The past year has seen a relative flurry of change come to Northeast Minneapolis. The area, whose population has been steadily growing since 2020, has undergone all manner of changes to its infrastructure and skyline alike, for both good and ill.
A handful of warehouses on Central Avenue no longer overlook Sociable Cider Werks following an overnight fire, and the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority opened a major housing development just blocks away. Lowry Avenue recently reopened with wider paths for bikes and foot traffic, but with fewer lanes for automobiles, and Central Avenue is likely to get a similar makeover in the coming years.
Just about each of these changes has its positives and negatives, depending on who you ask: derelict warehouses could have been transformed into artists’ flats, but their land could be so many other things, too; an increase in housing development presents an opportunity to deepen the local community but also may increase congestion. And a changed Lowry Avenue is a clear statement of values. Increasing space for one style of transit essentially requires another gets tightened up a bit.
The reality is: between a (gradually) swelling population, a molting infrastructure and a transforming silhouette, Northeast Minneapolis is on the route towards change. This is, in the abstract, as it should be; cities cast in amber are cities left to fossilize. But it’s worth considering who, exactly, it’s changing for.
The proposed changes to Central Avenue, for example, have stirred up worry in Columbia Heights, where some residents already concerned with a dearth of street parking have voiced concern about transit times skyrocketing as the lane count decreases.
At the same time, other residents have spent time advocating for additional “traffic calming” — measures intended to slow, or calm, traffic for the purposes of pedestrian safety — in a proposed Marshall Street redesign, which is slated to break ground in Spring 2027.
These ideas — safety for pedestrians and convenience for automobiles — are, to be blunt, at odds with each other; one asks for patience, the other, speed. Discord like this can be instructive, though. It ought to invite dialogue between residents, elected officials and business owners; disagreement, at its best, presents a chance to find something that works reasonably well for most people involved.
In any case, it’s not as though any City Council officials or staff members — in Minneapolis, St. Anthony, Columbia Heights or Hilltop — make it particularly challenging to get involved. Governmental meetings are frequently livestreamed online before being added to an overflowing archive, with ample opportunity for public comment; elected officials frequently host “office hours,” giving interested constituents the chance to dig into the issues they care most about one-on-one; and most major infrastructural projects undergo many evenings where proposed designs are shown out in public.
Some of these approaches are, to be clear, easier to access than others. Not everyone can make it to a 2 p.m. meeting on a Wednesday, just as not everyone is available on a given Friday evening to discuss the intricacies of urban planning. But the range of options makes it likely that anyone interested in their city’s future can get involved in one way or another.
The question, then, is: what might that future look like? There’s no certain way to know that, but public advocacy is perhaps the most effective way to make sure your city works for you. The specifics of that will vary from resident to resident — maybe it’s going to public meetings, maybe it’s getting to know local business owners, maybe it’s calling representatives and pushing for local changes, no matter the style.
Now to loop it back to the start. Northeast Minneapolis is slowly, but certainly, transforming, in all sorts of ways: battles over historical preservation, debates over pedestrians’ and commuters’ needs, old buildings burning down as officials cut red tape on new ones, teams of construction workers reimagining roads. This is both inevitable and, ultimately, beneficial for the city, however messy the process can be.