In building-boom era Minneapolis, the process of redeveloping the site of a former Mexican restaurant on Lake Street into a multistory apartment complex began like so many others.
Nearby residents questioned how affordable the new apartments would be, and how they would affect the neighborhood’s property values. When neighborhood leaders summarized those concerns in letters to the city, planners went back and forth with the project’s developer. In the end, a five-story, 48-unit building was approved, ushering in a project that will tower over the busy corridor as a symbol of the city’s growth.
In addition to the predictable questions about the building, the project included a feature that has also become an increasingly common element of new development in Minneapolis: a new name, one not only intended to identify the building, but rebrand its surroundings. The building at 811 East Lake Street, in the heart of the city’s Latino neighborhoods, has been christened “SoPHI” for south of Phillips.
It’s not the first rebranding effort of its kind, of course. Whether developer-driven or sponsored by neighborhood associations, a series of initiatives to reimagine areas of Minneapolis have come and gone in recent years, all of which had the same ostensible goal: to shake old reputations and attract people to spend money in areas whose names no longer reflect their look or feel.
But why do some rebranding efforts in Minneapolis work — while so many others do not?
The success: North Loop
North Loop is by far the most successful example of a neighborhood rebrand in Minneapolis. Forbes magazine once called it “One of America’s Best Hipster Neighborhoods,” which the magazine actually meant as a compliment.
Yet for most of the area’s history, a large railroad yard surrounded by factories and warehouses gave residents few reasons to visit or live there, and urban planners grouped it in with downtown’s Warehouse District. “It was not a great neighborhood, and no one ever thought anything would happen,” said Tim Bildsoe, president of the North Loop Neighborhood Association.
By the 1980s, artists set up shop in the industrial area, finding relief in the area’s lax building regulations and cheap rent. But Minneapolis’ economic boom in the ’90s and subsequent construction attracted new attention to the area.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]North Loop is by far the most successful example of a neighborhood rebrand in Minneapolis.[/image_caption]
Bildsoe said it was a conscious decision to establish a brand to attract visitors, residents and businesses that was separate from the Warehouse District Business Association, which represents entrepreneurs specifically, and developers and the city embraced the change.
“The North Loop brand has been so successful because people used the name,” said Fritz Kroll, of Edina Realty and the neighborhood’s association. “Housing developers, shops, restaurants and commercial building owners started using the name consistently, and that helped build awareness.”
From WeDo to East Town
Less successful was the effort to rename the part of downtown surrounding Hennepin Avenue from the Walker Art Center to the river.
Remember WeDo?
No, YouDon’t.
Begun in 2011, the effort came about after the National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Hennepin Theatre Trust money to establish “a cultural district brand” that draws “people from one end of downtown Minneapolis to the other,” according to Meet Minneapolis, the city’s convention and visitors nonprofit.
The Hennepin Theatre Trust later recruited the Walker Art Center, the city and the creative branch of Target Corporate to help with the project. And by early 2015, the groups had launched a full-fledged campaign for calling the western part of downtown, including First Avenue and a portion of Loring Park, the “West Downtown Cultural District”: WeDo. Wearing “WeDo” attire and handing out free mech, brand ambassadors fanned out to spread the new name.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Corey Anderson[/image_credit][image_caption]WeDo didn’t catch on beyond the creative team from which it originated, and the groups soon stopped promoting it last year.[/image_caption]
Around the same time, business leaders in downtown’s neighboring district began brainstorming how they could reinvent themselves to capitalize on the U.S. Bank Stadium’s opening in July 2016. They worked with the local PR firm Padilla to come up with some two dozen options for a new name — East Loop, E Do, SoFa, Celebration Heights, East Central Park and the real possible game changer, East Downtown.
Ultimately, the East Downtown Council, which represents businesses in the area, shot down suggestions for “The Stadium Village” or “Stadium East” and unanimously agreed to launch a new logo and website under a new name, the East Town Business Partnership, “to help form a narrative larger and more integrated than the Stadium as a definer in itself,” Executive Director Dan Collison said in an email.
And yet, for all that effort, as far as residents and even city planners are concerned, the neighborhood’s name remains Downtown East.
