According to the Star Tribune, the American Planning Association (APA) was in town this past weekend touring the metro area because Minnesota sets some sort of example on how future planning should take place. There were many preset tours available and several were canceled, probably due to lack of interest, but one certainly stuck out in my mind: Burnsville’s Heart of the City.
The group’s CEO was formerly a Minneapolis planner and is very proud of the work that has been done in the metro area. He gushed to the Star Tribune about how great the linked parks, lakes, and parkways are and how he uses it to teach planners in other countries about proper future planning. While they only quoted one other APA visitor who had both positive and negative things to say, the real meat of the article came all the way at the end with the list of sold-out tours versus those that were canceled.
Examples of sold-out tours included Suburban Redevelopment Projects such as St. Louis Park’s Euro-style Excelsior & Grand and Emerging neighborhoods of the Minneapolis Warehouse District. Examples of those that were canceled are Twin Cities Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and Burnsville’s Heart of the City. The obvious correlation between these two ignored tours is quite entertaining to say the least.
If you were an APA planner would you want to see the Heart of the Shitty™ so that you would know what not to do or would you just want to ignore the area entirely and concentrate only on what’s good about any particular metro area? As a Burnsville resident are you disappointed that even a group which should have an interest in that type of development decided to skip out on it, much like developers and business owners have, because of it’s apparent failure?
Go ahead and comment on, I’d love to hear what you have to say!
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April 27th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
In a way, its nice to know that the planning professionals spurned the HOC too – it kind of ratifies how the locals feel about its planning (or lack thereof). I wonder how City Hall is going to “spin” this? One would think that the future president of the US Conference of Mayors would have some sort of pull with a national organization such as this? Come on – force them onto those buses and show off your “vision” Lizzie! The same way you trucked in realtors to try to sell the condos, and bused in legislators from St. Paul for the PAC groundbreaking. (None of those people, by the way, have been back since, I’m pretty sure). You can be like the Wizard of Oz: “Planners! Pay no attention to the empty streets, unsold condos and vacant storefronts….look at the pretty park!”
April 27th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
No tour of the AV circle of dead businesses and dirt patches?
And it makes me cringe to think we had a city of urban planners in town trying to figure out ways to get me to pay for bike paths, light rail, big pimp ass bus stations, and the like.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I’m assuming that the big problem may have been the fact that the HOC isn’t linked to anything except itself. Nothing like touting the linked nature of parks and lakes and then saying, “oooh, come visit the HOC where we have no lakes, one little park, and nothing else!”
I really think it’s important that other planners see the failures that exist in the MSP metro’s planning choices so that they don’t choose to repeat those elsewhere. Unfortunately that wasn’t shown and the only negative aspect was that our city streets were a little empty.
I’d really like to know what the APA thinks of Apple Valley and Lakeville’s poor planning choices. Walkable downtowns that don’t exist and are barren yet continue to “show promise once the economy rebounds”.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Based on some of the other stuff they chose not to see, I think the distance from the convention site, hotels, etc. probably played a part in their decisions too. But I agree that it’s just as important (if not more so) to look what doesn’t work and why along with what does.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Yeah, it would have been hard to bring these APA members to the Burnsville Heart of the City when the ink is still drying from the articles in the local papers and news describing gun shots, four police cars smashed and large amounts of crack and cocaine confiscated in a large drug bust near the Burnsville Heart of the City (Travelers Trail and Nicollet Avenue). The pretty park is lined with yellow tape as they spend another $500,000 to make it safe for humans to wade in. The land for a song restaurant is still not finished and shows off it pretty yellow insulation yet. Besides someone might have wanted an ice cream cone from Double Dip seeing the signs, and then what would we tell them? Well, many businesses that did make a go of it here have failed. So, probably a good thing they did not swing through unless they wanted to show how the VISION of Mayor Kautz and a few short sighted supporters can go terribly awry!
April 27th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I am sure it would have been a great tour:
Ladys and gentlemen, here we are on highway 13 to start our tour of the HOC. First you will see how we cleverly placed the mass transit station on the ooposite side of the very busy highway from the vast majority of the apartments, condos, single family houses, coffee shops, and restraunts.
