urbanMSP

This is a run-down 70's era little commercial node with a bunch of cool little places that people miss because Cedar is such a car sewer through the area.

Anyways, the Carbone's owner purchased the former Hallmark Cleaners / Coldwell Banker building across the street for $800,000 pending re-zoning allowing for the restaurant.

There's also a little landscape business sandwiched between the existing Carbones/Cork Dork and Tom's Popcorn which is for sale. Apparently it is still zoned for "heavy industrial" and is grandfathered in somehow. Not sure exactly what was meant by that.

Confusing topic title, I thought this was about 47th street/Minnehaha Ave, not 47th Street/Cedar Ave.

Decided to change the title to Minnehaha Pkwy when I was composing this but I changed the wrong street.

Are you implying Carbone's may be moving across the street to that new building? That would be nice. They could potentially get a patio, of which South is lacking many good options. and update the... "classic" interior design of the current building.

In addition to the car sewerness of Cedar, the large mature trees on the west side of the street [ironically] play a role in hiding this area from people driving by. From the north, the Carbone's/Cork Dork building is almost entirely screened. From the south, you might see the building, but it requires a left turn across the sewer or street parking on the right + an unsafe dash on foot. By no means am I suggesting removing the trees. Heavens no. Just observing their impact.

Regardless, the nature of the street is the far biggest issue. Despite the half-dozen intersections between 62 and the Parkway, northbound traffic treats Cedar like a freeway—no doubt partially due to that stupid and unnecessary bridge over Nokomis. Southbound traffic flies down the hill and sees the intersection at the Parkway as its last real barrier to GTFO of the city, and will do anything to make that light. Some traffic calming/road-narrowing and a well-marked mid-block pedestrian crossing or two on the block north of the Parkway would go a long way to making that area feel safer for pedestrians.

I have a design for that, but could really use some fetish maps to move it into "small area plan" territory.

Yes, Carbones will apparently move across the street if they can figure out the zoning/license issues.

The M'haha Parkway Bike/Walking path intersection there can also be very hairy due to the same "car sewer" treatment. I bike it frequently on my way to and from work in the summer. People are aware for the most part, but the path can get blocked by cars who don't understand the concept of stopping at the white lines and the occasionally nearly deadly inattentive driver or commuter running a red light makes it dangerous.

Or people turning onto south Cedar from the Parkway, crossing the walk/bike path.

Consider it a small victory, the intersection is narrow enough to slow down traffic for the mass of people crossing on foot/bike. I wouldn't be surprised to see this intersection "upgraded" with extra right and left turn lanes in all directions without anyone knowing about it before the hammers hit the pavement.

cedar and nokomis pkwy is worse...and i agree cedar is a narrow freeway funnel. this street needs work. a traffic mgmt plan, traffic calming infrastructure, anything would be an improvement.

I can't think of any intersection on the Parkway with right/left turn lanes [edit: on the Parkway itself. Obviously the cross streets have them]. They go against the entire purpose of the streets, and the City seems to know that. The continued use of a 25mph speed limit is a pretty good sign (to me) that MPLS has no intention of turning the Parkway (or the Grand Rounds in general) into commuter arteries.

I live near that intersection, and your fine comments here spurred me to send the following message to John Quincy, the Council Member for this ward.

If any of you live in John Quincy's ward, would you like to join the cause and send a message, too?

Good morning, Mr. Quincy,

I, my wife, and our three-year-old son live at xxxx 1xth Ave. S.

We're concerned about the volume and speed of traffic on Cedar between 47th Street and Minnehaha Parkway.

Retail establishments on both sides of the street along this block and paths along Minnehaha Parkway encourage much pedestrian and bicycle traffic. At the same time, cars tend to race along this stretch, with many drivers using Cedar as a thoroughfare between south Minneapolis and Highway 62 and Hwy. 77. This isn't a nice mix.

I have a couple of suggestions that I think would be inexpensive and yet make the area less challenging for pedestrians:

--Just north of Minnehaha Parkway, on the west side, is a short service road that gives access to the south of the SuperAmerica station. Because the station has a wide curb cut directly onto Cedar, I can think of no reason why this service road should have to connect with Cedar, complicating traffic flow and pedestrian crossing at its busy intersection with the Parkway. It need only serve vehicles accessing SuperAmerica from the south from Minnehaha Parkway, and these access the service road at 18th Avenue.

Can this service road be blocked off between Cedar and the entrance to SuperAmerica? As a test, simple traffic barriers would suffice.

--At 47th and Cedar, a broad white line is painted on the east side of the pavement. Its purpose is to prevent cars from using the area between this line and the curb as they head northbound. If this line were marked with flexible, white traffic dividers (just like those used a couple of blocks north), it would have the effect of narrowing the street and making the crossing less intimidating for pedestrians.

