The Midtown Greenway opened 25 years ago, so let’s hear from the folks who pushed for it to happen! George Puzak envisioned the Greenway, Tim Springer was the Midtown Greenway’s first Executive Director, and Soren Jensen is the current Executive Director.
Links
- Midtown Greenway trench history by Brian Mitchell: Part 1 & Part 2
- Donate to the Midtown Greenway Coalition
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 hosted, edited, and transcribed by Ian R Buck. 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] Soren: There’s a reason the Greenway is so popular that it’s the most popular bikeway in the region. It’s because it’s safe, because it’s protected, because it’s removed from traffic.
[00:00:08] Ian: And now it’s being connected to more and more safe-
[00:00:10] Soren: And connected to others. Right, right.
[00:00:12] Ian: Like Bryant Avenue going south.
[00:00:13] Soren: The Bryant Avenue is a world-class facility. Yeah. It’s a great example, and you know.
[00:00:16] Ian: And in that neighborhood now, I see so many families with cargo bikes and everything. And I feel like it’s because Bryant connects to the Greenway. And so, you know, like they compound each other. 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 Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck. The Midtown Greenway turned 25 this year, so it’s a fitting time to learn about its history. I highly recommend the articles that Brian Mitchell wrote for Streets.mn this summer, but one thing he didn’t cover is the advocacy work that went into turning this rail corridor into a bike trail. I thought it would be fitting to learn about the Midtown Greenway Coalition, so I sat down with George Puzak, Tim Springer, and Soren Jensen to get all the details. George is going to start us off.
[00:01:15] George: In 1989, the community over by Cedar Lake formed an organization called Save Cedar Lake Park. To preserve some railroad land. And we’re having difficulty getting people interested in preserving more parkland by the chain of lakes. And so I suggested let’s connect it with a system of trails.
[00:01:37] Ian: Mm-hmm, because the Cedar Lake Trail and the North Cedar Lake Trail, those didn’t exist yet?
[00:01:42] George: Correct. Okay. And so the Kenilworth Trail, Cedar Lake Trail, was to connect the lakes to the river. The Kenilworth Trail would get us down towards what’s now Lake Maka Ska. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I was bobbing around the city and I asked the director of Public Works one day, you know, Mike, could we get a crosswalk on Dean Parkway at Cedar Lake Parkway? And he said to me, “George, we don’t recommend crosswalks. They provide the illusion of safety.” And that floored me, that that was a policy in our city. And so, at the time I was head of the trail committee of the Save Cedar Lake Park Association and at the annual meeting, I had to give a presentation on an overhead projector and I drew lines on a map of a bunch of different greenway options around the city. One of which I named the 29th Street Midtown Greenway. 29th Street, so people would know where it is. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know, for six, eight weeks I didn’t do anything about it and I thought, you know, I’m talking the talk, I better walk the walk. And so I wrote a one page letter that had a lot of white space on it and it explained why, what and how to build the Midtown Greenway and sent that to all 16 neighborhoods, every elected official, federal, state and local that represented the Greenway Corridor. And that was by US snail mail back then in about 1991. And no one responded, not one person. And finally, about two months later, the phone rang and it was Joan Vanhala from the people of Phillips neighborhood. And that’s when the Phillips neighborhood was a large neighborhood, not broken up into three. And so Joan and I met at 26th and Nicollet and I showed her my drawings, drawing boards, a little slideshow I had and leave behind some paperwork on why, what and how to build the Greenway. And she suggested we should work with the neighborhoods and I had already been going to some business groups and different organizations. And so the Phillips neighborhood said, hey, that’s a great idea. Let us know when you get here. And I said, well, how about if you help me or help us get the Greenway started, we have to connect to another Greenway to get it started. So we were connecting on the West, phase one was on the West.
[00:04:16] Ian: Right there at the chain of lakes.
[00:04:18] George: Yeah, at the chain of lakes. And the idea was to go East in three phases. And so as I was running around the city, I’d have a little paragraph. We support the concept of the 29th Street Midtown Greenway that connects the chain of lakes to the river and da da da da da. And try to get every organization to just put their name on it. Neighborhood group, business groups, rotary clubs, all kinds of groups, nature groups. And that’s how it started. And then it was a public works employee who mentioned to me as I was out in the community, “do you know Tim Springer?” And I said, no, I haven’t met Tim yet. And she said, you know, he might like your idea. He’s been pulling our chain to put a bike lane on 31st Street as he bikes from Powderhorn to St. Paul every day. I said, “well, that’s a long commute.” And so she gave me Tim’s number and I called Tim up one day and he was excited. God, we met within a day or two. We met over at Hiawatha on Lake Street, had our bikes and we walked through the Greenway going West with our bicycles. And we walked because there was so much debris and glass, you couldn’t ride your bike there. And from that day on, Tim has been a volunteer and advocate and he eventually became the first executive director of the Midtown Greenway Coalition.
[00:05:43] Ian: There you go. So let’s meet Tim right now. Hey, Tim.
[00:05:46] Tim: Hi.
[00:05:47] Ian: So I obviously as a bike commuter myself, I have to ask about, you know, OK, what part of St. Paul were you going to? You know, obviously you have to pay the hill tax one way or the other. But like, were you going to like Macalester or were you going to like downtown?
[00:06:00] Tim: downtown!
[00:06:01] Ian: OK, oh, yeah, that is a haul.
[00:06:03] Tim: Yeah, I remember one day I biked from my apartment in Powderhorn Park to downtown St. Paul when it was a minus 70 degree wind chill. And I saw another bicyclist and I kind of wanted to, you know, connect with him or her. But we were way too bundled up to stop, you know.
