The Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) department held a community engagement meeting on Thursday evening at the Arvonne Fraser Library in Dinkytown to discuss the draft guidelines for the Dinkytown Commercial Historic District.
Minneapolis city planners Robert Skalecki and Erin Que led the meeting, presented the draft design guidelines and answered questions from community members.
Minneapolis City Council approved the Dinkytown Commercial Historic District designation in 2015. Revolving around the intersection of Fourth Street SE and 14th Street SE, the district includes 35 properties constructed from 1899 to 1929 — the period of importance as outlined in the draft.
However, the city council-approved period of importance is only a portion of the original period proposed in 2015, which extended to 1972.
While drafting the guidelines for the Commercial Historic District, Skalecki, Que and their team could solely base their work on the city council-approved period of importance. As a result, the current draft of the guidelines excludes buildings constructed or significantly altered after 1929 from contributing status to the district.
Three such buildings are Blarney Pub & Grill, the Varsity Theater and the one-story brick building housing CrunCheese and Tony’s Diner.
Kristen Eide-Tollefson, a co-founder of Preserve Historic Dinkytown involved in the 2015 proposal, said she was surprised to see the exclusion of buildings initially accommodated in 2015.
“The proposal was to change literally a third of the buildings from contributing to non-contributing to the historic district and including the Varsity, which has been proposed as a landmark for decades by the city,” Eide-Tollefson said. “That kind of tells you how this has gotten a little off base.”
Skalecki said in the community engagement meeting a building with non-contributing status does not exclude it from historical preservation protections.
“A non-contributing resource does not mean that the property is being ‘de-designated,’” Skalecki said. “It still has the same preservation protections. It’s just that it’s evaluated somewhat differently.”
Community members like Eide-Tollefson remain concerned with the current draft guidelines. She said the draft allows for more high-density developments — like student housing complexes — which could impede the economic integrity of Dinkytown.
“Whenever a new development goes in, the rent goes through the roof, and you can’t sustain and provide the kind of business incubator and opportunities for new business,” Eide-Tollefson said.
Some Dinkytown property owners, like Steve Young, have opposing concerns. Young is the managing member of the real estate firm Arbor Commercial Group, L.L.C., which owns property in Dinkytown built in 1984. The property is included in the Commercial Historic District design under non-contributing status. Young said, despite not being a historical building, he is still required to comply with historical preservation standards to modify his property.
“Even though my building is not a contributing building, I still have to go through the Historic Preservation Commission to touch it in any way,” Young said. “So, it adds a layer of cost to small businesses that come into my building that they wouldn’t incur if they were one building outside of the historic district.”
Community members are not the only group involved in efforts to preserve historic Dinkytown. The University of Minnesota established 325 14th Avenue SE LLC to purchase the property, which was formerly home to Gray’s Campus Drug.
Leslie Krueger, assistant vice president for planning, space and real estate for the University and point person for the Gray’s property purchase, said the University hopes to protect Dinkytown as a valuable part of student life.
“We want a place that people feel excited to go, and where students can take their parents when they come to visit, when we’re a place that they can go to go on a first date, a place that faculty or staff can go out for lunch,” Krueger said. “We really wanted to make sure that we were supporting the preservation of that historically charming neighborhood commercial area.”
The guidelines for the Dinkytown Commercial Historic District are not final. At the end of the community engagement meeting, Skalecki said he and the rest of the CPED team hope for another, similar meeting to hear and discuss community feedback before the guidelines are made official.
“We’d be interested to hear what community members might want to see change and what we can do with that,” Skalecki said.