Move Minneapolis recently hosted a summit on the topic “Exploring How Businesses Can Survive and Thrive Through Construction.” Our producer Parker Seamon scoped it out, and invited several attendees to come on the show to chat about the topic.
Links
- Move Minneapolis YouTube page: recordings of previous summits and webinars.
- 2020 Summit “Commute Revolution: A Seismic Approach to Transforming Transportation”
- 2021 Summit “Revisiting the Urban Interstate: Freeway to the Future or Road to Ruin?”
- 2022 Summit “What is Mobility Justice?” keynote and panel recordings
- 2023 Summit “Envisioning Downtown Streets That Prioritize People”
- Star Tribune article mentioning the summit
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced and edited by Parker Seamon aka Strongthany, and was hosted and transcribed by Ian R Buck. Many thanks to Catherine Windyk, Seth Stattmiller, Matt Kazinka, and Sam O’Connell for coming on the show. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.mn Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful Seward, Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck. Move Minneapolis recently hosted a seminar called Exploring How Businesses Can Survive and Thrive Through Construction.
Our producer Parker went to the event and connected with some of the guests to invite them to come on an episode diving into the topic. Coming up, you’ll hear from several different perspectives, a business owner, a business corridor organization, and the Metropolitan Council. But first let’s chat for a moment with Catherine Windyk from Move Minneapolis about the event itself.
[00:00:49] Catherine: Yeah. Well, thanks first of all, for having me. I’m a big fan of the podcast and the newsfeed, the articles that are put out on Streets.mn. So a big fan. Thanks for having me again. My name is Catherine Windyk. My pronouns are she/her, and I’m currently an outreach specialist with Move Minneapolis. I’ve been there since late 2021 talking about who Move Minneapolis is. We’re a 501c4 nonprofit. Uh, we are the downtown transportation management organization in Minneapolis. We were founded in 1991 to improve air quality in the Twin Cities, metro area. And our major funding is provided by a federal CMAQ grant that stands for congestion mitigation and air quality.
We’re currently a subsidiary of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber. And our mission is to empower people to choose sustainable transportation options through educational opportunities and by reducing barriers. So I mentioned that we are the downtown transportation management organization, which means that we do focus on getting to and around downtown specifically versus other areas of the city.
There are other transportation management organizations, TMOs that handle other areas of the region, the metro region, um, historically Move Minneapolis did engage primarily with just employers and commuters. And it was really a nine to five white collar worker audience that we engaged with given downtown your
[00:02:07] Ian: classic nineties approach, exactly.
[00:02:09] Catherine: And the way that transportation is set up and our system revolves around kind of that audience of nine to five white collar workers in a downtown core. That was what we focused on, uh, in the last few years, obviously things have changed a little bit since COVID and we’ve expanded our audience for many reasons and we now include residents, visitors, employees who work beyond the nine to five, so service industry, hospitality, that kind of audience as well, not just nine to five office workers, although we do still serve those core employers that are nine to five, Monday through Friday, coming in from the suburbs.
[00:02:42] Ian: We’re going to have to find a different phrase than nine to five because a lot of us are hybrid. Or whether that’s by hybrid by day or hybrid by hour, right?
[00:02:51] Catherine: There’s a lot of kinds of hybrid.
[00:02:53] Ian: Yeah.
[00:02:53] Catherine: Yeah. So the summit is a, an annual event that is produced by Move Minneapolis and it’s actually been going on since 2010.
[00:03:01] Ian: Does, does it have a name besides just "the summit"?
[00:03:03] Catherine: It’s the transportation summit. I think we used to specifically call it the downtown transportation summit, but We’ve kind of shortened it a little bit just for wordiness and as I’ll get to, we’ve expanded a little bit outside of downtown as well in recent years.
So transportation summit, the purpose of the transportation summit is really can be summed up, summed up as advancing collective conversation on the latest cross cutting topics and sustainable transportation. So that’s like a really broad thing that we’re trying to do.
[00:03:32] Ian: Right.
[00:03:33] Catherine: And it can include keynote speakers, panel discussions, interactive sessions.
The topics are supposed to be kind of big picture explorations of topics within this transportation sphere. There, we are hope that they can collectively engage the audience in the topic with interactive sessions and with a chance for attendees to build networks, you talked about Parker attending, that’s, I met Parker at the summit, um, you know, and I’m doing and putting on the summit, but also that was a chance for me to meet Parker, which is why I’m here today. So, you know, building networks is great. And also audience engagement, problem solving and connected, connecting versus the webinars or other events that Move Minneapolis puts on, which are more focused on just straight education and awareness and less necessarily on interaction and collaboration.
Because if you’re on a webinar, you’re really there to hear. And not as much to interact with other people that are on the webinar or things like that So this is more of an interactive format.
[00:04:26] Ian: Yeah.
[00:04:26] Catherine: Speaking about the last few years specifically So, uh, we’ve kind of expanded the topic as I mentioned we’ve promoted it more broadly to the whole community rather than just The business or just the employers, we, we invite all sorts of folks.
And thank you to streets. mn for promoting and walk the talk, uh, emails that have gone out in the last couple of years. So appreciate that. And shout outs in podcasts maybe, or maybe that’s car free MSP. Yeah. I think that was car free. Okay. Well, future, future podcasts. We’ll have you give a shout out. And audience again, audiences have grown in the last three years.
So rather than just employers, we do now have advocates in the room, planners, elected officials, sometimes people from local media. We did have a Star Tribune reporter attend this year and did include a shout out to us in an article that they wrote after the fact it didn’t, it wasn’t specifically about the summit, but it was about this topic and they noted that we did this summit, so.
That’s something people can check out. Uh, we’ve also, we also had business owners in the room this year as well, specifically, and people just interested in transportation generally. So, you know, the wonky people that are really the Streets.mn audience are probably who are in the room as well. In addition to the normal employers that we typically had had in the past. Uh, in 2020, we had our first virtual summit for obvious reasons. Uh, it was always an in person event beforehand. So, you know, that makes sense. But that meant that we were actually able to tap resources from across the country and bring in a lot of nationwide speakers, which we wouldn’t have been able to do in the past because you’ve, you’re paying to fly people in and lodging, all that stuff that made that more accessible.