Next, notice as we turn off the very busy highway 13 onto the very busy Nicollet ave. In a stroke of genius, we decided to build the HEART OF THE CITY straddling this very busy traffic artery.
As we continue with the tour, you will notice that there are three things in the area that force people from outside the neighborhood to drive thier cars right into the heart of our new walking community. Of course, the transit center, which you already saw. Next is the Cub Foods. Last but not least, Nicollet Commons Park and the PAC. Please keep your eyes on the transit station and then Cub Foods, that way you will miss the horribly run down Gas Stations on the opposite side of the road. Next up, we have several nearly empty buildings, on both sides of the street. Oh, that other building is going to be a nice restraunt. Yes, the city is pretty much paying the MCC to come in and open a restraunt in the HOC by building them a shiny new building. Yes, all these other places are empty. Well not all, Jo Jos Rise and Wine is the mayors place.
Whats that? No, sorry, there are no drive throughs here, and no donut shops either. This is a walking community, why would we have drive throughs? Pay attention.
Next, the crown jewel of the HOC, the Performing Arts Center. A $25,000,000 tribute to local theatre and commedy clubs. Oh yea. Gorgeous place. This fall they are going to have a concert there we think. Maybe. Please dont look up the hill. That other big empty building is not supposed to be there either. We ran out the bank and as soon as we can raise taxes again we will get that torn down. Also, notice that beautiful spot across from Nicollet Commons Park. That will be a restaraunt by 2014.
We hope you enjoyed your tour. Now you can walk around the park and see the non sanitary water features. When thats done, stop at Jo Jos for a cup of coffee. Careful of the traffic though, its dangerous.
Have a great day.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Chad, remind me not to read your comments while in meetings. Giggling about a website post while someone is presenting isn’t exactly nice ;-)
April 27th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Great post Chad!
April 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Excellent post Chad, another reason why they did not take a tour through the HOC is they did not have enough kevlar vests and helmets to issue to the APA visitors on the bus. Oh and just across the street from the vacant bank near the funeral home lives Burnsville’s Convicted Level Three Sex Offender, can not forget to point that out. So if you feel the urge to see Jo Jo’s up close and grab a cup of Joe, be sure to dodge the bullets and do not speak to any stangers and rapidly return to the bus. Finally do not forget to acknowledge by honking your horn for the frequent war protestors on the corner of Nicollet and Burnsville Parkway that encourage you to honk to end the war.
April 27th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Wonderful post Chad.
I am shocked Burnsville was even considered to be a potential tour. Unless it was on the what not to do portion of the event. It reminds me of infomercials. Burnsville is the black and white portion where everything goes wrong. Then drive 20 minutes where the world is suddenly peppy and colorful! Check out St. Louis Park, same idea… but it works so much better.
I can’t wait to hear Lizzie’s next speech about how wonderful and successful the Heart of the City is.
It makes me wonder however, if there was a tour what Lizzie would have done to be involved. Would she hop a bus with them and be their guide? Or would she simply choose to stand on her balcony and wave. (Have you seen her do this? As the movie ends she stands on her balcony waving to the community with Christmas lights and such on… weird. But funny.)
April 28th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
It makes me sad that none of the mayors and/or PAC supporters have chimed in to show us the error of our ways.
Really, I know that Kautz supporters and PAC supporters read this. It would really make my day to have someone chime in with some valid reasons why the PAC and HOC are actually going to work out and we are all upset over nothing. There has to be some positives someplace right?
April 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Chad, I agree that it is amazing that there are no comments from PAC/HOC supporters. I attribute this silence to the inability for anyone to substantiate a positive position that the PAC is going to work or refute the errors of our ways, because we are only calling the facts as we see them.
