Uptown has led several different lives in the last half-century, and they often ended abruptly and disruptively. But nobody remembers an Uptown that looks like Uptown today. The block and a half from the Uptown Theatre to the former Suburban World Theatre has so few operating businesses that they can be counted on one hand. And more are leaving: Kitchen Window recently closed, while CB2 is not renewing its lease.
Uptown’s current problems are both external and self-inflicted. First, Covid shuttered the commercial district, then looting and vandalism that followed George Floyd’s murder found its terminus in Uptown. A year later, the police killing of Winston Smith in the Seven Points parking ramp gave birth to a violent protest encampment that lasted for a summer.
But those events were the coup de grâce. Uptown was already struggling, despite the addition of thousands of units of housing over the last two decades. Uptown’s pivot to national retailers and restaurants proved a failure, and the large spaces built to attract them proved difficult to re-lease as they departed. And a raucous nightclub scene that found a home in the neighborhood created a polarizing presence that repelled as many as it attracted.
“It’s like the 1970s now, when things were really tough,” says longtime Uptown developer Stuart Ackerberg. “People want to be where there’s a good energy. That needs to be reestablished.”
Today, Uptown is a study in contrasts. “Demography has never been stronger,” says Ackerberg. “We’ve got amazing housing stock.”
Yet the area’s commercial base is on life support. So a small group of influential local property owners hired former Minneapolis economic development director David Frank to develop a resuscitation plan.
Frank says safety, street activation, parking and economic sustainability are the priorities, and he needs the advocacy of City Hall to achieve some of them. Activating Uptown is a function of solving the other challenges: perceived safety, quality of amenities and access. City government has a role, Frank insists. “The city’s hands-off posture to Uptown has been neglectful.”
Particular enmity is directed at former City Council President Lisa Bender, who represented the neighborhood from 2014-21. “[She] singlehandedly destroyed Uptown,” says Jeff Herman, who owns seven Uptown buildings totaling approximately 50,000 square feet. “She didn’t care about business, became locked in a power struggle with the mayor, and gave up on her ward.”
Local property owners have stepped in to fill the breach left by the depleted Minneapolis Police. Area property owners partnered We Push for Peace (WPP), a community engagement organization founded by Minneapolis resident Tray Pollard and staffed largely by people of color. “[It] is very effective. Very good at deescalating. Fearless,” says Ackerberg. Herman says violent crime is down substantially since WPP began its patrols.
In 2019, the city eliminated auto parking on Hennepin between Lake and 31st streets to provide greater space for bikes. The impact was immediate. “Loss of street parking decimated foot traffic,” says Herman.
The city is contemplating similar changes to Hennepin between Lake and Franklin. The plan has Hennepin/Uptown businesses up in arms, and 100 of them recently penned a letter to Mayor Frey, among other officials, demanding the city pause and reevaluate the implementation of the proposed plan, which is not scheduled to be actually built out for two years.
“We need the city to take ownership, understand the impact of its decisions,” says Ackerberg. “If they are reckless and do to the rest of Hennepin what they did [on] 31st to Lake, I don’t know what’s going to happen. We can’t afford more collateral damage.”
They are looking to Mayor Jacob Frey to block what they see as otherwise a fait accompli driven by a policy agenda implemented by the previous city council that was indifferent to small business. But nothing good can happen in Uptown until businesses return, perhaps the most vexing of the problems.
“Retail has changed,” says Ackerberg. “We need smaller spaces” — showrooms, not superstores. The current building code requires at least two stories, he says, “but two-level doesn’t work for retailers; they won’t rent.” The combination of wrong-sized spaces, inflated tax valuations, and outsourcing of city services (policing, trash, etc.) drives rents to levels that only national tenants can afford.
So “the next phase is about righting the business mix,” says Herman. The new model for Uptown, say the landlords, is a tenant mix designed to appeal to nearby residents, not exclusively visitors from other parts of town. “We’re looking for neighborhood-first uses that generate daily visits,” says Sam Ankin, managing principal of Northpond Partners, the Chicago-based developer that is preparing to redevelop Seven Points.