The long road of Marcy-Holmes
Perhaps no Minneapolis neighborhood has had a longer identity crisis than Marcy-Holmes, the city’s oldest neighborhood.
Located on the east bank of the Mississippi River and bordering the University of Minnesota and Como neighborhoods, the area sat outside of Minneapolis’ geographic bounds until 1872, when the city annexed most of the town of St. Anthony. It was not until the 1970s, though, that neighborhood leaders launched an effort to differentiate the area by establishing the name that exists today, honoring Marcy Elementary (now called Marcy Open School) and Holmes Park.
But the rapid redevelopment of Minneapolis — construction permits surpassed $1.4 billion last year alone — has changed Marcy-Holmes’ landscape dramatically. What was once a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes has turned into the epicenter of high-rise apartment complexes, celebrated restaurants and bicycle paths. At the same time, neighborhood leaders have wrestled with how they should redevelop riverfront land to maintain history but take advantage of rising property values.
The transformation has raised questions from residents over the years: Does the Marcy-Holmes’ name still represent the neighborhood that it is now? Do visitors of the Kitty Cat Klub or the Fourth Street McDonald’s know they’re technically in Marcy-Holmes — not Dinkytown? Same goes for areas near Hennepin and Central avenues that most people consider northeast.
“Nobody can tell you which is which,” said Chris Lautenschlager, of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association (MHNA). “We would push back constantly … But the people we interacted with would be like, ‘Whatever, old man. It doesn’t matter.’”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Corey Anderson[/image_credit][image_caption]Perhaps no Minneapolis neighborhood has had a longer identity crisis than Marcy-Holmes, the city’s oldest neighborhood.[/image_caption]
And yet, Lautenschlager said a new effort to change the neighborhood association’s name could be on the horizon. He is currently researching the pros and cons of expanding the Marcy-Holmes association’s borders southeast, covering all of the University neighborhood to the edge of TCF Bank Stadium so that the group represents more Dinkytown residents. And with the geographic change would come another duty: renaming MHNA to reflect its wider base.
The idea to expand borders is pending approval from the association’s board as well as agreement with city planners. If that happens, Lautenschlager said he’d like to use the opportunity to create a name based on the area’s location, east of the river, so people remember it better than Marcy-Holmes. “It’d be called something else, like the East Bank District or the East District, or something like that that would be more geographically based,” he said.
So what actually works?
Lautenschlager, who leads the Nicollet Island-East Bank Neighborhood Association in addition to Marcy-Holmes’, said he’s had enough conversations about names with residents, developers and the city to know what makes a rebranding initiative work.
One-off ideas by developers or business leaders with big marketing campaigns often fail, he said. A campaign by a Minneapolis-based realtor to rename the area that encompases Surdyk’s as well as portions of Hennepin and St. Anthony Main as “Old Town,” for example, hasn’t showed signs of gaining traction in the community, he says.
Such efforts are often “the idea of one person, or they’re the idea of a consulting team,” he said. As such, “They don’t [create something] organically over time through the community.”
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]A campaign by a Minneapolis-based realtor to rename the area that encompases Surdyk’s as well as portions of Hennepin and St. Anthony Main as “Old Town” seems destined to be about as popular as WeDo.[/image_caption]
Instead, names that fit with the community — or ones that residents think of themselves — seem to stick, he said. That’s because people throughout Minneapolis place so much identity on their neighborhoods’ label and image; only community-driven efforts to reinvent areas’ prevail.
Which brings us back to SoPHI. While high-rise apartments in Marcy Holmes is the new normal, the 48-unit apartment complex at the intersection of Chicago Avenue and Lake Street is the first development of its kind in that area. Once it’s completed, in the winter of 2020, the new five-story building will tower over neighboring businesses that have been there for decades, such as Chicago Lake Liquors and Chicago Lake Coin Laundry. The site’s former owner, Los Ocampo, will rent space on the ground floor.
“Everywhere you look, no matter where you look, the scenery is changing,” said Daryl Guthmiller, a manager at the laundromat.
The project’s website touts “urban living made easy” with studio apartments that have Italian-made furniture, solar-powered utilities and phone-controlled amenities.
