Echoes of Greatness, Seeds of Change along Grand Avenue
The neighborhood along Grand Avenue, approximately between Dale and Lexington, lies close to my heart. I have wonderful memories of the food here; during my first visit to the neighborhood my family and I ate a wonderful lunch under a warm sun and blue sky. The avenue is where I went to my first bicycle advocacy event, where I have gone on (nearly) all my dates, where I’ve had all my birthday celebrations. It represents a miniature downtown, a main street for Saint Small’s quaint southwestern neighborhoods. The street has a sense of place which is unique and magical - but why? And how? What are the urbanist traits of Grand Ave which contribute to its special sense of place? And how might we plan or develop Grand going forward in order to compound on these traits?
One element of Grand’s charm lies in its multimodality. Adjacent lies the Summit Ave bike lane (and the future location of the regional trail - go St Paul!), which in turn are connected to the broader southern Saint Paul bicycle network.1 This makes the shops easily accessible by bike for anyone living south of University Ave and I94. For those more inclined towards transit, the 63 bus zooms by every 15 minutes, replicating the streetcars of old. It goes east to downtown Saint Paul and west to the university/prospect park neighborhood, giving lateral connectivity across the city. The 63’s 15 minute frequency shines forth among other bus frequencies of 30 minutes or more, meaning it is actually convenient for transit especially when the temperature drops and all but the hardiest of cyclists demure. Its multimodalism and peculiar linearity is borne from the area’s streetcar-era roots. In the early 20th century, a streetcar ran along Grand Avenue and ran a similar route to the 63. Development occurred along the line as the streetcar made the surrounding land visible and valuable to retailers, and thus the modern neighborhood along Grand was born. I’ve included a few historical pictures below - the first is of a Grand streetcar, and the second of a picture of Grand and Dale with the streetcar tracks still present. A bus ride down the corridor recalls what must have been a very pleasant streetcar ride, ambling past packed shops and happy diners.
The streetcar era did not last long, for soon the road was conquered by the automobile. Evidence of redesigns for this new greedy master is plentiful - the car-oriented street gloms over five lanes (two for parking, two for traffic, and one for turning) and facilitates cars racing down the corridor, destroying Grand’s quaint charm for others with loud engine sounds but also losing their own experience in the process. The road width is so wide that the pedestrian does not feel “enclosed” in the slightest - even though this is necessary to create a great walkable environment (see Jeff Speck’s Walkable City). The pedestrian rightly feels out of place as surface parking lots slash gaps in between the shops (see figure 4) and in some cases even lie in front of them (see figure 3). Cars remain the privileged guests of Grand, to the detriment of those not in a two-ton death machine. However, one cannot blame those who go to the various shops via automobile. The street, at a mile long, too far to reasonably traverse on foot. With the dominance of the car, of course, comes all its associated externalities - an unpleasant walking environment, carcinogenic brake dust and exhaust, and the worst offender - the aforementioned surface parking lots.
So what should be done to improve Grand? I have several ideas, ranging from simple tweaks to complete overhauls of the corridor. One improvement independent of public investment would be using tax incentives to encourage developers to build residences above the shops. There are already several apartment buildings and multiplexes lining Grand, but most are a sizable distance from the shops. Building residences above stores would lend greater economic resilience to the businesses below, as well as transforming the street into a cozier, more enclosed environment. Another cheap improvement would be removing the slip lane and installing a grade-separated bike path. Focus on the Summit mixed use path misses the point of cycling infrastructure - when one travels via bicycle, they want to pass through vibrant neighborhoods and see interesting things, not simply travel from point A to B.2 Grand and its vitality would be far more amenable to this than Summit with its stately and aloof estates. More people would cycle on a path through Grand than they would through Summit - even if the Grand pathway was truncated at Lexington and Dale.
More ambitiously, a streetcar could serve the corridor well. It would ensure that people do not need a car to get from end to end of the strip, and could connect into downtown and the light rail so urbanites could come patronize the space. To be effective, this intervention would need to be done alongside something else to limit auto traffic - perhaps a narrowing of the road, or the aforementioned cycle path - for to ensure it is actually used. A streetcar would reduce traffic (and its associated malimpacts) while giving the neighborhood a sense of unique charm - a blast from the past, so to speak. Grand Ave could become Saint Paul’s Stillwater, quaint, charming, and a constructed relic from years of yore. A very ambitious plan would be to completely close the street off to traffic, install a streetcar, and create a linear park along the length of the corridor. Pedestrian- and cyclist-only neighborhoods have been proven to be very desirable - again, see Walkable City for statistics on the desirability of walkability. An exciting example is the Culdesac Tempe neighborhood in Phoenix, a pedestrian-only neighborhood (which has no parking space for residents) which has been filling up quickly even with its relatively high price for the region. People want walkable neighborhoods - so perhaps the way to inject further wealth and vibrancy into Grand is to give the people what they want.
The key to the appeal of Grand lies in the past. Unique streetcar-era architecture and spacing means that it is multimodal, at a semi-walkable scale, and is alive. Going forward, we must look to the past for ways to improve upon the phenomenal neighborhood - meaning employing design principles prior to the automobile, that destroyer of pleasantness and the human scale. We must champion active mobility - pedestrianism and the bicycle - as ways to enliven the neighborhood and make people more happy and healthy. Greatness lies in the future, but to reach this we must, to borrow a phrase, carpe diem.
Appendix
The Grand Streetcar
Grand and Dale
Figure 3
Figure 4
Why bifurcate the Saint Paul bike network thusly? There are very few bicycle-amenable ways to get across the interstate and University. The Pelham one is very good (fully protected as well!), but Prior only has sharrows and bike gutters - which I may remind the viewer are statistically more dangerous than literally having nothing, and there is nothing good east of prior. I plan to write a blog about this sometime in the future, but for all intents and purposes there are really 2 disjoint bike networks in Saint Paul (that above the interstate and that below).
This is also one of my criticisms of the Midtown Greenway - something I’m sure I’ll write about in a future post.