Downtown's Next Renovation?

What’s Next—and Who

EPNI doesn’t have much financial bait for hooking retail entrepreneurs, but there are a few potential lures.

One is Minneapolis’s Great Streets program, which partners with private lenders and other funders to provide loans and grants for improving the city’s business districts. Adopted last spring by the city council, Great Streets expands a motley group of programs that have helped renovate commercial corners on Lake Street and Franklin Avenue.

EPNI is also trying to trigger retail development through its Centennial Commons initiative in Elliot Park’s old business district. Centennial Commons would include housing, retail, and office space. EPNI has access to some private financing, but would like to get more.

In the meantime, the neighborhood might get help toward further development from other entities based there.

Hennepin County Medical Center has been participating in meetings on neighborhood economic development—in part because the hospital has some of its own economic development work to do. On January 1, 2007, HCMC shifted from being a county hospital to operating as a “public-benefit corporation,” technically separate from the county. It’s busy repositioning itself as a “hospital of choice,” notably among the growing number of downtown residents. After considering a move out of downtown, HCMC chose instead to put $80 million into interior improvements, including updating and expanding its intensive care units and inpatient bed capacity.

Now the hospital plans to cluster its various outpatient clinics—currently spread across several buildings in Elliot Park— into a new facility near its campus. HCMC hopes to nail down a site sometime this year, and wants to make sure the project is “harmonious with folks in terms of quality of life in the Elliot Park neighborhood,” says Michael Harristhal, the hospital’s vice president of public policy and strategy.

HCMC is one of the medical institutions and businesses along Chicago Avenue north of Lake Street that formed the Minneapolis Lifesciences Corridor a few years ago. The idea was to promote the creation and clustering along the corridor of businesses that could commercialize medical technology developed at the University of Minnesota and other hospitals, clinics, and companies in the area.