In 2011, Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) produced a program titled "
Lowertown: the rise of an urban village," which explored the history of Lowertown and the many stories that helped shape the vibrant district that it is today. During the filming of this project, the Green Line was in the
process of being built, the Union Depot was under
renovation, and we had just purchased the
Pioneer Endicott buildings for
renovation. Fast forward three years, and all of these projects have been completed, along with numerous
new restaurants, and even more
developments underway (like
a revamp of Rice Park)! Additionally, Lowertown has received national recognition as '
The Most Romantic North American Getaway,' one of the Top 10
Up-and-coming neighborhoods around the USA,' '
America's Top Hipster Zip Code,' and #1 of the '
12 Great Neighborhoods' in the Twin Cities.
With all of this recognition, new development, and increased growth, we wanted to catch up with the voices of TPT's Lowertown 2011 program, all prominent neighborhood figures, to hear their thoughts on the fast growth these past three years in the neighborhood.
Our first interview was with David Fhima, executive chef at
FACES Mears Park. The
second interview was with John Mannillo, commercial real estate developer and chair of the
Capitol River Council Development Reviews Committee. He also provided us with some
fascinating facts and stories about the early years of the Pioneer Endicott Buildings!
Our third interview, seen below, took place with
Ta-coumba T. Aiken and Lucy Thompson. Ta-coumba is a public artist / art activist and has been a resident of Lowertown for over 30 years. He is also in the
Guinness Book of World Records for creating the largest picture made of Lite-Brites. Lucy Thompson is the Principal City Planner of St. Paul, and has been greatly involved in the
Downtown Station Area Plan.
Ta-coumba and Lucy have known one another for a very long time, and they have both been an integral part of the slow and deliberate organic growth of Lowertown in the past 30 years. Ta-coumba, an internationally recognized artist, arts administrator, educator, and community activist, is full of hope and optimism (and fantastically insightful analogies). He is also a type of 'father' to Lowertown, making sure that everything runs smoothly in the world of the artists. Lucy Thompson has been the Principal City Planner in St. Paul for over 25 years. She is an advisor on the
Greater Lowertown Master Plan, and has written all plans for Lowertown over the past 15 years. Lucy knows Lowertown from the inside out, and is both excited and optimistic about the future of Lowertown as an artist's community. The three of us met at
Pioneer Endicott and had an in-depth discussion about Lowertown that yielded in newfound wisdom and understanding (for me anyway) about the community that is Lowertown.
In the text version of the (edited) interview below, Lucy Thompson will be illustrated as LT, and Ta-coumba Aiken as TA.
ON THE (NON) GENTRIFICATION OF LOWERTOWN
LT: The balance between affordable housing and market rate housing is seen in buildings such as the
Crane Ordway Building ... and every plan I've written for Lowertown all say to maintain housing affordability. The Greater Lowertown Master Plan also talks about maintaining long-term affordability for studio space. The city has tried and will try its best to abide by this, but it's tough because it's a market phenomenon ... We've seen it in city and city around the country. It's happening in Minneapolis. Artists come downtown, but once they arrive it becomes a 'cool place' to be, and other people want to come. Property values increase and the artists get priced out.
TA: We had an idea as artists to develop a place that artists could live and work. All of these things have learning curves. Yet, the community has grown, and 25 years (of growth) means we (the artists) had something to do with it ... It is always a great task to find a way for all kinds of people in all economic levels to grow within a place. There's this real fear that everybody is going to get priced out, but we work everything out here - together, and so far so good!
LT: I think the difference about Lowertown is that it is a resident artist neighborhood. A lot of art districts are made up of just studio space, where the artists themselves go away and live elsewhere. This (Lowertown) is and always has been a resident neighborhood, and that is different. I think people have a stake in neighborhoods like this. They are here 24 hours a day, so there is this consistent kind of investment in the neighborhood. This is a huge resource for someone like me working in the city, to know that the group is here and they are committed to every facet of the community.
TA: And, in a way, the people here, we work in a value system. So, some people have money, some people have talent, some people have talent and money. Some people are just really amazing greeters in the neighborhood who will help visitors find the
Green Line or
Union Depot. There's always going to be people who want to invest and make money. I think you can make money here no matter what, but focusing it on just the people that have money, that makes no sense because there are people who don't yet have money, who will eventually have money if they get the opportunity. That's what can happen in Lowertown.
LT: Yes, it's about balance. You see investors doing the Crane Ordway Building, and there's been some really excellent affordable or worker housing and there's deliberate investment in that, but if that's all it were, that wouldn't help grow the neighborhood. So there's some preservation of existing affordable housing, but there's also got to be the higher end stuff. I mean, that's just the way good, diverse neighborhoods are. That way it doesn't stagnate.
ON OPPOSITION TO THE GROWTH OF LOWERTOWN
LT: I remember when we started working on the Green Line. We had very heated conversations at the
Black Dog. There were public meetings that the
Met Council held, and I remember the discussions about the Operations and Maintenance Facility (OMF). The OMF is the shed that's at the end of the tracks, and when the Council discussed siting it there, I remember people standing up at the Black Dog and saying, you know, "the mayor has abandoned Lowertown, this will reinforce it as an industrial space!" These are the people who spent half a million dollars to buy a condo in Lowertown. So they were the new generation. They were the empty nester folks coming back into Lowertown but not expecting a changing neighborhood. I remember them saying "that's not what we bought into. We bought into a high end residential district." And I myself thought, well, that's not the district we're creating. So there's a little bit of a mismatch there. I think overtime now, people have gotten comfortable with the Light Rail and the OMF, but I think there certainly continues to be residential investment in Lowertown.