[00:05:58] Ian: Were you doing webinars before? Pre pandemic?
[00:06:00] Catherine: We were not really, uh, as far as I know, I don’t think we were. Yeah. Okay. So,
[00:06:05] Ian: so that kind of branched into now two different avenues for you as an organization.
[00:06:11] Catherine: Which is, is really the good upside of doing a virtual event is you get to expand your reach.
So that included the audience that we were able to reach out to. We, we did, we promoted that nationwide as well, and we had attendees exceeding 600. So, you know, usually our. Webinars are not 600, that’s for sure, uh, but so that was nice too. And people all from around the country were able to tune in to those webinars or those summits and our webinars as well.
[00:06:35] Ian: I mean, talk about like expanding networks.
[00:06:37] Catherine: Exactly. Yes. Yes. The topic was exploring how businesses can survive and thrive through construction.
[00:06:43] Ian: Evergreen topic. Yes.
[00:06:45] Catherine: For reasons, yes, well, or for things I will touch on for sure. Um, so the reason that we decided on this topic specifically, there were a bunch of reasons.
So this was actually first kind of envisioned. It was born as a webinar topic in 2022 amongst our team. And we had a working title of you’re getting a bike lane. Now what? And it was geared towards business, a business owner audience and was focused more on kind of the end result. So a bike lane or a bus lane, et cetera, and the impact on businesses.
Um, we kind of just felt like the timing was never right for that. It just didn’t, for a webinar or whatever, it just didn’t come together. So we had a few conversations with people and it just never gelled.
[00:07:22] Ian: I mean, the funny thing about your webinars is that like quite often I will have an idea for a podcast episode.
And then like a week later. You announce a webinar on that exact topic. And I’m like, Oh yeah. Okay.
[00:07:33] Catherine: Great minds, great minds. Well, that, that is, um, a good point because I will say that we were really inspired by the 2024 Streets.mn Podcast, business owners and parking is complicated. Um, so me specifically, when I listened to that, I really gained a lot of empathy for business owners as someone who, you know, is really, you know, passionate about sustainable transportation and who is not a business owner It was really helpful to hear those perspectives in the way that you framed that so that was actually it really contributed To us choosing this topic along with just lots of stories lots of news stories in Minneapolis this year the spring and summer About businesses and street construction projects that include sustainable transportation improvements So we’re talking, you know better biking and walking infrastructure Preparation for a lot of bus rapid transit lines like the E Line and the B Line.
Those were all Um, involved in a lot of the news stories that were coming up around Hennepin Avenue South, Hennepin and First and Northeast, Lowry and Northeast, Lake Street, all of those things. And as well as continuing, uh, conversations on the Blue Line moving forward. So, you know, that’s not under construction yet, but there’s still business concerns.
There’s still plans happening. So that was, that’s still a relevant piece of it as well.
[00:08:46] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love That, like, that Move Minneapolis, Streets.mn, you know, we’ve mentioned a few other projects and things. From other organizations, right? Like, um, uh, our streets, you know, with the, the Twin Cities Boulevard, you know, like that adds to the conversation.
Um, I’m thinking about the, I think that we are represented by that picture of like a bunch of people in a circle who are all sitting on each other’s knees. And like, if any one person leaves the circle, like they all fall down, but, you know, like, but we’re all supporting each other, right? Right.
[00:09:19] Catherine: Right.
Definitely. Well, and, um, as far as like goals. for the summit and for what we were hoping people would get out of it this year and every year, but this year specifically around this topic, we wanted to explore the topic and generate ideas. We didn’t want to promote any one perspective or anything. I mean, obviously Move Minneapolis promotes sustainable transportation, but that doesn’t mean we want businesses to go out of business.
Like clearly we have, uh, an interest in everyone succeeding in this process going well for everyone. So we wanted to be kind of that liaison between the different parties. Uh, we really want the. conversation to continue past the summit. Um, and we’re.
[00:09:54] Ian: Here we are.
[00:09:54] Catherine: Well, exactly. So we’re past the summit.
We’re continuing the conversation and we’re trying to figure out like, well, how do we keep this conversation going onward? Because as you noted earlier, this is not going to go away and it’s, it’s an ongoing issue. Hopefully we’ll continue to have two seasons in Minnesota construction in winter, but all the pieces and people involved.
need to work together to get this right in order to continue to improve the transportation system overall. So we can’t have one piece not working. Like it all has to work together. Everyone has to get the benefits in order for us to move forward.
[00:10:25] Ian: Catherine, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:10:26] Catherine: Thanks so much for having me, Ian.
Take care.
[00:10:35] Ian: Now let’s chat with Seth Stattmiller from Recovery Bike Shop.
[00:10:39] Seth: I am co owner of Recovery Bike Shop at, uh, Central and Lowry in Northeast Minneapolis. We are a used bike shop. Last year we sold 650 bikes. Um, because we sell used bicycles, we are able to offer fairly affordable performance. And that means we sell a lot of bikes to people getting their first adult bike.
So I like to say that we put 650 new riders on the streets of Minneapolis and beyond last year. And approximately every year and over the last 20 years, we have put, I would say at least 10, 000 new people on bikes in the Twin Cities. And I like to think that maybe is responsible for a half a block of bike lane out there somewhere.
[00:11:25] Ian: Yeah. Uh, well, yeah. What’s the math on, uh, on yeah. The conversion rates from, from bikes to, to infrastructure. Um,
[00:11:35] Seth: Riders do we need to get one block of bike lane?
[00:11:38] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. So when it comes to construction and businesses, you know, the, the obvious, like the first thing that people think of is like business owners are going to be concerned with maintaining access to their businesses.
So do you have any other concerns regarding construction beyond that obvious, like how are people going to get to my business?
[00:12:01] Seth: Well, deliveries obviously are a huge concern. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s car traffic. And we like to say that customers are not cars. But in the US there’s a, there’s a strong correlation.