The only positive that I could make a stretch claim of support for would be for the Chameleon Theatre who got a tax payer funded 150 seat theatre to perform in and try to sell out. If this is all that we needed we could have saved $20M and $3.5M on the parking structure and they could have leveraged the Mraz Theatre at the High School or built them a standalone theatre in the old Menards on Hwy 13, or the old TCF Bank on Nicollet. No one from the Chameleon is going to stick their neck out now, they got what they wanted with our tax dollars and are not going to pile on the fact that the 1,000 seat theatre and the VenuWorks management of booking acts in the main theatre is horrific, play on. LACA – The Lake Alamagnet Center for the Arts, (house that is funded by the City of Burnsville in Alamagnet Park)another city funded facility for the Chameleon Theatre rehersals and the Arts should be sold immediately as we have an empty world class, dark, 1,000 seat theatre and the 150 seat theatre you wanted, now pay to use it Chameleon Theatre for rehersals and storage.
Do not forget antoher positive as more of our tax dollars are going to flowing from the ISD191 budget into the PAC black hole of revenue this fall when the new magnet school for the arts leverages the PAC a few days a month.
April 28th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
TL,
Looking at the schedule it really appears that the Chameleon group got a 25 million dollar theatre to play with. Sure, they have to let people like George Jones perform one or two days a month, but other than that, they have the run of the place.
Pretty nice digs.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I remember back when I was in Urban Planning grad school at the U of M we took a field trip to tour HOC. I left class that day thinking, “Wait, this is an example of GOOD development? Really? Are you sure?”
Still, I think there really is a lot to be learned from the HOC development and it still has a lot to offer a tour group. Most notably, I think it highlights exactly how challenging creating new pedestrian oriented spaces is. Burnsville set out with a pretty exciting vision for a vibrant, pedestrian oriented development, yet for several reasons (many mentioned by Chad) they did not (yet?) accomplish their vision.
May 12th, 2009 at 8:57 am
“I think it highlights exactly how challenging creating new pedestrian oriented spaces is.”
Seriously?
OK…I have a BA in Communications and a job in a cubicle at a behemoth health care company. Absolutely no “Urban Planning” experience or classes, ever. That said, here goes:
Idiot’s Guide to Making Creating New Pedestrian Oriented Spaces Easy
1. New pedestrian oriented spaces should be placed in locations where it is natural for pedestrians to exist.
If you really need more than just that, here are some other brilliant concepts:
2. New pedestrian oriented spaces should be placed where there is an inherent advantage to walking over other modes of transportation.
3. New pedestrian oriented spaces should not be placed straddling major thoroughfares, especially should not be placed straddling multiple major thoroughfares, and double-dog especially across multiple major thoroughfares bordered by even more major-major thoroughfares.
4. The first step in new pedestrian oriented spaces should NEVER be installing a strip mall with 1,000 parking spaces that people have to walk through or around, and multiple parking garages.
5. Pedestrian oriented spaces should be built based on the idea of pedestrians taking as few steps as possible to accomplish what it is they are there to accomplish. When building pedestrian oriented spaces, it should be required to place entry doors to businesses on the FRONT of the buildings, at the same level as the pedestrians instead of requiring them to walk to the backs of buildings and go up and down sets of stairs to get from business to business.
6. Similarly, pedestrians choose to walk in places that are inviting, offer vistas, natural beauty and/or places where they can gather with neighbors. In successful pedestrian oriented commercial spaces, storefronts are close together, they are inviting, they open to the pedestrian paths, they take advantage of the surrounding scenery and they acknowledge and facilitate walking in the climate of the location.
Anyone want to pick up at #7?
May 12th, 2009 at 9:08 am
On a side note, on the off chance anyone has been to any of these, here are some places off the top of my head that I think are “pedestrian oriented”, or have excellent pedestrian friendly characteristics based on some of the criteria above:
Camden, Maine
Sonoma, California
Bath, England
Central Park, Manhattan
The Mall, Washington D.C.
Old Town, Alexandria, VA
San Antonio’s Riverwalk
Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, Colorado
Duval Street and Mallory Square, Key West, Florida
May 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
As usual, perfectly said.
You could do variations on the theme, such as that you should not have to build an additional surface parking lot next to your condo in the MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING WALKING COMMUNITY.
May 12th, 2009 at 9:53 am
I think #7 could be the existing or nearby presence of yuppies, at least if you’re going to add expensive housing in the mix.
As for your examples of pedestrian-oriented areas…why Central Park specifically? Most of Manhattan seemed pedestrian-oriented when I was there a while back. The only other place you mentioned that I’ve been to is the Mall in DC, and that was over twenty years ago, so I don’t remember it much.