But the cost of doing business in Uptown makes that a problem. “The economic model of Uptown can’t right itself without tax reforms,” insists Herman. He says taxes and landlord services approach up to $20 per square foot of rent, resulting in rents of $40 per square foot, which is untenable for small business.
As a result, landlords at the Uptown Theatre and the ex-The North Face space are pivoting to create businesses in their currently un-leasable spaces. On the horizon is an announcement from Northpond about dramatic changes to Seven Points. “We want to add density, multifamily residential, we want to make it interactive to the streets,” says Ankin.
The key, landowners say, is the attention and advocacy of a Mayor Jacob Frey, now reelected with enhanced powers. “You fix Uptown by the mayor taking an active role and speaking for business,” says Herman.
“I tell [Frey] to ‘play big,’” says Ackerberg. “He’s got an amazing opportunity.”
Attempts to reach Frey over six weeks were unsuccessful. A mayoral spokesperson expressed Frey’s support for an ongoing role for WPP in Uptown but was otherwise non-committal on the tax and parking questions Uptown’s building owners raised.
I’m confused. What “forced” the change from unique businesses to national chains? The only draw to Uptown for me, now that Kitchen Window is gone, is Penzey’s Spices and a few nearby restaurants. But there’s a Penzey’s in St. Paul, and I HATE driving to/through Uptown. There’s no reasonable way I can get there from home (I’m in Blaine) or work (Golden Valley) without a car, and south Hennepin traffic is such a dysfunctional mess it stresses me out too much to drive there.
Speaking of dysfunctional traffic. I’m also confused about what business owners want. “Neighborhood-first” or street parking and more traffic. Because you can’t really have it both ways. Uptown really isn’t terribly friendly to pedestrians, except for that weird space between the businesses and apartment bordered by Lake, Lagoon, Fremont, and Girard. And the block on Hennepin that Calhoun Square (can we rename that now that it’s empty) is on. If you want neighborhood visits, make it friendly to foot, bus, and bicycle traffic all over the area rather than relying on parked cars to achieve your foot traffic.
YES. I was also confused about that.
AND… Building code requires two-story businesses? Or two-story buildings? Those are two different things. It’s not like the building code is requiring such large retail footprints, and I highly doubt these large-footprint stores aren’t able to divide up into smaller ones–to densify–to better handle the cost-per-square-foot piece.
Lived and worked in Uptown during the 80’s. Geeze it was a lot of fun.
Still went there in the 90’s and early 2000’s Chang Mai was the best Thai restaurant in town.
There is no reason why I would want to visit there now. Daytime or nighttime.
Not sure I will ever go back.
I’ve attended a few sporting events and one show at First Ave in the last 12 months.
Besides that, no reason go downtown.
Minneapolis needs some political leadership to clean this mess up. Progressive activist types aren’t the answer.
There’s been a lot of recent good news concerning Uptown that isn’t mentioned in this article. We give too much voice to the cranks. And no, the loss of a few parking spots between Lake and 31st did not ruin Uptown. Uptown is undergoing a renaissance and these doom and gloom narratives will look very silly in a few years.
Why is business reporting and journalism always so disappointing? So a bunch of property owners blew up their business model by bringing in national chains and wiping out Calhoun Square and now they have a consultant telling them the Mayor has to fix it and it’s all one council persons fault? Looks like garbage to me. I suspect the reason property taxes went up so high is that these guys built bigger spaces for the big boxes and otherwise pumped up their property values. That business model blew up and they’re stuck with taxes.
For what it’s worth (and I’m not saying that’s a lot) I trace the decline of Uptown back to the developers who killed Calhoun Square. I worked there for a couple years at a photo lab next to Tony Roma’s Place for Ribs (now Famous Daves) and that was a thriving and popular retail space/mall. It was the nexus of that entire end of Uptown with several popular restaurants and retail stores. There was even a Health Partners clinic in there on the second floor. Then developers bought the building with a big plans to add more stories and housing and offices and like so many other developments they bought the property and failed to develop. Within years retailers fled the rents and uncertainty of development gone bad and the place became a hallow shell of it’s former self. Then a certain ditzburger local restaurateur snatched the Suburban World and killed that as a functioning space of any kind. And THAT was followed by the ditzy idea that people would go to through the hassle of Uptown in order to shop at chains that were far more easily found and shopped in suburban malls.
