Past Projects : 2001 – 2003 : The Northwest Corridor, Hennepin County, Minnesota

The Design Center has been working with a variety of public and private partners to transform an aging county highway and the surrounding area into a corridor of connected and more livable communities. The initiative involves issues of suburban redevelopment, bus rapid transit service, transportation and land use alignment, and inter-governmental partnership.

County Highway 81 is a former rural state highway that begins in Minneapolis’ urban neighborhoods and runs through inner and outer suburban cities, ending in an area currently being developed. Along its length the corridor contains a diverse, and visually chaotic, mix of development from every era since the 1870s. Local leaders are concerned that the corridor is not performing well enough, as a traffic mover and as a collection of land uses. They want to use public and private reinvestment in the corridor to stabilize their communities, to diversify the available housing and to create the next generation of development.

Project partners include Hennepin County; the Northwest Corridor Partnership; the cities of Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Maple Grove, Minneapolis, Osseo, and Robbinsdale; the Metropolitan Council; private partners including Target Corporation, TCF, Scherer Brothers Lumber Company, and Wells Fargo; and non-profit partners including North Hennepin Community College, North Memorial Medical Center, and the North Metro Mayor’s Association.

The Design Center conducted two studies for this initiative:

  • Northwest Corridor Planning and Development Framework (2000-2001): This project, conducted early in the overall corridor effort, established a vision and principles for alignment between a proposed bus rapid transit system, a redesigned roadway network, and future land development.
  • Northwest Corridor Development Approach (2002-2003): This project created information and analysis tools to help staff, citizens and stakeholders in corridor cities consider transit-sensitive redevelopment along the entire bus rapid transit network. Issues included municipal fiscal impacts, urban form and overall suburban redevelopment considerations.

Status: Complete

 





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