May 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Manhattan is a great place to walk because of the sheer amount of interesting stuff you can hit within a few miles radius. Walking is also virtually required, so by that factor, it meets my 1 and 2 above easily.
Central Park specifically strikes me as having a number of elements of the quintessential pedestrian oriented area. I love the idea of a central gathering space for recreation, on which businesses, homes and workplaces alike face and spill out onto. It’s aesthetically pleasing to shop, work, live and recreate all in a close proximity. Almost everything you naturally do on a day-to-day basis is right there from necessity to pleasure. While vehicle traffic exists, it is on the periphery and you get the feel that it is secondary to the acts of living going on around the place. The natural feature is a treasured asset and is “central” to everything going on around it.
Central Park and the Mall, to me, have a similar feel and are on the list for similar reasons. You take the idea of a “town square” (recreation, beauty, open space, gathering) blow them up and structure life around it, with entry and exits facing inwards. Traffic is kept on the periphery for the most part. Sonoma, CA is an example of the traditional version of the town square idea.
It’s way too late for that, but here’s a fun vision I toy with every now and then: With the avenue leading downhill to a nice vista of the river valley and downtown Minneapolis, I would have Nicollet Ave in HOC being closed off from Burnsville Parkway to Highway 13 and converted into walking boulevard/town square-ish space, creating a “T” with the PAC and park. The remaining plots of land and the existing Grande Marketplace, the Mayor’s House and Personal Coffee Shop, etc. be built out/reconfigured to spill out entry/exit into the space. Hold weekly farmers’ markets, Edina Art Fair-type events, etc. There are enough other ways to get from north to south Burnsville that wouldn’t make this inconvenient for traffic.
Anyway…that was a tangent….
May 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Let the comment war begin! Ha. just kidding. This is probably my last.
MSPD:
Yes, seriously. The fact that there hasn’t been a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood constructed from scratch in the twin cities within the past 30 years is substantial evidence. The fact that some have tried and fallen short (like HOC) is further evidence. I’m arguing that incompetence is not entirely to blame, but that there are institutional, cultural, and economic roadblocks preventing pedestrian friendly communities from being constructed.
Constructing one pedestrian oriented building in the middle of an already pedestrian oriented neighborhood is relatively easy. What Burnsville tried to do is to construct a pedestrian oriented neighborhood in the middle of an area that is decidedly not pedestrian friendly. Constructing a pedestrian oriented neighborhood where one does not currently exist is quite difficult. Some would argue that it was a stupid thing to try in the first place. There are many who would argue that if someplace isn’t already pedestrian friendly, we shouldn’t try to make it be pedestrian friendly. That’s a perfectly acceptable opinion to have. I simply disagree.
Your comments #1 and #2 highlight the classic chicken-and-egg nature of this problem. Which comes first, the pedestrians or the development? Many cities choose not to build sidewalks because there are no pedestrians. There are no pedestrians, of course, because there are no sidewalks.
As for 3-6 (and Tim’s #7): I agree entirely. These are all things pedestrian friendly neighborhoods should do/be. As I said earlier, I’m just saying that there are significant institutional, cultural, and economic roadblocks that make accomplishing this quite difficult.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Reuben, thanks for the comments. I actually agree with what you are saying.
The point I was passive-agressively making is supported by your statement that “some would argue that it was a stupid thing to try in the first place.”
That really hits the nail on the head. It was mindblowingly stupid even to biggest dolts like myself with absolutely no city planning credentials/knowledge to do the HOC like they did. You don’t even need to get into the REAL challenges you are alluding to — they couldn’t even acknowledge the basic idiot concepts that don’t pass the smell test. To further it, they continue to impose this stupidity on the taxpayers (e.g. the planned “pedestrian oriented” neighborhood in Eagan) with more of these ill-conceived ideas.
I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to borrow from your post: “The fact that there hasn’t been a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood constructed from scratch in the twin cities within the past 30 years is substantial evidence.”