And then at some point whoever owns the C-Square building ruined the Lake-Henn corner entrance by closing it in a while back (although I notice they’ve restored it more recently).
And then there’s the parking. Listen, parking has been a ridiculous hassle in Uptown for decades so the idea that some lost street parking is killing foot traffic can’t be seriously. I’ve been shopping in the area since I got my drivers license in 1979 and I can tell you the drill… you might be going down there to a record store or Stereo Land further down, and yeah, you’d always drive by to see if you could get lucky and find a spot in front the store, but when that failed you drove around until a spot two more blocks away. Anyone who tells their customers stopped coming in parking spots on the street in front of their stores has disappeared is blowing some kind of smoke. And who owns that parking lot next to C-Square anyways? They’ve jacked up the prices just enough to kill off any interest in parking there. We used to go Famous Dave’s regularly but the last time we went Parking cost as much as a meal and since we don’t park blocks away (like I did when I worked there back in the 80’s) we just stopped. And we had noticed declining crowds at the place before that.
And Ms. Kahler is absolutely correct, what’s your actual vision here, a neighborhood space within walking distance for local residents or outdoor shopping area for people who drive in and park their cars? I don’t think the latter model is going to work so if you want to bring foot traffic down there you better stop complaining about the bikes and the pedestrians and figure out how people who don’t want to drive are going to get down there. Busses have never been a great option, even though several bus lines converge on the area they run too few and far between most of the day or night. You can build bus lanes but you better run a lot of busses on them is all I can say. When I needed to get down there in more of a hurry I found that hitch hiking got me there much faster than the bus, but that’s not a practical solution for most people eh?
So I don’t how to save Uptown, but I suggest we discuss the mission without dancing around the role that the businesses played in killing it. There’s a lot of self inflicted damage down there and the idea that we can only fix self inflicted damage by turning the problem over to the mayor is simply daft. Do you guys really want to fix this or not? Yeah, businesses could use some help and we’re not necessarily against that… but don’t demonize someone else.
“So these guys built bigger spaces for the big boxes and otherwise pumped up their property values. That business model blew up and they’re stuck with taxes.”
Could someone cross-stitch this, please? Dummies scaled up too fast, killed the sense of place, and now want to blame someone else for their stupidity.
One of these things is not like the other:
– The greater Uptown area which has one of the highest concentrations of new dense development in the twin cities in the last decade, heck, even the last two years.
– Quotes from a developer stating the sky is falling in Uptown.
My take: Ackerburg is trying to devalue property in the area so he can make a bigger profit on future developments.
His quotes are in bad faith. Uptown is still a very desirable area to live in the Twin Cities, hence the high rents, the huge property value gains over the last 20 years.
The author should next time take a more critical look at the subject matter before carrying water for the metro area’s power players.
Glad to see the end of the failed “updale” phase where landlords recruited all the national chains. No one forced them to do this, so they own the mistakes.
The city also has made mistakes- I believe even a Mpls city planner admitted their redo of south hennepin has not gone well. Tolerating widespread vandalism and destructive protests has driven away residents buisensses and visitors.
Uptown has the ingredients in location, residential density and key amenties to be successful but hanging it all on the Mayor seems like the wrong approach.
Interesting to see Ackerberg quoted without pointing out that he and his company are also responsible for the state of Uptown today (yes, Lisa Bender was awful too) – when they took over Calhoun Square, tossed out long-time tenants, raised rents only to have to unload the building a few short years later for half what they paid for it, leaving behind a huge void.
I can’t speak to the Bender issue but I don’t think there’s any doubt that the biggest damage (aside from the riots) was inflicted by the business boys down there. I doubt that any city council person could have substantially mitigated the damage those folks were inflicting on the area. The problem now is they seem to think the mayor can restore what they themselves destroyed, and even IF that’s possible, I’m not sure mere restoration will bring the place back. These ARE different times and Twin Cities aren’t what they were in the 80’s.