[00:06:23] Ian: Yeah, yeah. Once you stop, you’re like, that’s when you get cold. Yeah. Yeah. So, man, today, like the choice between the Trench and 31st Street is like, that’s not even a choice, right?
[00:06:37] Tim: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:39] Ian: But at the time in the early 90s, like painted bike lanes, that was kind of like there was no in-between between, you know, like that was kind of the only kind of facilities that we ever got as cyclists, right?
[00:06:51] Tim: Right.
[00:06:52] Ian: Now, how did like the word greenway, when I think of greenway, the midtown greenway is like the first and almost the only one that I think of, was that a widely used phrase at the time?
[00:07:05] George: Not locally, but I would say nationally and internationally. You saw it more often. I had been paying attention to Diana Balmori, nationally or internationally renowned landscape architect. And her program was the Once and Future Park linear trails and saw some of her presentations and examples of greenways around the world.
[00:07:31] Ian: And so what did those examples look like? Were they recreational trails or were they more like cycle tracks in Denmark and stuff like that?
[00:07:40] George: I think it was everything, you’d see the gambit, but they weren’t all below grade or recessed like the Minneapolis corridor, which is a unique opportunity.
[00:07:54] Ian: Right, right, because we have applied the word greenway to a lot of different things here in the Twin Cities, like 40th Street, you know, it’s called a greenway.
[00:08:03] George: That was Steve Brandt after we had a meeting together and he thought, well, that’s an interesting idea. And then he named it the 40th Street Greenway. You name it and claim it. Well, there’s the Loring Greenway in Minneapolis. I think that goes back to the 70s maybe or 80s.
[00:08:23] Tim: Kind of use the term greenway however they want to.
[00:08:25] Ian: Exactly.
[00:08:26] Tim: For a long time in the city of Detroit, they would call it bike lane on a roadway a greenway.
[00:08:30] Ian: Well, and now Detroit has some facilities that feel very much like the Midtown Greenway.
[00:08:36] Tim: The Dequindre Cut.
[00:08:37] Ian: Yeah, which like, honestly, I was there over the summer and I think that it’s a little bit nicer than ours because they have enough space down there to have like picnic areas and grills and stuff and like people just hang out and you still have space for like, you know, bikes to zoom on by and that’s awesome. I’m a little bit jealous of that.
[00:08:56] Tim: Yeah, they do a lot of programming down there.
[00:08:58] George: Tim, you probably had something to do with that, I would assume.
[00:09:01] Tim: Yeah, based on the success of the Midtown Greenway, the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy hired me for a couple of days to go there and talk to cops and fire people and trail designers and a bunch of others as they were envisioning their trail. And in fact, they had a brochure for the Dequindre Cut and they included a picture of the Midtown Greenway because they look so similar and nobody knew the difference. The Midtown Greenway. So the 29th Street Railroad Corridor before it was the Midtown Greenway was full of garbage. You would see, you know, people would dump couches and tires and toilets and just trash. It was really nasty.
[00:09:42] Ian: And of course, you see all those signs periodically along the Greenway corridor that say like, “this is, you know, Hennepin County Railroad Authority owns this, they bought it with the purpose of like, you know, future transit” and everything. Was that the case in the early 90s? Was it still private railroad land or had Hennepin County bought it by then? Like, who were you interfacing with for this proposal at the beginning?
[00:10:14] Tim: I want to say 1993?
[00:10:19] George: I was in a meeting in the Phillips neighborhood and Mayor Don Fraser was there with a small group and I gave this presentation about the Greenway and he leaned over and said, “that’s interesting. I’d like to know more, talk to my staff.” And so that got it going a little bit in City Hall here, but I won’t name names, but there were several politicians and the county and city council that said, “no, we can’t do that. We can’t put a Greenway there. We’re saving it for transit. That’ll change the land use and that crane storage company contributes to our neighborhood newspaper. We don’t want to lose them.” And my response was that, well, you will never get transit in the corridor until you have more people and the Greenway will help bring people and maybe even development.
[00:11:06] Ian: Right, and that certainly has played out here in Uptown, for sure, like the densest parts of the new developments that you see are right there on the Greenway. That’s where everybody wants to be. Yeah, you haven’t seen a whole lot of like businesses right down there on the Greenway level, which I think that would be like the really cool thing to see. Venture Bikes is the only one that I can think of, but yeah, okay. So you had some interest from city level, not as much interest at other places from other levels. Of course, like the Greenway is kind of like the unique defining thing that I can think of about Minneapolis for the last 20 years when it comes to like major American cities. It’s kind of, it’s a big part of South Minneapolis’ identity. Where do I want to go with that question?
[00:12:02] Tim: Well, the federal government had a great deal to do with it. Because in 1991, the federal government passed what’s called the ISTEA Act, Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. And that allowed federal transportation dollars to be spent on local bicycle projects.
[00:12:23] Ian: Oh good, mm-hmm.
[00:12:24] Tim: And I became aware of this through the Rails to Trails Conservancy and read about congressman Dan Rostenkowski in Chicago, who had brought home $30 million for bicycle trails in Chicago. I thought, my gosh, that’s a lot of money. We could do some of that in town here. And so that’s the Cedar Lake Trail received ISTEA money to get going and Kenilworth and we received some ISTEA money for the Greenway. So, and the people behind that locally were Martin Sabo, congressman Martin Sabo and congressman Jim Oberstar, who was an avid cyclist up on the Iron Range. And so they really helped grease the skids. And back then I was invited to DC to give my slideshow. And although there weren’t a lot of people there, but there were some lobbyists and Rails to Trails people and it resonated with some of them. And anyways, ISTEA money really helped make things happen.
