Hear Me Out: Maybe Don’t Reopen Nicollet at the Kmart Site?

Hear Me Out: Maybe Don’t Reopen Nicollet at the Kmart Site?

Nick Magrino
Land Use, Urban Design

A lot of people in Minneapolis hate the Lake Street Kmart with a passion that often comes off a bit weird, like the people in 9th grade who liked to talk about how they hated the word “moist.” Never really got that one.

But luckily for those folks, Sears, the parent company of Kmart, is probably on its last legs. It is generally assumed that the City of Minneapolis, which purchased the land Kmart sits on, will be able to redevelop the site sometime in the near-ish future. There’s some complicated business about leases, but it’s safe to assume the lawyers will work out something agreeable to both the City and whoever (whomever? idk) inherits the lease.

Kmart Aerial.png

Once the store is closed and the current building is torn down, we’ll have two whole city blocks to work with, located in a pretty central area with pretty good transit access. It’ll have even better transit access in the near future once the Orange Line opens, providing a quick shot to downtown, and when the planned B Line ABRT on Lake Street is funded and built, speeding up crosstown trips.

You could do a lot here—the recently passed Minneapolis 2040 plan has the site designated as “Transit 15,” meaning there’s a 15 story height limit and a four story height minimum. You could plausibly fit 600 or 700 or more housing units and quite a bit of office and/or retail space. One thing that might be cool in one corner is a new, purpose-built commercial space for East African entrepreneurs.

But what are we going to do about Nicollet Avenue, which currently ends sort of hilariously in the loading dock of the Kmart behind some jersey barriers?

Back of Kmart.png

The mid-1970s decision to close Nicollet Avenue at Lake Street too woo a big box store that lazily wanted two whole city blocks to build a surface parking lot that’s rarely more than a third full is probably one of the dumber things we did during the last century.

Or.......was.....it? 

In general, the idea of a simple, uninterrupted street grid is good for lots of reasons. It’s resilient (lots of routes) and easy to understand and it looks nicer on a map. For me, some of the biggest oversights in planning in Minneapolis over the past decade have been situations where we’ve allowed large parcels to get developed without reconnecting or making space for establishing the street grid.

In this case, though, I’d ask you to please close your eyes and imagine you’re standing at a street corner. Specifically, say, Nicollet and like 26th. It’s June. It’s nice, right? The sidewalks are a good width, there are two driving lanes on both streets, people are biking. The trees provide a nice canopy over much of the street. Not a lot of better streetscape experiences in Minneapolis than that.

Okay, now imagine you’re seven blocks to the west, at Lyndale and 26th. [STREET ROARS] YEAH, SORRY, HAVE TO YELL. IT’S LOUD AS HELL ON LYNDALE. [TOXICALLY MASCULINE ACCELERATION NOISES] FOUR LANES OF TRAFFIC, LOVE THOSE COUNTY ROADS. [DUCKS] YEAH WATCH OUT FOR FLYING BUMPERS. OH SHIT LOOK OUT—

0.) Lyndale should be safer.

1.) But why are the different streets the way they are? A large part of why Nicollet Avenue became Eat Street and why it’s a nice place to hangout is because there isn’t all the through traffic that turned Lyndale into a dangerous car sewer.

It’s true that the Lyndale right-of-way is a bit wider than Nicollet’s, but you can also look to nearby Franklin Avenue, which has a narrower right-of-way than both streets, as another example of a dangerous four lane road designed to move cars as quickly as possible. If Nicollet had never been closed at Lake Street, it’s easy to imagine a mid-1980s sideburn-heavy Public Works department widening it to funnel Chrysler LeBarons to South Minneapolis and Richfield.

If we were to reopen Nicollet through the Kmart site, it would start getting more through traffic. I think we can rest assured that we’re not going to fully turn Nicollet into Lyndale—it’s hard to imagine adding two new car lanes in the 21st century, when we’re finally starting to drag lessons about induced demand into our decision-making—but we should think twice about reopening the street fully.

How about a transit mall, like Nicollet Mall 14 blocks to the north? That would speed up the Route 18 bus and create the opportunity for a unique public space in the middle of this important site. Or maybe, at most, a shared street where buses, pedestrians, cyclists, and cars are all treated equally?

It’s not often we get an opportunity like this, where there’s a huge, blank canvas at a prime site in a growing city, with great transit access. Let’s be creative.

New Suburb-to-Suburb Bus Route Failure Article Template

New Suburb-to-Suburb Bus Route Failure Article Template
When Homeowners Make Money by Blocking New Housing

When Homeowners Make Money by Blocking New Housing

Related Posts