The rental prices are unknown at this point, but Tabitha Montgomery, who leads the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association, said they will offer a clear indication of what type of customer the developer is trying to attract to the area. (Developer DJR Architecture, Inc. could not be reached for comment.)
Montgomery said she’s heard mixed opinions about the complex. Many in the neighborhood have questioned how it fits into the city’s goals of preventing the displacement of low-income people, especially since more than one-third of Powderhorn residents earn less than 35 percent of the area’s median income, or $35,000 annually for a family of four.
But in general, Montgomery said the community sees any redevelopment on Lake Street as a good thing. And despite the new interest from the high-profile developers, she believes the neighborhood’s core values of inclusion, diversity and artistry will remain strong.
“The community at large is concerned about affordability overall and displacement occurring for people already in the community as new developments come in, but not that we would brand or [change] what the community wants to reflect and to embrace,” she said. “I don’t think that’s in jeopardy at all.”
All of which means local sign painters probably won’t be in high demand anytime soon. “No one is walking around, talking about, ‘Oh, I live in ‘South Phi’ or ‘So Phi’,” Montgomery said. “They picked a name that I don’t think is going to be anything more than the name of that apartment complex.”
My understanding is that East Town was not intended to be a rebranding of Downtown East, but rather a bigger area composed of Downtown East and Elliot Park.
Max: This is correct. “East Town” didn’t seek to rename any neighborhood. East Town is short for East Downtown. And, the East Town narrative is not about branding as much as bridging two neighborhoods, Downtown East and Elliot Park, in an area of town that is connected by corridors and large scale projects that literally straddle the two neighborhoods. East (Down) Town: A vibrant, multifaceted and connected district.
I would argue that Uptown is the most successful neighborhood rebrand in Minneapolis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown,_Minneapolis#History
South of Phillips is Powderhorn Park, which is already a pretty good and well-known name.
Lest we forget – the US military ratified a treaty with the Dakota in Marcy-Holmes. What about ‘Bde Maka Ska’? I am in favor of consistency in our city to include our history to reference place. This gives every neighborhood a sense of character, dimension and story. Even the North Loop has something to do with the old railroad. Marcy-Holmes is rich with historical names. Be it a Dakota name or something that celebrates our Stone Arch bridge, mills, industry . . . lets imbue our rich history in the name.
I live in Elliott Park in FHA Housing, with The Francis Drake Hotel across the street and millionaire condo on the other street nearby. This is the diversity of downtown East. Many of us could not rent the new apartments which have been developed there. Too many construction in our part of town. Eighth street is a mess, hard to walk there. I don’t like when the sport teams play because these people take over our neighborhood. Cars come down our alleys at night with booming speakers too much when these games happen. Guys hit on women on the bus and many of them are drunk. Another problem is the smokers who walk around downtown and take over bus stops. They won’t move away from the non smokers when asked and they take over bus shelters in wintertime. Glad to see they want to raise the smoking age. That would help to cut down on them. I would like to see information at each bus shelter downtown on quitting smoking and banning smoking at bus stops, like the train platforms have. There is no reason to smoke. You can use homeopathic nicotene. You only take one a day, cheaper than smoking and it annoys the public less. Medical Assistance will pay for you stopping smoking, also. Exercise, chant, yoga and meditation are better ways of dealing stress. When you start following my plan here, you will throw the cigarettes away. I personally would like to see the tobacco companies put out of business having asthma and allergies and chemical sensitivity. Second hand smoke is something I face downtown.
Successful neighborhood brands either predate most of the neighborhood (i.e. the “North Loop” name was devised long before most of its current residents came to live there), or are created by the community and pull directly from it (i.e. Marcy Holmes).
Putting generic directions and places together to create dross like “WeDo” and “East Town” is just makework for consultants.
I understand branding as necessary in capturing the imagination of and stimulating curiosity/interest in a product, in this case neighborhoods. Neighborhoods, however, are organic entities that evolve with people/topography/time. Creating a new identity for such is difficult to manufacture though NORTH LOOP seems to have done so.