[00:13:31] Ian: And so what was that money used for? Are we talking the physical paving of the space? Was it a lot of cleanup that needed to be done? What were the requirements before we could turn this rail corridor into a recreational and commuter facility for cyclists?
[00:13:50] Tim: Corridor purchase was a part of the budget for the ISTEA grants, I believe.
[00:13:53] George: Right, and part of receiving ISTEA if you had a partnership, federal, state and local. So we had a little private money. We had state money, LCMR, legislative commission on Minnesota resources, LCMR money, and then it helped leverage ISTEA money. And that’s how the whole package was put together.
[00:14:15] Tim: So the Midtown Greenway Coalition was this tiny little one or two person depending on what year, nonprofit organization. And we did not receive those dollars and contract out to build the trail. We were advocates. So we convinced the city, county and state and federal electeds that this was a good idea and pushed them to make it happen. And then we were involved when consultants were hired to design the trail, for example. And you were talking about the cultural identity of South Minneapolis is intertwined with the Midtown Greenway. So the Midtown Greenway is such a top-notch bicycle transportation amenity because it offers nonstop travel, given that it’s below grade for much of its distance across the city. So you can zip nonstop east to west across the city grid as you pass underneath all these bridges that carry the city streets overhead. So, and also the design features of the trail with wide east and westbound lanes for biking and a separate walking trail offer that nonstop travel at high speeds opportunity that is, you don’t find that many places, certainly not cutting right through a city grid.
[00:15:31] Ian: Right, yeah.
[00:15:32] Tim: And so you see young families on cargo bikes, extra cycles, long, long bikes or cargo bikes with a bucket in front or just trailers or kiddie seats on the back or whatever.
[00:15:48] Ian: Right, a bunch of people hauling furniture, all the furniture that’s in this apartment was hauled from Seward over to this apartment this last spring, yeah.
[00:15:57] Tim: Excellent, yes, yes. You see people taking canoes to the lake to the Greenway or Peace Coffee does their deliveries of coffee by bicycle trailer through the Greenway. They located their roasting facility in the Greenway building. It was formerly the Green Institute on the Greenway near Hiawatha Avenue because they wanted to be along the Greenway. So the bicycle transportation opportunities that the Greenway affords did usher in helped with a bicycle transportation cultural revolution that took hold.
[00:16:34] Ian: Yeah, yeah. And so early 90s through 98 was the article that you sent me that was kind of, it seemed like it was really hard, like the ball was rolling by that time, right?
[00:16:48] George: I think the article was at the groundbreaking. Okay, good, yeah. Of phase one on the West End.
[00:16:55] Ian: Yeah, so you said three sections? Was that right? So how, from where to where was that first section?
[00:17:03] George: Phase one began at the chain of lakes technically Chowen Avenue South and it went to Fourth Avenue South. And then phase two was Fourth Avenue South to Hiawatha Avenue. And then we initiated the bridge over Hiawatha, now the Sabo Bridge. And phase three was Hiawatha to the river.
[00:17:25] Ian: Got it. All right, I just looked up the opening dates. Phase one opened in 2000, phase two in 2004 and phase three in 2006. A year later, the Sabo Bridge was completed in fall of 2007.
[00:17:40] Tim: A fun anecdote that I like to share when we’re talking about Greenway history is in the early days of the Midtown Greenway Coalition before we were a formal organization where we’re just a collection of people and we would meet over lemonade or beer in each other’s living rooms or backyards. And we were at Andy Wright’s house one time and we decided we needed to have like board officers. We needed a president and a secretary and whatnot. And so Andy got voted as president because he was in the kitchen when we took the vote.
[00:18:14] Ian: Yeah, okay. He got voluntold, huh?
[00:18:16] Tim: Yeah.
[00:18:18] Ian: So yeah, let’s talk about the organization. Like obviously the early years were focused on just making the Greenway into a thing, right? You’re purely advocacy organization trying to push for this project. Once the project started to get built in the early 2000s into the, you know, 2009-ish, like where does the focus go from there? What is the organization doing at that point?
[00:18:43] George: Well, we needed to raise money. And to do that, you have to have a fiscal agent. And so before we had the 501C3 Midtown Greenway Coalition, the neighbors over at Cedar Lake Park Association were our fiscal agent.
[00:18:58] Ian: Got it.
[00:18:58] George: And that enabled us to get some money and start building this together. And we doled out expenses early on that way. And then once we had a five-member board, myself, Tim, Joan, Katie, and Terry. We all sort of lived near the Greenway at some point, but then we became our own fiscal agent. And that’s where Tim talked about a president, treasurer, and secretary.
[00:19:25] Ian: And what was the purpose of the fundraising? Because obviously the coalition was not the entity that was trying to purchase like the corridor and, you know, build everything, like you said. So yeah, what were you using the money for?
[00:19:38] George: Tim, I mean, flyers, handouts, lemonade when we got together. It was drawings, community engagement, some sort of visioning sessions we had over at Abbott Northwestern and different locations. And Tim, you can speak to some of that.
[00:20:03] Tim: Yeah, it was all those things related to outreach and advocacy. And I was a volunteer for a number of years. And at the time, I was a solid waste management consultant. I had a company called Waste Reduction Research. And one month I looked at my time sheet and I realized that I was spending more time volunteering for the Midtown Greenway Coalition than I was doing Waste Reduction Research Consulting. And I said, I need to make a change here. So at some point, not long after that, I transitioned to being paid staff.
