The Shubert's Next Stage

“The redesign made a big difference” at the legislature, Zellers says. “A lot of people, I kid you not, that’s what hung them up: the [original design’s] big swoop and how much money it would cost.”

The path now was clear for the Shubert’s development and construction. With $25 million in non-state funding sources at the ready, compared with the $15 million Artspace was requesting from the legislature, the project was well under Pawlenty’s 50 percent funding threshold for state money. “We had really strong bipartisan support, mainly because, as one legislator said, we weren’t coming to the trough for all of the money,” Motes says.

With other high-profile cultural projects underway—notably, the new Guthrie Theater and the MacPhail Center for Music—the Shubert was finally at the top of the Minneapolis City Council’s bonding-priorities list for the legislature. The Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association, Downtown Minneapolis Council, and the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce all formally endorsed the project.  And the Shubert’s growing education program, now in 25 schools across the state, was leading many Greater Minnesota legislators to view the Shubert as more than a Minneapolis project. This year, the legislature approved $11 million in state funding. The remaining $4 million that’s needed is expected to come from private funders. 

The Shubert finally appears ready to play a role in the economic development of downtown Minneapolis.

Perhaps 1996 was the year that Minneapolis’s central business district lost its longtime retail prowess forever. That year, the marble-heavy enclosed mall on Nicollet and Eighth known as the Conservatory came down in all its “yuppie baroque” glory, to be replaced by U.S. Bank’s new headquarters building. One block south, the downtown Target store, which opened in 2001, symbolizes the central business district’s now scaled-down retail scene.

To be sure, downtown Minneapolis hasn’t died. Financial services firms prosper, the condo boom has brought thousands of new residents to the city center, Target’s headquarters have helped keep the office vacancy rate fairly low. And the rejuvenated theater district has kept the lights on up and down Hennepin Avenue.

In fact, many claim that the arts have joined office-based businesses as a key driver of downtown’s economic health. According to economist Ann Markusen, a professor who directs the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, the arts offer some economic advantages that retail no longer does.