Met Council recommends Blue Line route through North Minneapolis

After a year of engagement with community members, the Met Council has decided on a route through North Minneapolis for the Blue Line extension that they want to vet as part of the federally required environmental impact review. 

The route, which will not be finalized for another year, avoids Lyndale Avenue and much of West Broadway at the request of area business owners and residents concerned about the effects on their neighborhoods such as parking, loading for those with limited mobility, and generational wealth. 

Kim Smith, who over the last year rallied her Lyn-Park neighbors to prevent the light rail from being built in their neighborhood, was relieved yet cautious about the recommended alignment because it is not yet final. She and her neighbors pledge to continue to monitor the project as it develops. 

“You actually listened to us,” said Smith after she learned of the recommendation at a Blue Line Extension Corridor Management Committee meeting last Thursday. “This is potentially the best route of the options they have given so far.” 

Despite the relief, business owners remain concerned over displacement, and some residents are worried about how the line would alter the North Side, particularly the West Broadway corridor. 

The recommended alignment

With Lyndale and most of West Broadway out of the picture—for now—planners are proposing to take the Blue Line up Washington Avenue and 21st Avenue to West Broadway. As previously proposed, the extension will start at Target Field Station and end in Brooklyn Park, near Target’s North Campus office park.

Planners envision the Blue Line emerging from Target Field Station, heading northwest on 7th Street, following the D Line. At Oak Lake Avenue, the train will make a right, following 10th Avenue, where it might operate on its own lane or share it with buses and emergency vehicles. Planners may decide to use the remaining space for pedestrians, biking, or for northbound traffic towards the river.

At Washington Avenue, the proposed route makes a left and heads north. It continues on Washington until 21st Avenue, where it makes another left and crosses a new I-94 bridge overpass. Planners envision the bridge overpass to carry traffic, as well as pedestrians and bikers. 

From the bridge, planners envision the train continuing west on 21st Avenue, crossing through a parking lot owned by Minneapolis Public Schools, and ultimately cutting across an area where several homes and a soon-to-open smoke shop exist, to return to West Broadway. 

The agency has proposed adding three stations along the route. One of the stations, at Washington and Plymouth, would connect with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority headquarters and the new V3 Sports Complex a third of a mile away. 

The other two stations would be on 21st Avenue. One of those stations will be at James Avenue to connect with North Commons Park and the YMCA. The other, at Lyndale, will connect with the Kemps milk plant, the Masjid An-Nur mosque, as well as Cub Foods to the south. Both stations are roughly a five-minute walk to the D Line at Emerson and Fremont.

The agency does not plan to build a station at Emerson or Fremont to connect with the D Line because planners are worried about losing ridership. “How do we efficiently serve the community? How do we get the stations that we’re proposing in the spots that get the most ridership,” pondered Nick Landwer, Metro Transit director of transit system design, adding that more stations may impact light rail travel time. This is in spite of the fact that the Blue Line makes two stops in Bloomington that are spaced 1,100 feet apart, roughly the same distance of the proposed Lyndale stop from Emerson Avenue. 

The alignment’s impact

Although the alignment has the potential to foster new connections and development within North Minneapolis, it would affect commercial buildings and homes, some of which may have to be demolished. 

One of the buildings not being affected by the recommended alignment is the Bell Lofts building, a former Northwestern Bell telephone exchange building that was converted into apartments in 1986. The building was condemned in December after residents, who complained about deferred maintenance over several years, were forced to quickly vacate with help from local activists and money from internet strangers after a water pipe burst. 

Twelve additional buildings could also be demolished, eight of them on 21st Avenue. Some of those buildings are currently vacant. Others are occupied by renters, some of whom were unaware of the project. Two of the buildings’ residents—one at the proposed James Avenue station location, the other at the proposed Lyndale Avenue station location—only spoke Spanish and were not interviewed due to the language barrier.

Bruce Barron, who lives at the corner of 21st and Emerson, has mixed feelings about the light rail running mere feet from his home. “What are you displacing?” said Barron of the abandoned houses steps from his front door. “If I were planning, I’d build it here. From a living standpoint, it wouldn’t help us. Who is going to buy a house that’s 20 feet from the train?” 

