After five years of work, Hennepin County finally completed the roadway work on Lowry Avenue in August 2009. Now we enjoy a new street with sidewalks, lighting and bicycle lanes, which makes it easier to drive, walk or bike down the corridor. The trees, art and street-scaping make it more visually appealing, but does Lowry Avenue really look the way we want it to look, and does it serve its function as a community corridor?
The Minneapolis Plan for Sustainable Growth designates Lowry Avenue as a community corridor; and describes a community corridor as one that is primarily residential with intermittent commercial uses clustered at intersections in nodes. Commercial uses are generally small-scale retail sales and services, serving the immediate neighborhood. Community corridors differ from commercial corridors (like West Broadway) which have historically been prominent destinations and offer a mix of uses, with commercial uses dominating and the housing being higher density.
The five neighborhoods on the Lowry Corridor - Cleveland, Folwell, McKinley, Hawthorne and Jordan - decided that Lowry Avenue is not "finished," so last year they applied for and received a Great Streets Grant from the City. Along with neighborhood revitalization funds, the grant was used to hire the Cuningham Group to look at the residential and commercial properties along Lowry, consult with residents, gather ideas and create a long term strategic plan for development on the community corridor. The project is called the Lowry Avenue Strategic Plan.
So the questions are: How do folks see Lowry Avenue developing into a viable community corridor, with medium density housing and neighborhood supported businesses at the nodes of Penn/Lowry, Fremont/Emerson/Lowry and Lyndale/ Lowry? Which parcels need redevelopment? What do we want to keep? Do we need more housing on Lowry? What kinds of goods and services do we want to have on Lowry? Where should they be located? How do we attract new businesses and development? What can we hope for, and what do we do to support housing development? How do we balance what the community wants with what is realistic for developers to build? What are the challenges for developers and business owners, and how can we address them so that more good things happen in the future? What new partnerships can be built to advance our goals?
We might all agree we need more businesses on Lowry, but can we support more businesses without increasing our density - i.e., adding more residents to our neighborhood population? Through a series of focus groups and public workshops, the Cuningham Group has been exploring these questions with the residents. Minneapolis City Planner Tom Leighton says, "We're halfway through a process of looking at what's next for Lowry Avenue...now we're working on creating goals and strategies for all of the other changes and improvements we hope will happen on Lowry Avenue."
Folks met again on January 28 at North Regional Library to help answer those questions - the final meeting on the Lowry Avenue Strategic Plan is set for March 25. For info check http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/cped/lowry_strategic_plan.asp.