[00:20:35] Ian: There you go. That’s good. Yeah, professionalize the work.
[00:20:41] George: A lot of this advocacy goes on between 8 AM and 4:30 PM when you’re dealing with government. I mean, you have to have someone answer in the phone or meeting downtown or go into the businesses.
[00:20:55] Ian: Totally.
[00:20:56] Tim: And connecting with the neighborhood organizations. We spent lots of time at meetings of the neighborhood organizations along the Midtown Greenway. And our first full board of directors included a seat for each of the neighborhoods and to this day still does.
[00:21:11] Ian: Mm hmm. Nice. And then as we get into the years, the 2010s and so the last 15 years, essentially, right? Yeah, where has the organization been focused there? Soren, this is my cue to kind of bring you into the conversation as well.
[00:21:31] Soren: Hi, I’m happy to be here. Yeah, I mean, we didn’t stop our work after the Greenway was built. We continue to advocate for it. And boy, this past summer, we’ve been super busy. We just finished up putting 15 new pollinator gardens in the Greenway, creating what we’re calling the best pollinator pathway in the nation. And we built it especially for monarchs and rusty patch bumblebees and other pollinators to make the Greenway even greener. We’ve helped plan over 5,000 trees over the years with our partners. We also are really into putting in public art. So we just recently had a really big mural project where we put in five new murals celebrating the diverse cultures that live along the Greenway.
[00:22:20] Ian: And what does the coordinating look like for that kind of project? Because I imagine you have to get permission from the railroad authority and whatnot.
[00:22:27] Soren: Yeah, we have a great partnership with our government partners. The Greenway is owned by Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority and we partner with them. We partner with our other government partners on projects. But also sometimes we have to push the government sometimes. The thing that makes the Greenway unique is it has an advocacy organization. There aren’t a lot of other trails in our region that has a group that is every day trying to protect and enhance the Midtown Greenway. And so a couple of years ago, the city put a new surface on the trail. It didn’t go very well.
[00:23:03] Ian: Oh my God, I remember that one.
[00:23:05] Soren: Yeah, it was terrible. And so we reached out as we did and said, we’d like you to redo the trail. They said, no, we think the trail’s fine. And I said, no, no, it’s not. It’s full of cracks. It’s horrible. You did it. You just didn’t do a good job. So please do it again.
[00:23:20] Tim: It was bumpy!
[00:23:21] Soren: It was bumpy. There were cracks. I mean, it was embarrassing.
[00:23:25] Ian: Refresh my memory. Like they intentionally were using it like a new experimental process.
[00:23:30] Soren: And also, by the way, cost less than was allocated. So they were, I guess, trying to save some money too. But you do it on the cheap or you do it experimental and you get this horrible bumpy trail with cracks. It was embarrassing. And so yeah, we reached out and said, will you do it? No, we won’t. And I said, well, OK, we’re going to have to elevate this. So we put out a petition. And within a week, over 2,000 people signed the petition asking the city to redo the trail. You know, people love the Midtown Greenway. You do not want to do something like that and then think it’s going to be OK. And you’re just going to let the trail have these horrible cracks and bumps and things like that. So then we got on the front page of the-
[00:24:11] Ian: I think experimental processes are fine, but you probably don’t want to try that on like your flagship.
[00:24:16] Soren: Yeah, your flagship. The most important trail in Minneapolis and the one that thousands of people use. And so yeah, I got on the front page of the Star Tribune. And then I called back to the city and said, now, what do you think? Are you are you willing to redo the trail? Like, “yes, we’ll redo the trail.” So I mean, this is this is an example of what we do. And we’ve got plenty of other examples of where we need to push our government partners. We’d much rather partner with them in a friendly collaborative way. But if they’re not doing right by the Greenway, then we’re going to step up. And honestly, it’s all of our supporters and all of our followers. We have thousands of people that follow us on social media. We’ve got, you know, lots of donors, although I would say this, we’re looking for more donors. This work does cost money, this advocacy, getting out there and doing all this work. We have to pay our staff. We have to pay, you know, various costs for print materials, for advertising, for our office. You know, we have we have expenses. And so, you know, we are always out there looking for more donors. And in fact, this year, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Midtown Greenway. And so as Tim and George were talking about, the first phase went in in 2000. So it’s our 25th anniversary. And we’re going to be launching a 25th anniversary fund to help fund us for the next 25 years so we can keep doing this kind of advocacy. And, you know, one of the projects that people are most excited about and that we’ve been working on a lot lately is trying to extend the Greenway over the river and through St. Paul. This has been a vision that the organization has had for many years. And we’ve really been working on it the last five years or so to get it front and center again and keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And so the exciting news is, the Met Council is doing a study right now of the bridge over the river and then how to extend the trail into St. Paul at least at Cleveland Avenue.
[00:26:15] Ian: And this is at least the third time that this exact study has been conducted.
[00:26:19] Soren: Well, you’re right. It is the third time for the study. So I guess that’s good news in some ways.
[00:26:25] Ian: Right, third time’s the charm.