So yeah, the road construction certainly means, uh, a loss of access to have a substantial amount of customers, um, and then deliveries and all of that stuff. And you know, there can just be associated costs with it. We got a $14,000 assessment on the day that construction started. Um, we weren’t. On Lowry. So we weren’t expecting any of the, any of that.
It’s also, this was a Lowry is a Hennepin County project, so it was very surprising to get a city assessment. Hmm. Uh, and as far as I know, I mean, all of the businesses that I talked to were not expecting that kind of. Bill for this project as well.
[00:12:57] Ian: So there wasn’t any like communication lead up before the project started about like, Oh, Hey, here’s this thing that’s going to happen.
Here’s what your assessment is going to look like.
[00:13:06] Seth: There was nothing that I saw, you know, the city, the county and the state all are not great at communicating about these projects. Um, to varying degrees of success. And so I can imagine something went out, but it didn’t land in front of my eyes and it didn’t land in front of the eyes of the community.
At least any of the business owners that I talked to, uh, in the neighborhood.
[00:13:29] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. And those kinds of things aren’t like, they’re not automatically rolled into the property tax assessment, right? Like this is just a separate, like one time.
[00:13:39] Seth: No, no, they, uh, you can pay them upfront, but generally they do become part of your property taxes.
And you pay for it over 20 years or something.
[00:13:48] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel that the, the communication would be, have been better? Like what, what channels would you have been expecting to receive this information through as a business owner?
[00:13:57] Seth: It’s a really good question. You know, our best channel is like Instagram and, uh, that’s not.
It’s not an official channel. Like I don’t expect the government to, uh, use social media like that. And like, Instagram is not that great at getting the word out to everybody that we want to know. Newsletters where people have opted in is not that great. Right. Though that would be better. I do subscribe to a lot of city updates and getting those.
That gives me exactly the information that I want. And I appreciate that. Uh, they’re putting, you know, two foot signs on corners with 12 point fonts that no one can read. Even if you’re walking by those signs, I think the best thing obviously would be one on one meetings. There are, there are. Seven businesses on the section of Lowry for phase one, that’s seven doors you got to knock on like, that doesn’t mean that the, the owner or landlord or manager is going to be home when you get there, but that’s only seven. Entities that you can go to those places and say, Hey, mitigation that we can do? Well, What are your concerns? Blah, blah, blah, that should happen.
[00:15:15] Ian: And for, for the assessments, especially like they have a list of all of the properties that are going to be affected by assessments, the US mail service exists.
[00:15:25] Seth: Right. Right. That is the most obvious thing is like, put a letter in the mail. That’s how I found out. I finally got a letter in the mail and I, you know, I read it.
[00:15:33] Ian: But not very far in advance, it sounds like.
[00:15:36] Seth: It was zero time in advance. Uh, for that piece, I, it isn’t entirely possible that, that we were missing letters, um, that were looked like spam postcards or something, but I especially take anything with Minneapolis logos or County logos or anything very seriously.
And it’s hard to imagine that, that something like that actually slipped by me. Um, So, uh, yeah, I start with a letter in the mail. If there is at all a budget for it, like get somebody out to that door, set an appointment, make a meeting with the individuals. All of our contact information is easy to find online.
Give us a call. We, we really. Do you want to know about this? And we’re not talking about door knocking in every, uh, at every residence in the neighborhood that might have some impact from this project. Get out there and talk to the major stakeholders.
[00:16:34] Ian: Let’s talk about the summit event that you went to.
What were you looking to get out of that event? You know, what were you trying to learn?
[00:16:41] Seth: The theme was, uh, surviving and thriving road construction. The problem from, uh, as I would frame it would be, you know, loss of access to customers, which is, uh, loss of access to potential sales and the. Most straightforward solution to that is marketing.
If you’re not going to change your location, then you are stuck just trying harder when it comes to marketing. And that falls a little flat to me, given that, you know, we like to think we’re always doing our best at marketing. And so if there was something that we could bring…
[00:17:17] Ian: [amused] I’m always acknowledging that I’m not doing my best at marketing, especially when it comes to promoting the podcast.
[00:17:24] Seth: Yeah, no. That’s true. That’s true. Uh, but if there was something we thought that could bring us more customers now, we would do it now. Yeah. Like saving something for the road construction days. So, uh, it just seems like the best solution is more of the same. Um, what I was hoping for going to the, the summit was Somebody was something incredibly innovative.
I did appreciate having the ear of the people, the peoples that were there. A, the tax assessment was a blow and seems unnecessary. There are other municipalities that do the inverse that, Pay their businesses that are impacted so that they will survive. They know they will survive these, these impacts so that the job providers and the community builders and community makers are there when this project is over, which is what we all want.
These are tax paying entities, uh, in a big way. Uh, I was hoping to be heard and have somebody listen and say, you know what? You can’t use the street. You shouldn’t have to pay for it while you can’t use it. How about a property tax holiday. We go to the car first. We need to go to the car last. Bicycles can get anywhere.
The second half of the phase one construction was kind of awesome because like the pavement was laid and there were no cars and we could ride the whole thing by ourselves. It was fantastic. So like, if we had a movement to have more, I mean, uh, if bikes were more culturally acceptable in Minneapolis as transportation and businesses catered to those customers a little bit more, uh, I think that would help mitigate these issues.
You’re still turning off the tap, whatever mode share we have, you’re still turning one of those modes off whenever you do an infrastructure project and it’s. It’s going to hurt. The only way to make it not hurt is to provide cash from the city, from the county to mitigate the loss.
[00:19:24] Ian: Well, here, let me pose a question to you about like a mitigation approach that we thought of, which is like, would, would you as a business owner, would you rather have as short a construction period as possible?
Or would you rather have a longer construction period that includes things like, keeping the sidewalks open or only doing a construction on like one half of the street at a time so that like, you know Access can be maintained to all of the businesses in some in some capacity
[00:19:54] Seth: It’s a very fair question and I don’t feel strongly, but I do think keeping it partially open is better than a full closure.
My impression is that people entirely avoided Lowry and thus the area during the construction. And the traffic levels do not suggest that those people have come back yet. This is, Lowry is going to be a three year project. Uh, they’re closing different segments of it completely in three phases over three years.
