Downtown's Next Renovation?

Shopping for Retail

Not all of Elliot Park’s condo projects have succeeded. An ambitious development called 1010 Park would have built tall towers around the Hinkle-Murphy mansion and knocked down the Enger Building, a former mortuary and sometime art gallery that’s much loved by the locals. The developers, Omni Investments in Little Canada, ran out of money when the condo market cooled last year. The site is now in the hands of Redwood Falls–based Minnwest Bank. Omni had until late April to come up with the money to reclaim it.

But what Elliot Park needs more than another residential development is more retail. “What this neighborhood needs is a destination,” a reason for outsiders to come in, says Diane Ingram, who heads the East Downtown Council, a business-promotion group that covers “Downtown East” from Elliot Park to the river.

In 2004, Ingram and her business partner, Shar Kanan, were retail pioneers of a sort, opening E. P. Atelier, a boho-eclectic combination of coffeehouse, gift shop, music club, and art gallery a few steps from the Hinkle-Murphy. Business has been OK, though Ingram hasn’t yet seen a big boost from the condos. She’s hopeful that when Otho—which opened in November—puts out tables as the weather warms, it will bring pedestrian traffic to the area, business to her door, and other retailers into the neighborhood.

Some prospects are more welcome than others. Braun’s observation is that, in other cities, the most interesting neighborhoods have retail that has “grown organically out of the needs of the neighborhood. Not ones where businesses have come in from the outside and done the market research and brought in a branch of a retail chain.”

Pharmacy giant CVS considered moving into the first-floor space at Skyscape. But “the CVS business model was not compatible with the pedestrian type of commercial retail experience we want downtown,” Fields says. “They insisted on a drive-through; they insisted on a certain amount of parking that we weren’t willing to concede.”

Ultimately, the sidewalk in front of Skyscape was widened, and that stretch of 10th Street was narrowed. Fields calls this “rightsizing the street” based on the traffic load it typically takes. Narrower streets slow traffic, create greater “pedestrianization,” and encourage business development, he says.

“When [retail development] starts, it builds on itself,” Fields notes. In Elliot Park’s case, the start has been elusive so far, though Otho may prove to be the needed catalyst.