And when I look at the complaints here it seems that the mayor or whoever these guys think should fix this will have to do so despite the business boys themselves. One would think they have enough sense to realize that bringing foot traffic back to the area is about creating places people want to visit, and getting people who want to visit into the area. But in the year 2021 instead of focusing on transit that can bring the foot traffic they want onto the sidewalks in front of their stores… they’re whining about parking spaces and bike lanes. And so it goes.
I lived in Uptown for seven years in the late 80s and early 90s, and I find it barely recognizable now. I resist the urge to say it’s “not as great” as it was, because I could just be looking back through rose-colored glasses. Maybe people who live there now think it’s great. I hope so. But I find the neighborhood somewhat repellant, with massive, cold facades that de-energize the streetscape, and a serious lack of reasons to go there.
But I want to point out an oft-overlooked major change that, I think, may have triggered the whole downslide, and it happened while I still lived there: The conversion of Lake and Lagoon to a one-way pair. It seemed like a reasonable change at the time, and I was pretty much indifferent to it. But it immediately turned two bustling-but-manageable streets into mini-freeways carrying large amounts of traffic THROUGH — rather than TO — the neighborhood. It prioritized vehicles over pedestrians and streetscape in a big way, and removed an essential source of traffic-calming.
Before that, you could be on one side of Lake and still feel connected to the other side. Not anymore. Unfortunately, the rebuild on Hennepin south of Lake had the same effect. The two sides of the street now feel like different worlds with a dangerous river of fast-moving vehicles between them. Say what you will about parking, but it’s well established that pedestrians feel (and actually are) safer when there are parked cars separating them from moving vehicles. Ironically, street parking is always more about preserving a healthy streetscape than customer convenience. It’s business-friendly not because it lets customers park closer, but rather because it makes them feel safer while walking to stores from wherever they parked. (I really want to like the new design for Hennepin north of Uptown because I appreciate what it’s trying to do, but I think it is more likely to expand Uptown’s woes and potentially devastate the corridor for this very reason.)
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Uptown, but it’s a mess now. It’s a place to avoid, which makes me sad. Perhaps changing Lake and Lagoon back to two-way streets could be a first step back to a neighborhood feel. Regardless, I certainly hope that there is another golden age in Uptown’s future.
I hadn’t recognized the effect of converting those streets into one-ways, I have to say that’s an interesting and valid observation.
The stuff about parked cars and pedestrian safety doesn’t ring quite so true to me however. Most pedestrians don’t get hit by cars while walking down sidewalks and many of the most heavily traveled sidewalks in cities around the country and the world aren’t “protected” by parked cars most of the time. But hey, it’s something to think about.
I honestly can’t see why so many people are complaining about the Henn Ave. rebuild south of Lake. Aside from taking a ridiculously long time to complete, I don’t see the problems there, it looks good to me.
The last person I’d take advice on regarding how to revive Uptown is a developer like Ackerberg, who your reporter seemed to think was worth quoting a number of times. He’s not interested in reviving Uptown, he’s interested in making money off of Uptown.
I remember Uptown in the 70’s, and I deeply resent his characterization as a time when “things were really tough”. Not too tough that a bookstore (Orr Books) couldn’t survive there, nor a small grocery store (Morris and Christies), nor the hardware store whose name I have forgotten.
In the 70’s it was a small, comfortable, friendly, local business district and I am SO sorry Mr. Ackerberg found it “tough”. The local people who shopped there beg to disagree.
I guess I am a little slow to catching on to what is happening here, but I believe:
1. Calhoun Square is now called Seven Points and it is being demolished to make way for a $150 million apartment and retail complex.
Seems like a good start to me. I’m sure some will find only evil in the black hearts of developer Northpond Partners, but folks do not invest 150M in a tainted hell hole declining into urban decay. The article makes a very good point on the huge housing growth within walking distance: to all the suburban isolationists that say they will never go to Uptown (or Downtown) ever again: Nobody cares, you’re not needed. The economic power of all these new residents will enable them to get what they want. And while I do not know exactly what that is, I will bet strongly against boarded up storefronts.