Uh, so the people that aren’t coming back now are not going to find Lowry hospitable for three years.
[00:20:32] Ian: Right. Is there, are there other things that we as consumers can do to support businesses during that time? Is it enough to just go and, and can, you know, making sure that we’re continuing to patronize or is, are there other things that you would love to see from people?
[00:20:44] Seth: Getting a word out is huge. Liking, subscribing, and sharing social media posts, uh, is huge. Is the quickest, easiest thing that, that anybody can do for any cause that they support. Um, so share Recovery Bike Shop’s posts, like us, engage in the conversations. Um, tell your friends rate us, uh, on, on Google and Yelp and all those pieces.
Honestly, the money is the biggest piece. Susan from Linden Hills was on the panel and she talked about a customer buying a piece of art at her gallery. Asking her to add a hundred dollars onto it because that customer loved what the, what her business did and just knew that she needed it right now. You know, during the pandemic, everybody was buying gift cards because they didn’t need something today.
We all needed the cash today. That’s a great thing. Uh, I think just generating the traffic. Getting the traffic in the store. I think partnerships could go a long way. We have a pop-up culture right now, which, which, which is fantastic. We we’re talking with Susan about like doing free bike repair at her gallery.
Like there’s nothing inherently, uh, in the Venn diagram overlap between bicycles and fine art. But, uh, there’s no reason not to have those kinds of partners.
[00:22:04] Ian: Minneapolis Institute of Art has their like monthly bike nights, uh, during the summers, right? Yeah. Who cares what the connection is? Bikes are cool.
[00:22:15] Seth: Coverage from the Northeaster was very helpful. Um, I don’t know that like Star Tribune or anybody did anything about that, but there was a lot of community support that came around this, uh, the Holland neighborhoods through a grand opening party when it reopened, having the community behind us. That’s the other piece.
Honestly, I met a lot of neighbors through this process that I didn’t know. And just having that feeling that we weren’t alone, that other people feel felt our pain and shared our complaints actually helped us get through this. That didn’t add up to more money necessarily, but just feeling like we’re not in this alone.
Helps you get up and go to work every day.
[00:22:57] Ian: Oh, that’s very sweet.
[00:22:58] Seth: Yeah, that’s real.
[00:23:00] Ian: Seth, any other, any other pressing things that you wanted to talk about on this subject that I haven’t asked about yet? I feel like you’ve gotten a lot off your chest already.
[00:23:09] Seth: I know I feel much better. You know, my thing is always that cars are not customers.
We probably don’t need all the parking that we think we need. Um, and if you are a rider. Make sure that businesses know that, that you’re not a car, bring your helmet inside, wear your helmet inside the store or, or, you know, tie it to your belt or something. Um, so that the businesses can see that cars are not the only way for them to get customers.
[00:23:37] Ian: If I’m a, if I’m a transit rider, do I like bring in that little pamphlet about like, Oh, here’s the guide for the route 10.
[00:23:43] Seth: Yeah, yeah, I scored some Metro transit socks that I wear.
[00:23:49] Ian: Yes. I’ve got a pair too!
[00:23:51] Seth: Nice. But yeah, I find myself involved in parking arguments often kind of, usually kind of sitting quietly in the corner being like, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. Our business is about 45 feet wide. That’s like two cars parked in front of our business. If those two free parking spots are, are doing everything that you think they’re doing, that means that all of your customers are somehow cycling through those two spots. Those two spots are not enough to sustain Recovery Bike Shop.
They’re not enough to sustain a Holy Land across the street or Dutch bar down the street. Like people are actually parking a block away and walking in. They’re perfectly capable of crossing. What is the equivalent of a Walmart parking lot to get to your business. And we consider, you know, parking that distance away at Walmart, convenient and then parking on the other side of the block and walking through the neighborhood, which is interesting.
[00:24:54] Ian: Right. As. And it’s a pleasant neighborhood, you know?
[00:24:58] Seth: It is. It is.
[00:25:02] Ian: Alright, awesome. Uh, Seth, thanks for coming on the show and chatting with us about this.
[00:25:07] Seth: Absolutely, my pleasure.
[00:25:15] Ian: Next up is Matt Kazinka with the Lake Street Council.
[00:25:18] Matt: So Lake Street Council is a non profit organization that supports the businesses and other organizations throughout the entirety of the Lake Street corridor. So that’s all the way to the river on the east end, all the way to the border with St Louis Park on the west end.
About six miles long. Yeah, um, and not just the businesses on Lake Street, but within a few blocks of it, really. Think of it as a, As a corridor, and we support businesses through marketing and technical assistance, advocacy, kind of just helping them be successful, helping bring people to Lake Street, helping make sure systems are working their best to support the businesses in the corridor.
City of Minneapolis has programs to support business districts and a lot of that kind of through organizations like us to help do marketing initiatives or provide one on one direct technical assistance to businesses. So we get some support from those types of programs. My role with the organization, I’ve been there about 10 years now, and I focus a lot on things that kind of have connections to sustainability.
So a lot of work on energy, energy efficiency, helping businesses access resources that could help them upgrade equipment or Rebates and incentives that are out there, but also kind of intersections with transportation infrastructure. I’ve been the person in our team to track what’s going on with transportation investments and street projects, projects that are to improve accessibility or safety.
Um, kind of help our team interact with those, help businesses learn about those and when they actually happen in the forms of construction projects, help businesses navigate that process.
[00:26:54] Ian: Yeah. The reason we do the construction is because the outcome later is good. So what kinds of project outcomes make you optimistic when you see like, you know, the design of the streets, what, you know, what kinds of things are going to be good for businesses along the corridor?
[00:27:09] Matt: That’s a great question. I think that there are. You know, there’s a lot I think to look forward to around a lot of the investments that are happening right now in city street infrastructure. I personally am really glad to see more bike network connectivity and protected bikeways. I think that has a benefits to not just the users, but to the destinations.