After 30 years of this stupid idea, maybe they should stop trying. At least they should stop acting surprised when nobody from a national planning organization doesn’t want to come see the latest and greatest in the 30-year string of absolute failures.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I think many of those roadblocks aren’t things that can be overcome at the municipal level, unfortunately. There’s going to need to be some significant social changes (they will happen eventually, but it will be quite a long time) before a place like Burnsville would be able to make a pedestrian-friendly development work, at least on that scale.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Will there actually ever be those changes in the suburbs? At the rate that people are relocating to MSP proper to get the advantages that the suburbs are failing to create, do those that are left really give a shit that Burnsville is pretending to have a pedestrian friendly downtown?
May 12th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
This is a tangent, but its pretty closely related. If you go to an outlet mall, you will see people parking thier cars and walking from place to place. However, if you go to Target on CR 42, you will see that people drive just to get from Target to Barnes and Noble (100 yards?)
The way these things are built, its does not encourage you to walk. I.E, you will get RUN OVER BY A CAR.
The same can be said for the HOC. If you were to try to walk from the transit station to Cub, you would have to brave some very heavy traffic. Or from Nicollet commons park to Cub, or from Jo Jo’s to Wells Fargo. The HOC has most of the things that people need/use on a daily basis; grocery store, banks, places to eat, recreation (parks and BPAC), etc. However the places are hard to get in and out of, the traffic is HEAVY. The Parking Lots are huge. Many of the store fronts are empty, etc, etc, etc.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Bill, I think it will happen eventually, but I mean decades rather than years, for the reasons you describe.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Tim, but if everyone that wants pedestrian friendly areas relocates to an area that has a working model for it (and has for 100s of years) why would it need to happen in an area like Burnsville where people are happy to drive everywhere they want to go?
May 12th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Well, I can see it happening quite a ways down the road (like I said, not anytime soon) for a couple possible reasons which may or may not occur:
– People being priced out of the cities who otherwise would live there. I agree with what you’ve touched on here and written about more extensively in other posts that, to be honest, the suburbs are the slums of the future (more or less like the banlieues in France). The cities will be the desirable places to live, but not everyone is going to be able to do so, assuming current levels of density. Eventually, people are going to look to the suburbs for cheaper areas to buy housing, start businesses, and redevelop.
– People driving less. Yes, people in Burnsville are content to drive everywhere *now*. But that’s going to change eventually for several reasons — aging populations, fuel being too expensive, and a younger generation where cars were not as available or seen as important when they were younger who, as a result, decided they didn’t want or need cars when they were older.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Tim,
Great points! Do you believe that Burnsville, in decades, will be able to redesign itself to have many HOC-like developments across the city or will they continue to try and overdevelop one specific location into a walkable area like they are now?
May 12th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
It’s hard to know how they will approach redevelopment in the future, but I’d guess that they’d have the foresight to try smaller-scale developments in multiple locations rather than one big development.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I would say considering the posturing going on about the Burnsville quarry site that the Mayor can’t wait to try her hand at ruining another large-scale development. But that’s just me. Maybe in her taxpayer funded travel around the country in her capacity as the First-Suburban-Mayor-to-be-Selected-as-the-Second-Vice-President-of-the-US-Conference-of-Mayors she can visit some successful lakeshore or riverside developments and come back with some useful knowledge. But I doubt it. I can’t decide if she’s completely blind and in some deep psychological denial of the development failure that is in front of her very eyes or if she’s just stupid-dumb. ..oh..wait…its the ghost of James McEnroe (last pedestrian seen in HOC) again…breaking through from the afterlife with another message:
Watch that Lizzie Kautz
All ye citizens of Burnsville:
At the quarry by the River and Cliff
She seeks to bury ‘neath visions and TIF
Unmined rock still worth several mil.
“Ignore those lost tax dollars†she claims.
“I want the land NOW – while my tenure remains!â€
“Make the mining haltâ€
stamped our very own Veruca Salt,
Like Nero, fiddling while the town round her ‘s aflame.
Mark not your ballot for Lizzie in 2012
Ye voters of the Ville of Burns.
She’ll empty yer coffers,
Despite the listening she offers,
Not even the welfare of kittens is she concerned.
Whew. Channeling spirits from the afterlife is exhausting, plus I have a hankering for Irish whiskey now for some reason.