[00:26:26] Soren: Yeah, I mean, the first one was done by the county back when phase three was going in and they walked away from it due to concerns about the bridge and the structural integrity of the bridge. We redid the study a few years ago with a focus on the bridge. And instead of walking away from it saying, hey, what’s it gonna cost to rehab the bridge? And we found out through our partners at Kimley Horn that it could be rehabbed and you could put a trail across it. And so we took that very exciting news out to the government entities and it kind of met with a thud. And they’re like, well, you’re the Midtown Greenway Coalition, so you’re obviously biased. I’m like, well, you know, Kimley Horn did the study. It’s not, you know, and so then-
[00:27:09] Ian: With drones, you can’t argue with drones.
[00:27:10] Soren: Yeah, we had drones, we had everything. I mean, you know, it’s a good study by a well-respected firm and so. But then our partners at the Sierra Club, we have a lot of partners that help us with this. A broad coalition called Extend the Greenway Partnership and our friends at Sierra Club suggested, well, what if we actually got the legislature to pass some legislation compelling the Met Council to redo your study? And so that’s a great idea. So they worked on that and very much appreciate their work on that. And then there was a bill passed having the compelling the Met Council to redo our study. Guess who they hired? Kimley Horn. So Kimley Horn is redoing the study and it’s currently underway. But we’re hopeful that once the study comes out that it’ll conclude the exact same thing that the bridge can be rehabbed. And then it’s gonna also have a shared use agreement. What would be a good shared use agreement with the railroad to have a rail with trail from the river, at least to Cleveland Avenue? And phase one or phase three of this extension, depending on how you look at it, has already been built along Ayd Mill Road. That is part of the extension. It’s sitting there, waiting for the connection up through St. Paul to the river.
[00:28:23] Ian: And I think one of the uniquely great things about the exact spot where the Midtown Greenway would cross the river is that you can easily connect that with neighborhoods north of I-94 and south of I-94. Because the railroad kind of curves around and crosses I-94. And there’s some bike facilities already in place at St. Anthony on the north side and then Ayd Mill Road on the south side.
[00:28:51] Soren: Yeah, and the state fair is gonna need more bike parking because people are gonna be like, “hey, I can take this new extension over to the state fair nice and easily.” And so I know a lot of people would take that option. And so, and then get to the soccer stadium and then get downtown. So it’s an exciting vision and we’re gonna keep working on it. And so this study, which will come out hopefully in the next couple of months or at least by spring time, will come up with hopefully new cost estimates for the bridge. What is a shared use agreement? What does shared liability look like? We’re really hopeful that it names the government entity that is going to take the lead because that is what we really need is someone to be the champion with funding and staff and put it in their plans. And so we’re hopeful for that. Now the study-
[00:29:35] Ian: And that’s something that’s like rather remarkable about the Greenway itself is like how many different levels of government entities are involved with everything. Like the county owns most of the corridor, right? You said that the city are the ones who plowed or who paved the trail, right?
[00:29:54] Soren: Right, right.
[00:29:59] Ian: And it was a Park Department project for the longest time and now it’s a Hennepin County regional trail?
[00:30:03] Soren: Well, no, actually, the Park Board is kind of a new partner. And so Hennepin County regional railroad authority purchased the corridor for future rail line. And in the meantime, the Midtown Greenway bike trail went in and became immensely popular.
[00:30:19] Ian: Yeah. And we have the same story over with the Bruce Vento Trail on the east side of St. Paul, right? Yeah. And the Purple Line was kind of the victim of that whole tension.
[00:30:29] Soren: And so I mean, it’s still held to this day for a potential future rail line. We can maybe for a different podcast to talk about whether that’s more or less likely these days. But in any case, you know, that’s why it’s there. But in the meantime, the city is under contract to maintain the trail and they do a pretty good job of it. I mean, they plow it quickly. Anyone who is a year-round commuter knows it. It gets plowed quickly. So if you can get up to it from your own neighborhood because your streets may not be plowed yet, but the Greenway is ready for you, you know? And so we’ve spent a lot of time advocating for buildings to be stepped back away from the Greenway to provide solar access to make sure that the ice is snow melts. That’s been a big part of our work. You may notice on the south side, a lot of the buildings are stepping back away from the Greenway. That’s to allow the sun to come in. But the Park Board is now involved. And I think that’s a good thing. The, actually George, it was George’s idea a few years back. And he said, “Soren, the Greenway should be an official regional trail.” And at the time, I didn’t know what that meant. But at the time, I also thought, well, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, but George was right as he often is on so many things. And what it means is if you’re a regional trail, you get more funding, okay? So the Greenway now is a regional trail. And it wasn’t easy. I’ll tell you, there was only one group that could help it become a regional trail. And that was the Park Board, the Minneapolis Park Board. What they had to do was pass a master plan for the Midtown Greenway Regional Trail. And I’ll never forget this. I went to a meeting, it’s about two years ago now, and staff was just presenting on it. They were just talking about how it’s coming along, the plan, because you had to do the plan first and approve it. And then it gets sent to the Met Council. At that meeting, several Park Board commissioners said, we don’t wanna do this plan. We’re gonna, in fact, we’re directing staff to put a, in fact, they tried to kill it at that meeting, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t kill the plan because it wasn’t, there was no notice on the public agenda that that was something that could happen. And so they were called out of order, trying to kill the Midtown Greenway Master Plan. And I just couldn’t believe what’s happening. I’m like, what are you talking about? And they said, we’re directing staff to come up with a resolution to stop the planning of the master plan. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t do this, don’t do this. We need the Greenway to be a regional trail. We need the additional funding plus regional trails connect the region. So this will help our Extend the Greenway efforts. And so once again, we had to step in. And in this case, we had, and we don’t do a lot of lobbying. We’re not a lobbying organization. We can do a small amount. That’s why we ask our friends Sierra Club who is a lobbying organization to help us when they do lobbying. Cause we don’t, we don’t lobby at all, really. But in this case, we did ask-
[00:33:19] Ian: You put out a lot of petitions, though, for people to sign.