And I think that includes a lot of businesses, the bus infrastructure, you know, we had the B Line construction this year, and I’m really excited for that to pay off in terms of the B Line becoming operational next summer. And I think that those. You know, things like we’ve had a real issue with crashes and safety on Lake Street, pedestrian safety and the redesign that Lake Street went under this year, I think will, I hope will lead to decreases and crashes and a little bit more of a feeling of safety and I think that has the potential to pay off in terms of the street feeling a little calmer.
And maybe making it a little nicer for businesses to do things like have street patios or have cafes on their street. I think we’ll have to kind of see if that’s something that businesses take up, if that really pays off in terms of a business activity that people want to do. And the project that the projects that happened this year on Lake Street have less of a visceral trade off that I think sometimes it can feel like construction can have for small businesses.
You know, there wasn’t really much parking lost. And that is usually the thing that businesses can feel most attached to is the street parking that’s available to them, but it wasn’t a full reconstruction. So they weren’t really changing the curb line except for at the corners and a handful of blocks where they did need to reshape it a little bit.
And that meant that the bump outs. Lead to a natural parking bay that has been on lake street since it was reconstructed in the mid two thousands. Um, and so all of that was retained. All those kind of parking bays were basically kept the same throughout the whole court.
[00:29:10] Ian: Because you can’t put, you can’t put a bus lane and then suddenly have a curb cut, like a curb bump out, interrupt the bus lane. Yeah, that has to be parking space pretty much. So what was the communication process like between Metro Transit, you know, the project coordinator, and Lake Street Council and also, you know, any of the businesses that are along the corridor?
[00:29:34] Matt: Yeah. First of all, there were really like five or so different projects happening on Lake Street this year. The B Line is the most prominent one. That’s the one that impacted the most of the corridor, but there was also the Hi-Lake intersection reconstruction around that Hiawatha-Lake area. There was the Hennepin Ave reconstruction, which obviously has a huge impact as an intersection of Lake Street, as well as First Avenue reconstruction, and then there were a handful of other projects and a few other intersections.
[00:30:02] Ian: And some of those are so hard, as somebody who’s just traveling on the corridor, to know, like, you know, I didn’t even realize that the Lake and Hiawatha construction was not part of the BRT, the, the, you know, the B Line corridor wide project.
[00:30:19] Matt: Totally. And it led to a lot of confusion for businesses about which project is which and who’s responsible for what and who should I direct my angry call to about the thing that’s happening in front of my building, but I think.
Uh, you know, uh, one of our goal is to help, help sort that out for businesses so they knew who they should talk to if they’re having an issue. But I think we can focus in on B Line because that was kind of the main one. And we had the benefit this year, you know, the majority of Lake Street that was under construction this year with the B Line project, everywhere from all of kind of West Lake and all of the Midtown area had the benefit of being the second year of construction.
In this project, Metro Transit started last year with all the work in St. Paul, and then the eastern part of Lake Street and the Longfellow neighborhood. And I think there was a lot learned in that process of last year, and I really saw Metro Transit come to the table this year with a real intention around doing good engagement and setting up the their assistance so that they could try to preemptively address some of the issues that might have come up in the last year of construction and kind of carry forward those lessons learned.
So Metro Transit has their own engagement team and we are in communication with them a lot about what’s going on and they’d go out and do rounds of outreach as well as doing mailers and all the sort of normal stuff. They had, you know, weekly office hours for a good chunk of the summer at a local coffee shop and would try to build some of their own relationships.
I know their contractor sometimes was out doing door knocking if there was work happening in a particular block and they needed to get a hold of a business owner about a particular timing for the contractor to do some of that work. I think they relied on other members of their team or occasionally, like, multilingual consultants to help do some of the outreach in particular parts of the neighborhood.
And then they, you know, they worked with groups like us to also get the word out about things. Um, one thing I really appreciated is that we were invited to be part, like, Lake Street Council was invited to be part of kind of the, the weekly construction coordination calls that happen between Metro Transit, the contractor, and kind of all the agency staff, including staff from the city and the county and utilities and everyone else.
And that’s like the call where they talk about the nuts and bolts about, you know, what’s happening this week or the next two weeks. Where do we have a coordination issue and need to work out, but I got to attend those and raise concerns if I was hearing something in particular from businesses. And that felt, it also made, made it possible for me to be able to communicate with businesses about like what they should expect over the next month.
Cause that’s, it made us be able to be a better distributor of information. And that I think was a. I think, and I hope led to some success in us helping keep businesses in the loop about what’s going on this year.
[00:32:58] Ian: Did those, did those channels of communication, did those feel like, for lack of a better word, good? Like, were they meeting their goals?
Were they able to get the information to the people who needed it in a format that worked for them?
[00:33:10] Matt: For the most part, I think information was shared and readily accessible. In a lot of different forms in ways that I think helped make people feel like they knew what was going on if they wanted to know and if they wanted to seek it out.
That said, there are still challenges. It’s tough to have the construction happening in front of your business, so even if you feel like you can know what’s going on, grappling with the reality of it is another matter, right? And there’s not much that can be done about that, but it is, you know, still a challenge.
And then there are things that come up that are, like, unexpected or plans change or There’s just some issue that is maybe not entirely in scope of the construction project, and it takes a lot of work to figure out how to get that problem solved. We’ve had issues with some, getting some of the street lighting back online towards the end of this project here.
There’s still a lot of street lighting gaps, and in some ways that’s citywide issue with all the, the copper wire theft that’s been happening. But there are particular places on Lake Street where, you know, the lighting is still not totally on yet. And it’s taken some work to figure out, is that because of the lighting systems and signal systems being impacted by the construction or not being fully completed yet?
Is it an issue of the street lights themselves? And is that a problem with copper wire theft or the bulbs being burned out or whatever? So It’s like still solving all of the issues in a timely manner can be challenging. And I’m not sure that that’s like something I would, I would put on the project itself being bad at, I see them try to fix it, but it also doesn’t mean that everyone’s a satisfied customer either, you know, because of just the complexities and challenges of, of the construction underway.
[00:34:49] Ian: What were you most interested at the summit? Like, what were you trying to get out of that event?
