Upzoning Is the Only Way to Save Grand Avenue
It’s time to repeal the East Grand Avenue Overlay District, a failed zoning policy that is killing Grand Avenue — once a vibrant shopping and dining district.
Tag Archives: shopping
A Lukewarm Defense of Lakeville
Your author has spent a good deal of time in Lakeville. My wife grew up there, and it’s where my in-laws still live. In fact, our family of four lived there for a summer in between selling and buying a house. My father-in-law runs a small business there, and I’ve even spent a number of […]
Deep North Podcast – Winter Markets: How We Gather
It’s cold here. Embracing it instills community in very different ways. In this episode we visit the spaces shifting the paradigm of what it means to gather during winter. Music by Enjoy the Cat, the Limozine Group, Zack Baltich, This episode marks the halfway point of Season 1. To hear plans for season 2 and […]
Saturday Morning Adventure on Central Avenue
Saturday mornings in the Hop household. Contrast a typical weekday morning with an easy going day, full of relaxation and adventure. Its Saturday today. Time for an adventure! Sometimes we make errands an adventure too. Ordinary daily tasks can certainly be turned into a fun time for the little ones. Imagination and mindset are the […]
Pedestrianizing Big Box Stores – Midway Super Target
Like many parts of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the Midway in Saint Paul is a slightly strange hybrid between urban and suburban built forms. Houses and apartments on narrow lots and streetcar-era retail buildings with zero setbacks coexist (oftentimes uneasily) with suburban-style big-box stores that have giant parking lots. The Green Line provides frequent transit service to places that have […]
Street Connections
How important are connections between inside and out? Panino’s, a place my wife and I enjoy eating at fairly often, recently expanded into the space next door. The original space was kind of a quirky collection of areas but it worked and felt comfortable. Unfortunately the new space is a giant windowless sterile echo chamber […]
Chart of the Day: Shopkeepers Travel Mode Share Estimates (Bristol UK)
Alex Schieferdecker turned me onto an old Citylab article about parking perception versus parking reality called Four Reasons Retailers Don’t Need Free Parking. It cites a (hard to find) study out of the UK which charted perceived mode-share versus actual mode share for a shopping street in Bristol, UK (a medium-sized city in the Southwest, population 450K). Here’s the chart […]
An Open Letter to Saint Paul Business Owners from an Average Millennial
Dear Saint Paul Business Owners, My name is Dan. I’m 31 years old and I lived in Saint Paul for nearly 8 years. During that time, I was a patron of many local businesses (I still am actually), as it’s a personal value of mine to support local businesses and give back to my community. […]
Map Monday – The Spending Habits of a “Modal Mom”
I had the pleasure of meeting Lana Stewart at this year’s innovative “Winter Cycling Congress” in Minneapolis. She’s a mother, blogger, and bicyclist from Ottawa, Ontario, and gave a good talk on winter biking with kids in Canada. Anyway, she recently put up a great post mapping out some of her shopping habits in Ottawa, and how […]
Chart of the Day: Time Spent Shopping per Day
The Star Tribune republished an eye-catching NY Times story this weekend about waste from online shopping. Here’s the punchline of their piece: But measuring the effect of the cardboard economy is more difficult. There are possible trade-offs, for example. As people shop more online, they might use their car less. And delivery services have immense […]