Assuming no budget for more expensive traffic calming measures such as curb bump-outs or a pedestrian light at 47th, these low-cost improvements could still do much to increase pedestrian and vehicle safety in the area.

Will you do us the favor of investigating any barriers there might be to implementation and let us know what help will be forthcoming?

Regards,
Marty

Good call. This area is a jurisdictional nightmare, which is part of the problem.
Parkway is Park Board turf, Cedar is Hennepin County turf, and streets like 47th St are city turf.
The node is split in two wards, with west of Cedar in 11 and east of Cedar in 12.
The node is split in two neighborhood organizations, with west of Cedar in Northrop (FRN) and east of Cedar in Erricson (S-E).

This actually gets at my main critique of how we use our main neighborhood streets to split up wards, neighborhoods, districts, etc. It ends up splitting many neighborhood nodes and it dilutes the effectiveness of organizations and officials to take a node under their wing and work to improve it. 42nd/Cedar and 47th/Cedar are great examples of this effect, whereas 48th/Chicago (where it's the "heart" of Field-Regina-Northrop) shows the benefit of that unified node improvement approach.

This is part of the reason why a bunch of our ad-hoc efforts and tactical urbanism projects are working under the banner of "West of Nokomis" since it's more geographical and less restrictive.

Good call. This area is a jurisdictional nightmare, which is part of the problem.
Parkway is Park Board turf, Cedar is Hennepin County turf, and streets like 47th St are city turf.
The node is split in two wards, with west of Cedar in 11 and east of Cedar in 12.
The node is split in two neighborhood organizations, with west of Cedar in Northrop (FRN) and east of Cedar in Erricson (S-E).

This actually gets at my main critique of how we use our main neighborhood streets to split up wards, neighborhoods, districts, etc. It ends up splitting many neighborhood nodes and it dilutes the effectiveness of organizations and officials to take a node under their wing and work to improve it. 42nd/Cedar and 47th/Cedar are great examples of this effect, whereas 48th/Chicago (where it's the "heart" of Field-Regina-Northrop) shows the benefit of that unified node improvement approach.

This is part of the reason why a bunch of our ad-hoc efforts and tactical urbanism projects are working under the banner of "West of Nokomis" since it's more geographical and less restrictive.

Same thing happens all over. Uptown at Henn/Lake 4 different neighborhoods and I believe Lake and Hennepin are different jurisdictions.

My SO lives very close to that intersection, and I've noticed it is often quite hard to make a left turn onto Cedar from 47th. I often end up just going down to the Parkway and turning at the light.

Bike parking at Bergan's Supervalu by mattaudio, on Flickr

The Nokomis-Hiawatha Regional Park Master Plan will not be taking a position on the Cedar Avenue Bridge, the thing built by humans which most defiles either the natural or human environment in the regional park.

The Nokomis-Hiawatha Regional Park Master Plan will not be taking a position on the Cedar Avenue Bridge, the thing built by humans which most defiles either the natural or human environment in the regional park.

I need to ask...how would this area work with no bridge? The water was basically up to the bottom of the bridge at its highest point this spring.

Wouldn't any "grade level" street be washed out completely?

What am I missing?

There are a few options, including reimagining the Cedar/77/62/Bloomington area, linked in the comments on this thread: https://streets.mn/2014/05/23/cedar-bridge-lake-nokomis/

The most viable options would likely include a repurposed parkway around the west side, either connecting right back to Cedar, or with a roundabout to distribute traffic along 54th, Bloomington, and Cedar. Hopefully removing the bridge would simply eliminate a share of the traffic, induced [lack of] demand.

Regarding the bridge, removal is not a part of the Nokomis-Hiawatha Regional Park Master Plan. I received a reply from the landscape architect who is MPRB staff for the commission. He said it was not a proper role of the park board or this commission to weigh in on a "regional transportation" topic. I think that's ridiculous - just take a stand and talk about how the bridge was hated from the start (Theo Wirth's opinion) and still defiles the park/lake and resident access to the park today. And then let the county/city/etc figure out how to accommodate that position as future plans arise.

When I first moved to MSP, this bridge confused me SO much. As in, why in the hell did they put this weird bridge over this really nice like in the middle the city. In general that whole area (Cedar, 77, 62) felt really poorly thought out to me as an outsider, to the point where I wrote off wanting to live right around the lake basically because of it.

I understand a little better now, with the role 77 plays and its adjacency to the airport, but I have to believe any perception of a true "need" for that bridge is mainly due to the induced demand of already having it there, as mattaudio says.