Positively Fourth Street

Marshall-University became Utec four years after the high school closed in 1982. Utec’s most famous alumnus is probably Sistina Software, which developed data storage software based on the Linux operating system. It was purchased by North Carolina–based Linux developer Red Hat in 2003 for $31 million. Another Utec alum is New Boundary Technologies, whose software allows users to control their computer networks remotely. In 2002, New Boundary moved to larger headquarters at the Broadway Corporate Center in Northeast Minneapolis.

In addition to software providers and education-based businesses, Utec’s diverse tenant base includes attorneys, nonprofit organizations, and alternative medicine providers such as acupuncturists, massage therapists, and chiropractors.

Walker says that Dinkytown is one of the friendliest areas for small business in all of Minneapolis, where someone can gain a first toehold on the business ladder—basically an office and a phone line for the cost of a security deposit—in a safe neighborhood.

“We’re not 100 percent full, but we’re always getting more tenants,” he says. “With us, we can offer very nice office space with no credit checks—all they need to do is verify they are who they say they are and come up with a security deposit, which is one month’s rent.”

Though retail and office space are flourishing in their modest way in Dinkytown, there are signs also that its future is in restaurants and entertainment.

The proliferation of eateries in the last five or six years has been tremendous by neighborhood standards. Johnson says that Dinkytown now has 33 restaurants, many of them attached to bars.

“The late-night activity has really surged in recent years,” he says. “If you talk to a number of the restaurants, they’ll tell you they make more money from midnight to 3 a.m. than they do from lunch business on school days. The bars and clubs have entertainment going until 2 a.m., and there are a lot of people. Not just students, but people who come in from around town.” He cites Kafé 421, the Purple Onion Café, and the Burrito Loco as destination spots.

“Even the coffeehouses are great places to come to—they’re full, they’re comfortable,” Johnson says. “They’re all enjoying late-night activity. On a late night where I’m working on a project in the print shop, I’m just amazed at the people on the sidewalks.”

Perhaps the key catalyst for Dinkytown’s evolution into something of a dining hotspot opened in 2001 at the site of the former Gray’s Campus Drugs (a spot fondly remembered by baby-boomer U students) at Fourth and 14th. Writing in September 2007, Star Tribune restaurant critic Rick Nelson credited the Loring Pasta Bar with bringing Dinkytown “roar[ing] back to life” as a dining destination.