“If that happens, we’ll have to leave,” said a person who lives at Barron’s home who declined to give his name. “We can’t be here with the train going back and forth in front of our single-family home. The County’s going to have to buy us out.”

A building at the corner of 7th Street and Oak Lake Avenue owned by native Northsider Wendy Sullivan would also be impacted. She bought the building and its property last year to develop a 10-story office and entertainment space to make North Minneapolis culture accessible to the rest of the city. 

“I bought my first commercial properties…to link the divided communities through food and fun. [It’s] to share the Northside community with the larger population in a way that is uplifting and dissolves the isolated commerce that has historically occurred in my community,” said Sullivan. 

“It was the ideal location to accomplish my vision. As an emerging developer of color, it will be extremely devastating this far along in my development process to have the project snatched from me without consideration.” 

Sullivan is also concerned about road access to the elevator-accessible 150 parking spaces she is proposing for the site, as well as the lack of a light rail station in the area of her building. “Suburban people are not going to take the light rail. They want to park. And they also want to have secure parking because Minneapolis has got a bad rap right now as far as being safe,” said Sullivan. 

“I [also] would like to see another [light rail] stop where [my development] is, either before or after, because 30,000 people passing by does not help my business or my development.”

The project would also affect milk producer Kemps’ operations in North Minneapolis. Kemps has a plant on West Broadway Avenue and stores its trucks in a lot on the north side of 21st Avenue between 4th Avenue and I-94. When contacted through their website, Kemps’ did not respond to requests for comment. They also could not be reached by phone. 

Despite the challenges, building the light rail would mean building a new overpass bridge over I-94, which could potentially improve connections from the North Side to the Mississippi River waterfront. “I love the finger connections that you’re making,” said Minneapolis Park Board Commissioner Meg Forney at the corridor committee meeting last Thursday. “I would also advocate that [the bridge across I-94 should be made] into a land bridge. Anything that we could do to get people to that river is what I’m just so passionate about.”

It’s important to note that the light rail would continue operating on West Broadway west of James Avenue as it continues to Brooklyn Park. Planners are sure the alignment would require the demolition of the Five Points building, located at West Broadway and Penn Avenue. 

Local radio station KMOJ is housed in that building. General Manager Freddie Bell is worried about the impact the project will have on the radio station. “I can’t pick up this radio station and move it from point A to point B tomorrow and have it communicate effectively without interruption,” said Bell. 

Displacement concerns linger

The Met Council plans to finalize the Blue Line extension route over the next year. Next month, members of the corridor committee will vote on whether or not to adopt the recommended route. Planners will then have to evaluate the route for its impact on potential historic resources, traffic, parking, land use and pollution, all required by the National Environmental Policy Act. 

They plan to publish a draft report on how they would address those impacts and allow people to provide feedback on it. The routing is finalized when all the cities along the corridor approve the alignment and project planners address the comments in a final copy of the environmental report, which they will submit to the federal government. All this is expected to be completed sometime in the next two years.

Planning for the project will continue despite concerns from local business owners over displacement. “The biggest fear with this project is we’re being told how much this is going to benefit our community. But we’re not being told how,” said KB Brown, who owns Wolfpack Promotionals on West Broadway and sits on the project’s business advisory committee. 

“We’re being told anti-displacement is there, but we’re not seeing anything happening,” said Brown. “I don’t care about transit. If my business is stopped, I lose my home.”

Mayor Jacob Frey agrees. “This is the worst possible scenario that I think we could put the council, and ultimately the city in, is to be in a position where they’re about to grant or deny municipal consent and there is a looming question [on if] we might get an additional $5 million [for anti-displacement] in a couple of months,” said Frey. “The more that we can time this correctly so that at the very least we’re all voting with our eyes wide open about what we will have and what we won’t have, [the better].”

Cathy Gold, senior department administrator at Hennepin County, said they are working to find money to implement the anti-displacement recommendations from a mix of private and public sources. “We want to be a model for how we produce good projects that have the community benefiting. Also we’ll look to our nonprofits and philanthropic partners, in addition to our federal and state agencies, to try and get as much money and resources available for this work,” said Gold at the corridor committee meeting. 

Gold also said they are looking to hire staff to get the anti-displacement work going. 

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that the recommended alignment would not impact the Bell Lofts building.