[00:33:22] Soren: We can put out petitions, people can sign them. In this case, we did a small amount of lobbying, which is allowed. And, but it was mostly just our supporters calling Park Board Commissioner saying, what are you doing? And I’ll never forget when the Park Board Commissioner called me and said, “Soren, please stop having all of your supporters call me. They’re clogging up our lines.” And I said, then please support the Midtown Greenway. And we’ll stop having all these people who love the Greenway and care about the Greenway. We’ll have them, we’ll have them stop calling you. You do your job cause, cause we’re, you know, I’m doing my job and our hundreds and thousands of supporters are doing their job protecting the Greenway. And they did relent and they did decide to let the study go forward. And so it did, the regional plan passed the Park Board and then it passed the Met Council. And so now officially, although I feel like we haven’t celebrated enough, the new name is the Midtown Greenway Regional Trail. And so it’s pretty exciting. And now the funding will slowly come in. Of course, there’s going to be lots of planning. So we’re not going to start to see those amenities that you mentioned about some other trails. I mean, the thing about the Greenway is it’s not really owned and managed as a park. It was really, as we’ve talked about, it’s held for future rail. And so in the meantime, the bike trail and bike ped trail has gone in, but you don’t see a lot of other amenities. You don’t see great signage. There isn’t great way finding signage. There aren’t a lot of picnic tables, right? Or even benches. We’ve put in a few benches, actually. But eventually, and it’s going to take a couple of years, we’re going to start to see some better amenities. Because of that regional trail status, eventually we’ll start to see things like benches and maybe some more water fountains, maybe some bathrooms. But what we really, really would like is some better way finding signage, really, because that’s one thing the Greenway is really lacking as sort of, where are you when you’re in the Greenway and what happens when I exit here? And if I want to get up to these businesses on Lake Street to support them, where do I exit and when? So that needs to be improved. But it’s all part of what your original question, the fact that there’s so many different governmental agencies involved. And we have to work with them all.
[00:35:31] Ian: And as a regional trail, which entity does that new budget come from? Is that a county level thing?
[00:35:37] Soren: It comes from the Met Council to the park board, as I understand it. And then the park board then will allocate it to the Greenway. And they’ll use the master plan. And in the master plan, there’s better way finding signage and there’s picnic tables and other kinds of amenities at different parts of the Greenway. So slowly, slowly, but if the Greenway would have been a regional trail for the past 25 years, maybe we would already have those kinds of amenities. But we’re starting now. And again, that’s because of the Midtown Greenway Coalition and our donors and our supporters, the people that support this organization. So we’re as busy as ever. And we’re talking about the next 25 years. So yeah.
[00:36:18] Ian: And yeah, it’s interesting to think about the way that people have viewed the Greenway over the course of the years, right? Like when it was first envisioned, it’s like, okay, well, from the chain of lakes to the river. And that’s kind of like, that’s the scope of the project, right? And you’re right, like that doesn’t feel like a regional trail necessarily. But like, you know, if you think about the chain of lakes is kind of, you know, that’s where you drop a little drop of water into the lake and like the ripples go out from there, right? You’ve got the Kenilworth trails that the Greenway connects to. And nowadays, you know, you can go down to downtown Hopkins and from Hopkins, you can, you know, take the Minnetonka regional trail out to Excelsior and to Carver Park Reserve, or you could go from Hopkins down to all the way to Chaska and Carver. And now on the other end, you know, going east, like hopefully we’ll be able to cross the river and go into St. Paul and have, you know, like it’s more and more and like the network effects are just compounding.
[00:37:20] Tim: Right, if you go north or south at the river, you can go north or south at the chain of lakes as well. So in addition to those east-west connections that you mentioned, it’s, so it’s pretty comprehensive. It’s a part of the, can be a part of the Park Board Grand Rounds.
[00:37:34] Ian: Sure, at that point is kind of a grand figure eight if you’re including the Greenway.
[00:37:39] Tim: Exactly, right, yeah. Soren mentioned a couple of battles that the coalition has had to take on to replace the hack job of bumpy pavement and to get the designation as a regional trail. There are two other huge struggles that the coalition took on and won historically. One was to keep a rapid busway out of the Greenway. So imagine paving across the entire floor of the Greenway trench for a busway. Even if you never ran a single busway, you’d destroy the Greenway just with the pavement doing that. So that was, that was a very tough battle. But we won it and we won it by enlisting the public and being assertive in our work with electeds. And then the other big battle was to keep Xcel Energy from putting new high voltage transmission lines along the corridor. The corridor is a spine for development and that would have just shut it down.
[00:38:45] Ian: Housing development would have been shut down, you mean?
[00:38:48] Tim: Yes, yeah, because who’s gonna take a risk of building a new three to six story building when your top floors are gonna be looking straight across 15 feet away from a high voltage line. Nobody’s gonna, no developer’s in their right mind is gonna do that. And so anyway, that was a big struggle and that took years. And it was played out through a legal process before an administrative law judge of the public utilities commission with lawyers for each side and discovery process with people entering evidence and then witnesses being cross-examined by the different sides before things were accepted into the record. So it was really a struggle that it cost us a whole bunch of money for that legal help. But we weren’t…
[00:39:42] Ian: And I imagine that when you started this whole thing in the early 90s, you were not imagining that you were going to have to be like doing court battles over high voltage. Yeah, electricity.