Using North Loop as a possible template, as well as DOWNTOWN EAST, I wonder how these names would work: SOUTH LOOP for the dreadful WeDo; DownEAST for Downtown East; UNIVERSITY VILLAGE for Marcy-Holmes; DownWEST could be used for the area west of Hennepin (Mayo Clinic, Target Field/Target Center and west); and Nicollet Mall/Marquette from Washington Ave to 13th could be Downtown Central or DownCEN.
I’m no marketing guru, business owner, or urban planner but am a longtime resident and stakeholder.
The answer to the question is in the question. Branding is a marketing concept that by nature is artificial. Things that last and survive are organic and grow out of the area itself. Its like Hennepin Ave. back in the day it was a vibrant, if a bit rough, night spot that had grown organically. They tore it all down and for the last 25 years have been trying to create something artificially, and wondering why nothing works.
God save us from marketing banality. You don’t “brand” neighborhoods, you live there and make them places people want to live. Neighborhoods are organic living entities, they’re not “products” to be purchased. No one’s going to move into a place because you gave it a new name. The North Loop wasn’t “branded” into success, it’s a cool place to live for a bunch of reasons.
I’m shocked that WeDo didn’t catch on.
Marcy-Holmes has long been known as Southeast, which suits it just fine, as St. Anthony does for itself. The urge to copy SoHo is a debased urge that must be fought against. Neighborhood names should reflect their geography and history, and are particularly important to children. Names picked by developers are completely wrong for that reason. And in a city with no ties to New York, such copying is inane. The Loop is in Chicago. And stop gentrifying every artist district and driving them out. There’s nowhere left to go!
As someone who has been teaching & researching the strategic environment of business, business ethics, strategy, culture, and leadership for over 30 years, and who has lived in the East Isles neighborhood of Minneapolis for 35 years, I say unequivocally that Minneapolis has lost most of whatever soul it ever had. Period. The comments above regarding re-branding’s superficiality are right on. The only “successful” example referenced is “North Loop”, which didn’t really have much of a neighborhood culture or history in the first place.
The Chicago/Lake building pictured is a perfect example of exactly what is wrong with Minneapolis city planning and development. It looks almost exactly as utterly devoid of architectural interest, repetitively designed, and out of place in the neighborhood as do the dozens of other “five + one” (1st floor retail, with five stories of apartments above it) buildings that have gone up all around the center of the city in the past few years. Worse, much of this has happened not only near downtown but in or around what were previously interesting neighborhoods, such as Uptown, Dinkytown, Stadium Village. As an example, a few years ago already, I stood on the Hennepin Avenue bridge looking east over the Greenway and counted FOURTEEN of these ugly, square, look-alike buildings along the north side of the Greenway between Hennepin and Lyndale! Right now, from Hennepin to the lakes (including on 31st St.) is a series of ghastly buildings springing up that perfectly embody how a City Pages article decades ago described what downtown Minneapolis had become: A corporate sculpture garden (and a very boring one at that!). The old Sons of Norway building and parking site is emerging as a truly ghastly behemoth that will utterly and completely eliminate any sense of neighborliness that may have remained at Lake & Hennepin or on 31st–much of what was already destroyed with the building on what was the parking lot of Lucia’s–which then contributed to the destruction of Lucia’s itself (with some help from the strategic blundering by the people who bought it from Lucia). It’s even happening right now all the way down Lyndale from Franklin!
I used to spend a lot of time downtown, from the ’70s to the ’90s, but haven’t been able to stomach it now for years. What was often a whimsical, sometimes/places a little edgy, very human environment has been totally destroyed (vide the “corporate sculpture garden” note above). I argued with city leaders at the time that Block E ought to be made into a park (to no avail, obviously), to really provide a community center downtown, which still doesn’t exist anywhere there today–unlike St. Paul, for example. Speaking of which, St. Paul seems to have mostly avoided this same mindless, soulless, monotonous development trap as Minneapolis, i.e., St. Paul still feels like it has urban neighborhoods, not just residential districts like Minneapolis.
In sum, although I had planned to at least keep a pied-a-terre in the city as long as I was able, I’ve pretty much had it. I can no longer enjoy wandering or bicycling around what is becoming such an unbelievably banal cityscape, so am in the process of moving everything out. Very sadly so, but it has really become difficult to find much of anywhere in the central areas of the city that have any soul left at all.