[00:34:52] Matt: I think it’s a really important conversation for us to be having around. Just how to support businesses through the inevitable, but still very thorny time of construction, especially because we are in a period of time where we are, I think, making more investments in our streets and having more kind of major construction projects happen than we’ve had in a while, just the things like the Minneapolis, Streets and parks funding plan mean that we’re dealing with a lot of like overdue investments that are coming due and need to happen.
And so we’re just going to, it’s a fact that we’re going to have a lot more construction, I think, in these next couple of decades.
[00:35:33] Ian: And st. Paul recently, uh, passed their, you know, tax levy for doing a whole bunch of really specific street upgrades.
[00:35:41] Matt: Yeah. And you know, it’s construction is this twofold challenge where it is, it is the drop in sales, the drop in customer visits for all of these businesses that is not uniform across different businesses and business types, but it is most businesses are going to have some sort of drop and whether that is a small one or a big one can vary business to business, but everyone sort of feels it, but there’s not just that there is the tax assessment, property assessment, part of how we pay for these construction projects, a part of it is often asking the businesses to pay through their property taxes through a direct assessment. And so we’ve had these systems that kind of work and people can usually scrape by, but we’re going to be asking businesses to get through a lot more of it in the next few years and or next few decades. And people who have been benefiting from investments made 50 years ago are suddenly now going to be on the hook for paying for the next 50 years of investments.
And heaven forbid that is, I mean, right. We need to make the investments right. There is no way around it. I think the, the model, it’s like, I don’t know of a better model. I’m, I’m not smart enough to know these things, but the model where we have to, we ask a, a property to pay, you know, a pretty decent chunk of cash for five years.
So that people can benefit from that for the next 30 or 40 years. I believe in that, in, in the system that we need to pay for the things that we use, and, and that investment has a lasting impact on our ability to have a functioning business corridor, but the very individualized impact of those costs can be challenging. Right. Well, and to have them happen at the same time, the lost revenue plus the increased cost is a tough thing.
[00:37:17] Ian: Like, is there a model that can spread that, the cost of that 50 year investment over the course of 50 years rather than like, you know, asking the businesses that just so happened to be here right at this one time when we have to make that call?
[00:37:33] Matt: Right. I’d love to know if other places have figured this out. There is a logic to the way it is currently. But there are also downsides to that. And I think that there is, it’s an area where I’d like to see public policy explore what, what can be done around that.
[00:37:47] Ian: Yeah. After going to the summit and, you know, seeing the talks and the presentations that were given there, did you come away with that with any like burning questions that you wanted to explore more?
[00:37:58] Matt: I think there is something That something I talked about at the event and that I kind of was reflecting on more before and after it is around, like, how do, how do we, all of us involved in this, how do we integrate a little more empathy into how we approach transportation projects and construction in particular.
I did this personally with the beeline work when beeline started rolling out last year and parts of Lake Street. The first few times I heard people kind of upset about it or concerned about it. I had a hard time empathizing with their concerns around the construction because I was like, "no, the B Line is going to be great. It’s going to be awesome to have a new bus shelter there in front of you. And it’s going to be like, so beneficial for us to have this." And I kind of put my foot in my mouth a few times because I just, Like wasn’t hearing the concerns about the construction itself. And I think there is a thing that we need to do around, like, whatever we think about the final product, we can all sort of recognize construction is tough.
It’s got hardship for people and like, we need to support the businesses. In the community who are going through it show up for them, whether or not we agree with them about what the benefit is in the long term, because we need them to survive so that we can continue having a good business district on the other side of it.
And that’s just a, I think I’ve been thinking about a lot and I think it all comes down to empathy and how we can build empathy for people going through hardship, even if we don’t totally agree with them about how, what we want to see as a vision for the future of our streets.
I think there is a little bit of fatigue, uh, among the general population of around that, that sort of calls for support, um, particularly because we just went through sort of that pandemic experience. And there was a lot of like calls for people to show up to those businesses and support them in a tough time. And so we had a couple of years of that and now Um, there can be some fatigue and maybe a little bit of, am I really able to do that? Am I really able to, to put in more money right now to support these businesses?
Um, and I think that’s understandable as well. I’m not sure that it is a sustainable marketing strategy for businesses or business districts. To just speak to that part of people that, you know, will, will show up because the business is having a tough time.
[00:40:24] Ian: But I feel like you do kind of start running into like the tragedy of the commons kind of thing where it’s like, Oh, yeah, maybe I, as an individual business owner, haven’t been trying to lean on that angle.
But if people have been hearing that from a lot of other businesses or business organizations, then like, That fatigue is probably growing anyway. And then when I try to tap into that sentiment, like it’s gone.
[00:40:51] Matt: I would also love to see some, you know, where there are opportunities for more policy impacts.
So that’s not entirely up to people to show up with their dollars, but also kind of better support for businesses from, from, uh, through policy that would lead to a more sustainable outcome in terms of. Businesses getting through construction.
[00:41:08] Ian: It’s almost like public policy is how we collectively decide to support things.
What, whether that be businesses or whatever other interests we have as a public, right? Yeah. Totally. If, if part of my tax dollars are going towards supporting whatever thing, then like, I as an individual don’t have to worry about that too much.
[00:41:32] Matt: Right, yeah.
[00:41:33] Ian: Matt? Thanks for coming on the show.
[00:41:35] Matt: Thanks ian, it was great talking to you about all this.
[00:41:43] Ian: And finally, let’s talk to Sam O’Connell from the Metropolitan Council.
[00:41:47] Sam: Thanks for having me on here. I’ve been with the Met Council since 2012 and I, uh, my background is transportation planning. So, um, prior to that, I had worked for Dakota County in the department of transportation, working on mostly transit projects.
So I came to the council in 2012 to work on the Green Line extension. I started out in engagement and working in communications in there. Then shortly thereafter in 2015, the council started working on the Blue Line extension. So then I also started working on engagement and communications and then eventually rolled into, uh, for the blue line extension, kind of the transition lead, but really in my role right now as working as a director of community relations is to support our chair and our 16 council members in emerging issues in the region and making sure that they’re also working with local government officials, kind of sharing information with our organizations and then bringing that back, what we’re hearing for feedback and kind of saying like, are there ways that we could be doing something better?