[00:39:53] Tim: Yeah, I wanted to just mention bring back up again the issue that the corridor is owned by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority for the purpose of future rail transit. When the Midtown Greenway Coalition was fighting to keep a busway out of the Midtown Greenway, George said, we can’t win this fight if we’re just against a busway. We need to be for something. So let’s be for street cars. And the concept that we were pushing was for cute little 1950s, what are called PCC cars, and they would operate on what are called turf tracks, like what you see in some European cities where…
[00:40:38] Ian: Oh, okay. Literally what it sounds like with some grass in the middle of the tracks.
[00:40:42] Tim: Right. Yeah, it looks like, it just looks like a lawn. And so the visual impact, the way it smells after a rain, it wouldn’t smell like wet pavement, you know? It wouldn’t smell like wet railroad rock ballast. The way it looks, the way sound echoes. I mean, it would still be a greenway. And it could be a very important part of a regional rail system. So we’re talking about getting everywhere easily on bikes. You know, if you’re disabled or you need real transit. So, you know, modern street cars, but now probably there’s technology that would allow them to be battery operated, so you wouldn’t need the overhead lines, which would be a problem anyway for kids tossing metal broomsticks on them and shorting them out and stuff from the bridges, right? But so if you had battery operated, cute street cars on turf tracks, it would connect the Hiawatha LRT line with the Southwest LRT line and be very important part of a regional system. So the design would be super, super important so it didn’t destroy the concept of a greenway. And for it to be a really friendly neighbor for the trail. And so if there aren’t elected officials or folks excited about making this happen, it probably won’t. And I’m not gonna dedicate my, be the person that dedicates their life to make it happen at this point, but I just hope folks keep an open mind to that possibility.
[00:42:15] Soren: And you know, it was studied about, no, it’s probably in almost 10 years now and their recommendation from Metro Transit was the rapid bus on Lake Street and also a light rail vehicle in the Greenway would do the most to advance transit. But where we sit today, I don’t know. I never say never, but to Tim’s point, we’re not gonna spend much time these days advocating for that anymore because it just seems like there aren’t very many elected officials that are very excited about it. We used to say that after the Nicollet Central Streetcar line was built, maybe the Greenway one will be next, but that Nicollet Central line seems to be dead. And so I don’t know. I mean, it’s a great vision, but if no one is advocating for it.
[00:43:00] Ian: It’s a great vision, but also like, if it’s not going forward and also the fact that like the entire corridor is still kind of like, this is for, you know, rail purposes, like that kind of constrains what we can actually do with the space in the meantime. So like, yeah.
[00:43:20] Soren: Half of the Greenway. I mean, the other half of the Greenway is just sort of sitting there, waiting for this rail line. And it’s been 25 years now waiting. And so it’s reasonable to ask how realistic is it that a streetcar line is going to be coming when we can’t find a single elected official that supports the idea and no one’s really working on it. And so maybe we should, at some point, just ask ourselves whether that’s realistic because the other half of it will do.
[00:43:44] Ian: And would that have to be like a Hennepin County commissioners having a vote kind of thing to say like, I don’t know. You know, we just, we said that we’re going to do light rail on this, but like, you know, we’re officially just going to say, no, we don’t have to keep this for that purpose anymore.
[00:43:56] Soren: I don’t know. I don’t know.
[00:43:57] George: That would open up some opportunities for additional uses on that green space.
[00:44:03] Soren: Right, right. Because currently there’s room for two trains in there.
[00:44:05] Ian: Yeah.
[00:44:06] George: And that was part of the reason we raised the bike path up midway and it’s Midtown, which allows for the transit underneath the bridges. Soren, I’d like you to talk about, I think you mentioned the other day that the Greenway Coalition has like 10,000 followers, yet there are only 300 or 400 people that donate money.
[00:44:30] Soren: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting that Greenway is beloved by so many people, but when it comes to trying to get people to make a financial contribution, we’ve got lots of donors, but I feel like we should have a lot more. And so maybe people think the government is doing this work, but we’re the advocacy organization that is doing this work. So we are going to be launching a fund to support the Midtown Greenway and our work for the next 25 years, the next 25 year fund. We have over 10,000 followers on social media. And if we could just get a fraction of those followers to make a financial contribution, a tax-deductible contribution to support the Midtown Greenway and our work, that would help sustain our work for the next 25 years. So we’re launching a campaign to raise money to support the Greenway for the next 25 years and hope to get all of the people that love the Greenway to make a financial donation to support our work. And that’s things like work to extend the Greenway over the river, continue to put in pollinators, gardens, and continue to put in murals and continue to be an advocate for keeping the trail maintained.
[00:45:43] George: Soren, and you don’t need to be a large dollar donor.
[00:45:46] Soren: No, no, any amount helps. Any amount helps. Any donation size helps. People can go to our Greenway or they can find us on GiveMN.org. Give to the Max Days coming up and we’ll be launching our new fund in coordination with that and hoping that we can get as many people as possible who rely on the Greenway and who use it, even if they just want to perhaps donate $10 a month, you know, a cup of coffee or two to support the Greenway and become a sustaining donor. That’s enough. If we had all those people that are followers on social media and all the people that love the Greenway will be willing to become sustainers, oh my gosh, that would be so amazing and that would sustain our work long into the future and allow us to continue to do this work and even do more work for the Greenway. So we’re hoping that our new fundraising effort for our next 25-year fund is really successful and will allow us to keep doing what we’re doing for the Greenway because, you know, as we’ve talked today, the Greenway would look very different without the Midtown Greenway Coalition. Tim was talking about the gigantic overhead power lines. So the Greenway could, if it weren’t for the Midtown Greenway Coalition, have these ugly gigantic overhead power lines.
