) The article points out that several acres of land have been “mothballed” since that time; devoid of any development. Central Corridor LRT construction could change all that.
What would your suggestions be for the resurrection of Seven Corners as a viable, hospitable district?
5 Reader Comments
6:51 pm
I’m struggling to identify any idle land between the west bank and seven corners, and teh gooogles do nothing.
7:47 pm
Why not just put more bridging over Washington Avenue, and then put a park on top – like they did with Hiawatha Avenue and Minnehaha Parkway in the area just west of Minnehaha Falls?
Granted, it’s not cheap, but how else are you going to create a connecting
space that’s worth anything?
11:40 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Seven Corners five blocks or so from light rail already?
8:09 am
Old Seven Corners landmark with history…so it’s gone now but there used to be, many decades ago, a huge old drugstore where everybody waited for the bus in its entrance; Franklin Library around the corner. Well, drugstore had cheap apartments upstairs and as an old story goes, Hubert Humphrey and wife with first child lived in one apartment…Fred Manfred (’Fieke Fiekema’ writing under his pen name at that time I)lived in another with new baby too. Story goes… one later famous figure, loaned their baby crib to the other; hard times in early career times I suppose. Call the new line Humphrey-Manfred line eh?
5:31 pm
There really isn’t much idle land. There’s some, but it’s negligable. The illustration in the Strib did not help explain what they are after. I assume they would build over the highway, making a sort of street-level platform bridging the two sections to make the area more hospitable to pedestrains. (Similar to the West Bank Skyway closer to the river.)
I kind of wish they’d build a bypass to connect old Washington (by the Holiday Inn) directly to the Washington Ave bridge. That area is very congested and most of the traffic is just trying to get to the freeway. As a result, this is a risky neighborhood for pedestrians and bicycles.