TA: Yes, while many of these people have grown to love it now, there were and are artists who thought there was too much development. They were afraid that they would not be able to afford living in Lowertown, or that there was going to be too much noise due to construction. And I always say, you know, there's beautiful property in MN and WI where there's no noise, and you can enjoy it it, but if you're looking for an urban setting you can't fool yourself. Like, some people don't like the little bell that the light rail has. I can have my window open and hear it, and I think it's kind of nice!
TA (continued): You also heard people worrying about the new
Saints ballpark. They were concerned that the lights were going to shine into their apartments and cause a nuisance. And I'm like, well, so does the moon, but you don't complain! But in all honesty, these same people will hopefully be able to go over there and realize that they can enjoy this new ballpark too. You kind of have to not look at the flat tire. You just have to reinvent the wheel. People are always giving it a flat tire, and I'm like, you haven't even see the car, you haven't even seen the vehicle that's taking you there! And you can drive it and you can prescribe to it now and maybe redesign it before it gets going. Every single day you can do that here!
TA (continued): It's like, people need to realize that things can't stay the same. If you put a rock in a creek up North, the Mississippi will still flow all the way down. We (Lowertown) evolved from the spirit of the Mississippi - we can't help but grow! We have to respect nature and respect people, but we have to respect the possibilities. Things never stay the same in nature, and we're not even 10% mimicking that. We should be doing at least 50%.
LT: I like that, the rock in the steam. It's like, the water will go around the rock and it will keep flowing. And it's like, well, you can try to be that rock in the stream, but the world's going to keep going.
ON THE ARTISTS OF LOWERTOWN. THE OLD AND THE NEW
LT: I think for a long time, the artists in Lowertown were happy being under the radar ...
TA: Well we had to be!
LT: They said: "We are just fine. First of all, we don't want people to find out about us because we're going to lose this great treasure." I think it was just a different artistic generation too. And what I have perceived over all of these years is younger artists coming in with a very different approach to art-making, to art-selling. They have incorporated their art into a lot of other things than just their livelihood. I perceived, I don't know if this is true or not, but a little bit of tension there for a while with young artists who wanted everyone to know about Lowertown. They're like, we're really excited to be here and we want to be here, and the older more established artists ...
TA: I think the older artists wanted to be seen, but they were really organized. I mean, figure 32 years ago we're talking about buying a building and being living, working artists. You know, other artists were going, yeah yeah, good luck with that.
LT: Yeah, it wasn't happening then!
TA: Yeah, Minneapolis and the warehouse thing. They were running people out, tearing things down. If it didn't get torn down, it got burned down. And we're over hear thinking, yes, this is a good idea (to have a living, working artist community) ... The younger artists were hearing about these things (artist commons/living spaces), and they were coming over here. You know, their desres were different. They didn't have to stop being artists in order to have families and places to live.
LOWERTOWN: A TAPESTRY AND A NEIGHBORHOOD IN TRANSITION
TA: I call it a weaving. Lowertown is like a tapestry that's still being made. And it's going to be super super super large. It's very small right now.
LT: I think there's a preciousness to the physical fabric of Lowertown that we all have to be careful that we don't lose. So there's these great historic buildings, it's a
national registered historic district, it's a locally designated historic district. We've had some new buildings go in - I think they've been done really well, but, as with so many arts districts in the country, they were first historic districts. But that preciousness of the fabric I think is really important to us. We're lucky in St. Paul that we have small blocks. It's a very
intimate European kind of downtown. But if we had done five buildings like
Cray or
Galtier Plazas, it would have been a very different place.
LT (continued): The importance of the existence of
Bruce Vento Sanctuary on one edge (of downtown) and the
Sam Morgan Regional Trail on another just can't be denied. And I think Vento has helped people accept maybe a little bit more density because you do have like, two blocks away, this urban oasis and green space.
TA: Yeah, I mean people go jogging and there's music in the park. Sometimes you don't even know who is sponsoring it, and you don't care, you know?! I really want people to pay attention to the multiple cultures that are here, that are just comfortably doing their thing. There are all of these amazing things: the
East Indian Dance Company,
Zeitgeist, Flamenco, and
The Baroque Room.
LT: And then you have
Artspace. This was the
first place for their urban project, and that says something to me.
TA: We showed the national and international landscape how to get their acts together, so they can do what we're doing. We just all did it together. We figured, why not do this as a business? Why not find a way to help artists live and work in a space ... it's a really interesting dance between all these people and organizations to make something work. But we've done it. We've influenced policies within the city of Saint Paul.
LT: And now, the
Saint Paul Art Collective is actually working with Artspace on exploring the idea of a Lowertown Art Center. However, we don't know if that will go ahead - it's up to the Art Collective to decide how to proceed. It could be an informational center where you could see a map of all of the gallery spaces. It could be a training space for artists. It could be production space. They've been working on it for one and a half years, because artists are starting to say, if we're really going to be here and invest in this neighborhood, then there are some things that we'd like and we want to be exposed to the world and we want people to know we're here. And I don't know what the answer is going to be.
TA: I mean, why not have this quintessential space that great people come to just like places in Tennessee or the
Grand Ole Opry. Places people know. Artists come from around the world here, they come right to Lowertown.
LT: Yes, there is still plenty of room for growth here. Lowertown is certainly a neighborhood in transition. There are still things coming down the line, like CHS Field. There are investments in things like
Custom House, things like the continuing kind of prosperity and investment related to the Green Line, and we hope that will continue to change Lowertown.
TA: And, I also think that part of the development of Lowertown is a selflessness of existence. It's not us us us, it's
US. I think, when we look back on this time, we all want to be able to say, "Yeah, we really did this."