Are there better ways for us to be partnering? How can we look at, uh, Issues through different lenses as well. So that’s primarily my role. I have a couple of staff members with me who do that. And we also have a staff member who is Native and she is our tribal liaison as well. So part of our work is also to be working with our tribal nations and Native communities.
[00:43:16] Ian: What kinds of features do we have, try to put into our construction projects?
[00:43:19] Sam: Yeah, and maybe I’ll start a little bit with the beginning. Um, I think folks have seen an expansion of so many Metro Transit projects in particular because we are building the system. It’s not unusual to see a lot of construction.
We haven’t really been in this phase. There used to be a time where we would do, particularly our larger projects, almost every 10 years. We’re now doing them almost every 18 months. So construction is now a bit of a way of a life as we go through this expansion of the system. So I appreciate that I would say.
[00:43:50] Ian: And the the major projects do look a little bit different now than they did before. Like every 10 years you’re talking about building the Blue Line and then building the Green Line. Yeah, and with all of our arterial BRT lines, you know, it’s a lot more like street focused constructions some of them involve their own right of way.
Some of them involve just building like fancy new stations.
[00:44:12] Sam: Right. Exactly. We’re spanning the gamut from really kind of like a whole new sort of rail line. Definitely. And I appreciate you saying about our arterial bus rapid transit because we are putting significant infrastructure there where I think a lot of community members and businesses are seeing that infrastructure put in because it’s the the, it’s the bus pad. It’s a nicer facility. It’s our fair collection that they’re also seeing some lighting as well. So the family of infrastructure that is being put in place is more significant. Part of that for the businesses is the fact that we are putting quite a really nice investment that makes our communities better connected, that ultimately, hopefully results in more foot traffic, particularly for our businesses as well.
But it’s also bringing more people and more eyes out on the street. It’s, um, bringing a higher level of kind of neighborhood connectivity as well. Um, it’s just making it a lot easier. And of course, you know, working for the Metropolitan Council, um, we love the climate aspect. Right. Like green travel is the way we want to go.
So sometimes with these investments as well, or not only are we improving what we need to put in the transit investment, but we’re making sure that the sidewalks or the neighboring trail systems are also well connected as well. So, um, part of it is working with our communities, both on the resident and on the business side to say, what are the dreams?
What are the desires? What are those plans that you’ve always wanted to do? And how could our projects bring some of that, uh, to the community?
I’ll share with you what we have heard from businesses. They said the best thing for them is to get in and get out as quickly as we possibly can. Right. And ideally we would love that too.
That works out as best for us. Um, what begins to make it a little bit complicated is if we’re also working with say a city or a County that has a project that they’re also doing. What we tried to do is really honor the feedback that businesses have said. It’s like, I would rather you close something down for two weeks, get your work done and then open it up and never come back. That is what we drive to. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s not what always happens. And we understand that.
[00:46:27] Ian: Yeah. And on the topic of like coordinating different projects so that they all coincide together, you know, whether it’s like the street needs a full reconstruction.
So this is also when we are going to re envision like what kinds of bike lanes are there and what kinds of transit amenities and et cetera, et cetera. Like not only is that desirable from the time perspective of the construction, right? Like you don’t want to have five different small projects that all have to shut down the street for a while, but that’s also good for like the tax base.
Right. If it’s cheaper to do all of those construction projects at the same time, then like, We as citizens and, and businesses don’t have to pay as much in taxes.
[00:47:08] Sam: Don’t have to pay a bunch of taxes and it’s, it doesn’t generate the headaches and that’s ultimately where we’d like to do. So we’d love to work with, uh, communities and cities.
Um, a lot of cities have noise ordinances at certain times, you know, and where there’s some flexibility where we could say, well, if we start at 6 AM and we can go until nine o’clock. We’ll be able to save like maybe four or five, six days, whatever that is. But part of that is working with residents and businesses to say, is that okay?
And chances are, um, it usually is, but then what you will have to work with some of the local agencies, just make sure we’re receiving the permits and we have the permission to do it. And there’s communication on it.
[00:47:50] Ian: How do things like. Considering hiring workers for second and third shifts, doing work on weekends as well as during the weeks, you know, like things that add to the cost of the project, but can get it done faster.
Like what’s the consideration there?
[00:48:06] Sam: Yeah, I think all of that’s on the table when we start designing to figure out what are the needs? What are our resources? Um, I would also offer up the construction business community and industry is They’re also trying to find workers as well that were maybe about 20 years ago.
That wasn’t a such a big thing, but a lot of those folks are retiring. Uh, there really isn’t as many people kind of coming into some of the construction industry that we’ve seen. Um, having said that there’s been great outreach to women, to making sure people of color in particular are, are also in the construction trades as well.
So I think that’s all on the table. For us as a consideration, yes, there’s definitely cost in it, but there’s also benefit as you’re getting to, right? What is the benefit of us doing that? So if that means we’re able to get in and out quickly and, um, it’s, it’s lessening the impact that may be worth it, but that will have to come up as sort of as those projects are being designed and, um, put into construction phase.
[00:49:10] Ian: And I think you also mentioned construction noise and impacts that doing that work during the night might not be feasible at all.
[00:49:18] Sam: Might not be feasible, yeah. Exactly, there’s noise, there’s vibration, right? There’s, you know, um, having potentially heavy You know, construction equipment coming down, you know, rumbling a little bit down your streets and well, but you know, I would offer up that there were some neighborhoods in particular with our Green Line extension that they were saying, like, that’s fine.
If you guys can work later into the hour, if we know that that’s going to like take off a week or a weekend particularly, um, we want to be very cognizant too of communities events. That’s another thing that we have to sometimes plan around our construction, especially if there are annual events. Um, we want to make sure that we’re either out of the way and close down or hurry up and get it done.
So those community events can still move forward.
[00:50:07] Ian: How quickly does, does traffic return to normal? Do usual travel patterns, you know, go back to like people, Re learning like, Oh, right. I can actually use this street again.
[00:50:17] Sam: I love this question because, um, we sometimes can’t move those barriers fast enough, right?