[00:46:59] Tim: And a busway.
[00:47:00] Soren: And a busway. It could have been paved for crying out loud, you know.
[00:47:03] Tim: So regarding the role of elected officials, certainly to get the Greenway extended across the river and through St. Paul and up to the Ida Mill corridor, you definitely need public agencies to champion it, but you also need elected officials to take it on and have it be a pet project because the Midtown Greenway probably wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for former Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin. It probably wouldn’t be there if not for former Congressman Martin Sabo and their staff people that we worked with. They were heroes. And then there was a whole bunch of…
[00:47:38] Ian: We’ve got to figure out which elected officials want to have the next bridge named after them, right?
[00:47:43] Tim: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
[00:47:44] Soren: Yeah, no, certainly Tim. We will need all the elected officials that we can, especially once we find the lead agency and once they start to do their work, then we’re going to need to go out and find all the funding too, right? So, yeah, but there is broad support and so I think that once we get that lead agency named, then it’ll start to turn to developing the plan, finding the funds, but we got to get started on this because every day or every year that goes by without a government agency taking the lead on this is just another year loss and so we need this report to come out to name the government agency that will take the lead and then have them start the work.
[00:48:28] Ian: Now, we’ve talked a lot about advocacy work that the coalition does, but I also know like, you know, the Greenway Glow Festival, for example, is kind of a fun thing that, you know, so what’s the full scope? What are some other things that the Coalition is into right now?
[00:48:44] Soren: Sure, we have all kinds of different programs. The Greenway Glow Arts Festival is a wonderful community festival that we’ve been putting on for the past 13 years. A lot of people tell us it’s their favorite annual festival. It’s a kind of a grassroots festival that brings people to the Greenway. It features several dozen local artists. There’s live music. We have a beer garden. We have artists that get placed up and down the Greenway. There’s glowing installations. There’s, you know, usually some juggling and bubbles and people on stilts and that we have a live music stage and so we just love to put on the Greenway Glow Arts Festival and bring people to the corridor. And while they’re there, by the way, they get to see all of our new murals that we’ve been putting in. And so our murals are creating this wonderful cultural corridor that we think is one of the best if not the best cultural corridors and cultural bikeways in the nation. And so we’re going to continue to put in murals. And in fact, we’ve received some interest from other foundations that are saying, how can we help you continue this vision to fund the murals? And so and individual donors have been reaching out saying, we want to help. And so we’re going to continue putting in murals. We’re going to continue planting gardens, planting trees. We’re going to continue to make sure the Greenway is maintained. We’re going to look forward to working with the Park Board on the way finding signage and getting better way finding signage. And so we’re just going to keep working for the Greenway every day to keep enhancing it, keep protecting it, and extend it over the river.
[00:50:27] George: If we could just take a minute and circle back to development.
[00:50:30] Ian: Yeah, go for it.
[00:50:30] George: I think the last 25 years has proven that the Greenway has been a successful stimulant for market rate housing. I would hope that the next 25 years it could stimulate more life cycle housing. Housing.
[00:50:48] Ian: What do you mean by that?
[00:50:50] George: That means housing for seniors. Housing for nursing homes and those in need of medical care. We did have the adaptive cycle program in the Greenway. Was it Mary and her husband ran it in the Greenway? And it was very successful. But there’s plenty of market rate housing. A lot of nice one bedrooms. But we need some other types of housing, whether it’s cooperative or senior or nursing homes up and down the Greenway.
[00:51:27] Soren: People want to live on the Greenway. People want to be able to just bike to work or bike around town or bike to wherever they’re going. And so it’s popular.
[00:51:37] Ian: And I remember an episode of Petal Hub back in the day. If you remember that Minnesota Public Radio program where a listener called in and said like something along the lines of like, “yeah, when I like, you know, see somebody’s Tinder profile and they say that they live near the Greenway, like that’s immediately, I want to go out on at least one date with that person. You know, that’s a big plus.”
[00:52:00] Soren: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:52:03] Ian: So to wind down, I’ve got one last question for you all. What is your favorite experience that you’ve had on the Greenway? Let’s start with Tim.
[00:52:12] Tim: I love it when I come upon an impromptu party on the Sabo Bridge. Yeah, especially at sunset. And that’s often when it happens.
[00:52:25] George: I think it’s special when you’re on the Greenway and you see people smiling or laughing or they give you a nod or a little wave and you’re a stranger and you just keep on going. But when people, you see people enjoying themselves on the Greenway, that is my favorite experience.
[00:52:47] Soren: I’ve had so many great experiences on the Greenway over the past 10 plus years. You know, on a personal level, to George’s point, when I’m commuting in on the Greenway and it’s a beautiful fall day and I just think, my gosh, I live in the greatest city in the world with the best bike facilities and I can bike all the way from my house up to the Greenway on protected bikeways and I just think we are so lucky and maybe we take it for granted that we live in such a great city. But I just smile myself and then I see people smiling on the way back and as they pass them and they pass me and people are just happy to be biking on the Greenway and out biking. As a lot of listeners know, biking is really incredible for your mood, for your health, for the environment. I mean, there’s so many win-wins.
[00:53:38] Ian: All right, Tim, George, Soren, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:53:41] Tim: Ian, thank you for the invitation.
[00:53:45] 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 Erik Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was hosted, edited, 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.