Connecting the Mill District to 7 Corners and the U of M - Downtown 2025 Plan

Section from the Downtown 2025 Plan from the Downtown Council:

From the Downtown 2025 Plan: 

One of Downtown’s Green Corridors should include greening the Washington Avenue Bridge connecting Downtown East and the Mills District to Seven Corners and the University of Minnesota.

So close, yet so far. The state’s greatest generator of jobs, innovation and economic energy lies at the doorstep of Downtown Minneapolis, yet the University of Minnesota’s presence is barely felt. A top priority of this report is to strengthen the connections—both physical and otherwise—between Downtown and the U. The effort is not to absorb the campus into a Greater Downtown by 2025, but to establish the two as next-door neighbors sharing mutual benefits.

For its part, Downtown offers venture capital potential for the U, as well as an attractive setting for jobs and housing for students, faculty and alumni. In turn, the University offers ideas, talent and a proven record of success. By working together to assemble a greater share of that intellectual energy on their own doorsteps, the University and Downtown can produce a critical mass that brings competitive advantage to both. It’s a win-win situation—but one that will be difficult to achieve. In her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs defines the problem as “the curse of border vacuums.” In this case, the border vacuum that separates the two neighbors is not so much the Mississippi River but the freeway trench that carries I-35W. The trench forms a nearly half-mile-wide no-man’s land between Downtown East and the West Bank campus.

There is no attractive connection over the trench, and no recognition that the trench must be breached if both sides are to benefit. The simplest physical connection would be to transform the structure that carries Washington Avenue toward Seven Corners into a treelined corridor that emphasizes transit, pedestrian and bicycle traffic. A similar green corridor could be built alongside the Central lightrail tracks between the Metrodome area and the West Bank campus.

A supporting idea is to provide a University-themed landscape to freeway entrance ramps along I-35W and I-94, treating these entry points as part of the campus.

Downtown 2025 Downloads

Connecting the Mill District to 7 Corners and the U of M