You literally, particularly the folks that are in automobiles, um, they are waiting, right, because they have such a strong muscle memory of their pathways of how they get through communities. They just want to be there. So, uh, they are usually, the auto traffic is usually pretty quick. I mean, that is. Um, it’s like water, right?
If you block water and you remove that barrier, it’s going to find its way. So that’s usually what we see. Parking kind of the same thing, right? Folks are, if they were used to parking and the parking was restricted for some way, and then it’s back, parking comes back very quickly. Sidewalks sort of the same thing as well.
And trails as well. Trails usually kind of takes a little bit longer cause just folks are like, Oh, do I detour or do I not detour here? Might take a, just a little bit, but we are a very mobile society and folks usually come back right away. So I would just offer up for our business communities that that really is an opportunity, really make it a celebration to say, Hey, this is back in.
We’ve got this new infrastructure. There’s new ways, potentially safer ways, uh, to get to our places as well. So we do see on the transportation side of things, you know, it coming back, it may be a little latent, however, for some of the businesses, right? Because folks are like, Oh, that is open now. So there might be a delay of like a couple of weeks or a few weeks of work.
Those normal business patterns start. But before we get into construction, what we do at the Met Council, particularly for our larger projects, is we sit down with all the business owners. And when we ask is we say. What are your hours that you’re open? When do your deliveries come? How do your employees usually get here?
It’s a mode split. Do you have, are they parking? Are they walking? Are they riding? So we understand kind of what the demand is. How do your customers get to you as well? Are they taking the bus? You know, how are they getting here as well? When does your garbage come? Where does your garbage come? So we try and poll, uh, people, businesses ahead of time. So as we’re developing the construction plans, we’re able to understand that and accommodate as best as we can. Parking is a big thing for businesses. So I can talk a little bit more about that. And what we’ll do sometimes saying there’s a lot that two properties may be border, but it’s owned by one.
And we would say, can we shift some of that parking? So both of you are sharing that property. parking during construction, and then when we come through, it’s opened up and everything. So there’s a lot of.
[00:52:48] Ian: And you’re referring to like off street parking?
[00:52:51] Sam: Off street parking, yeah, where we can take advantage of some lot.
And, you know, just really open up the conversation to say this is a temporary thing. Maybe one property owner has a curb cut and the other one is on a different side of that road. And we go like, is there a way that we can, they could maybe access that? So we really do. appreciate when folks are able to sit at the table with us, kind of literally roll out some maps, roll out ways, and we’ve got arrows and we’ve got, uh, ways to draw it and.
[00:53:20] Ian: Figuring out the maze together.
Exactly.
[00:53:22] Sam: And then, you know, it’s, um, it actually, I think the green line, they were pretty successful of where some of the businesses and property owners got together and going like, Oh, you don’t need that much parking or I don’t need that much parking. Much parking or even our businesses compliment each other.
So maybe we can, you know, we don’t need all that parking, like we need to, like, you know, so if that is the case, it allows for some of those conversations as well.
[00:53:46] Ian: Sitting down with business owners and discussing needs. Like what is the process for, for alerting business owners that a project is happening on their street?
Um, how much of a advance notice do you try for? Like, what’s that look like?
[00:54:00] Sam: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. Cause sometimes when these projects. Projects are in development, they can span literally decades. So who owned a business there 10 years ago might not be the person or owners that are there now.
We find too, if, uh, if folks are renters, you know, for business, right. They’re leasing the space versus, so there’s definitely some turnover. So some of that design and engineering literally can last a decade. When we begin to develop. construction documents, that is probably the point that we should absolutely be sitting down, because what we’d like to do is as we start developing our construction practices, um, we want to be able to make sure that we’ve got a contractor that’s also going to know what are the priorities and start building that into the schedule as well.
Some large projects, that schedule may take a year to actually develop, right? Some of them shorter, less than, um, some of them can even take longer. longer. I would offer up this because, um, on the Metro Transit side of the way we do projects, we do have the benefit of having a Community Outreach Coordinator.
Their job is to particularly be working with businesses and residents as a project. The communication that you should anticipate is When we know something once it’s sort of vetted and it’s like something you can bet on, that’s what we would want to be sharing, right? Cause there’s so much that can happen during construction, during the planning of construction, um, where we could be like, yes, this all lines up.
And then we would learn that a private utility now is doing something different that may impact that as well. Um, but. Although we might not be able to predict every single day, there should be a cadence that we should be able to share with all the property owners to say, this is what we’re anticipating.
They should also anticipate when we’re not able to deliver something that there should be a communication from us to talk about that as well, and be a partner in finding out what could be some solutions in that too. There’s times where we would like, Absolutely. This is going to be opening up on this day and there might be something outside of our control where it’s now extended a week.
Um, we kind of get that a little bit in the spring, right? Um, rains, you know, things, you know, all of a sudden we’re dealing with water in a way that we traditionally didn’t have to during the summer or winter months. So I would just offer up construction is not the most predictable thing in this world.
Yeah, but there is a cadence, right? Like we understand it We ultimately know what we’re trying to do and how to do it and everything. It’s just gonna sometimes be daily sometimes weekly. Sometimes it’s just a monthly update or conversation depending on what it is I would offer up for where we found the most success is where, uh, businesses, particularly business associations that have like weekly or monthly sort of communications or gatherings, invite us, have us come in and talk about the projects. Uh, give you the updates, talk about what’s working and what’s not working, and, and then we can go from there. I really appreciate the opportunity to kind of share some of the perspective and we’re always going to learn how to do construction better.
I think us staying in there and having folks kind of stay with us and really just sharing some great ideas. The summit had wonderful ideas of what we can do. So we’re going to be there to, to be a partner in that and just, uh, stay with us. We want to stay with you and ultimately we’re building some really cool things in our region.
[00:57:30] Ian: Sweet. Sam, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:57:32] Sam: Thank you.
[00:57:33] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non commercial, non derivative license, so feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it.
The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was produced and edited by Parker Seamon and was hosted and transcribed by me, Ian R. Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, Drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Streets.mn is a community blog and podcast and relies on contributions from audience members like you if you can make a one time or recurring donation you can find more information about doing so at [https://streets.mn/donate]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.