Minneapolis: A riverfront development corporation will run through it

Minneapolis could get its first riverfront development coordinating board since the early 1980s under legislation soon to hit Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s desk. Yesterday House and Senate conferees settled their only difference: the date by which the Minneapolis City Council and the city’s independent park board must ratify the new organization (Aug. 1).

The nonprofit’s task: to focus private and public planning and investment, which the city’s diffuse power structure may inhibit. (St. Paul’s river nonprofit is one model for the Minneapolis group, but St. Paul’s strong-mayor system makes it a poor comparison for Minneapolis.) State Rep. Diane Loeffler says the impetus for the board is to revitalize the industrial stretch of the Mississippi in north and northeast Minneapolis, but adds that the board will cover the riverfront south of St. Anthony Falls as well. Irene Jones, a member of the city’s Above the Falls Task Force that pushed for the new board, said that on the south side, park upkeep is a need, and development occasionally is an issue.

The board will have a mix of nonprofit, foundation, business and community leaders, with at most half its members coming from government. Aside from the city and park board, member bodies include the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization; Hennepin County; the University of Minnesota; and (a late addition) the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area (MNRRA), a unit of the National Park Service that’s often heard from but seldom listened to at local government hearings. With this new group, that — and things along the upper river — may change.