Star Tribune - Editorial: Land swap might help new library
Pelli's beautiful building deserves a more aesthetic setting.
It's a bit like eating a celebrated chef's sumptuous dinner on a paper
plate, or hearing a top composer's elegant new work played by a jug band.
Minneapolis' stunning new central library is rising on a moonscape of parked
cars, barren sidewalks and scrap-lumber fences. Cesar Pelli, the acclaimed
architect, can't be happy about that, but that's Minneapolis. The city cares
much about its buildings and little about their settings.
But context matters. It matters especially in a downtown that's banking on
transit and pedestrian vitality to aid its revival. On Nicollet Mall's empty
north end, revival won't happen until City Hall actively pursues ways to
surround the new library with a greener, more inviting cityscape.
Efforts to develop the city-owned block just north of the library suffered
another setback in September when no bidder emerged to place housing above
the existing Metro Transit station, which was to have been moved
underground. Instead, the Opus Group, owner of two other empty blocks next
to the library, proposed a land swap. It would build the sought-after
residential towers north of the library if the city would arrange for the
bus station to be moved to the old Powers department store site, next to the
Nicollet Mall light-rail stop. Opus would get air rights over the station
for an office tower to be built when the market improves.
It's an intriguing idea with severe complications.
First, Metro Transit would have to agree to the new bus location. Second,
two smaller parcels on the Powers block would have to be acquired for any
new underground station to succeed. Third, bus traffic in and out of the
station would have to comport to changes now being studied in bus and auto
traffic movements downtown.
In addition, the city should require Opus to agree to certain things before
any deal is struck, among them:
To actually build the residential and office towers within a certain time
frame, and to develop the block immediately east of the library. The company
has been sitting on these properties for decades.
To include in all of these projects a generous swath of public greening
that would, in essence, extend Gateway Park from Washington Avenue, past the
library, to the LRT station at 5th Street and Nicollet Mall. It's this
linear park that would help give the library the green context it deserves,
as well as provide an inviting pedestrian link from riverfront condos to the
LRT station and downtown shopping.
If Minneapolis is to capitalize on its downtown housing boom it must greatly
upgrade walkways and public spaces. The new library deserves a better
setting than it's getting.
Star Tribune: http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5709346.html
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Rod Krueger
Nokomis East
http://www.rodkrueger.org
.
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