Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

Perhaps you too have been at least peripherily following the Miss Rockaway Armada. It’s a group of a couple of dozen or so artists floating on a raft (shown here under construction) from St. Paul to St. Louis. This morning I actually visited their website. I found it to be rather interesting.

I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that they have some philosophical underpinnings to their quixotic quest. I expected their expressed desire to interact with the communities along the river, sharing art and absorbing culture. What really caught my attention was their concept of Pirate Utopias or, more specifically, Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ).
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Following up on the recent Block Head Gathering, NDDC E. R. Team members started work on minimizing the adverse impacts of Highway 3 Reconstruction on our community’s economic vitality.

Encouraged by Northfield’s Public Works Director Heidi Hamilton’s offer to take the NDDC’s recommendations for signage to MNDOT, NDDC Community Advisor Victor Summa and Executive Director Ross Currier spent Saturday morning driving around in the rain, visualizing a visitor coming to Northfield, confronting the highway work and still figuring out how to buy a hamburger from the Quarterback Club.

Our innovative thinking included putting signs warning about the construction zone a quarter of a mile before the “road closed” signs are located to clue people in to the upcoming detour signs, suggesting that the detour signs be City of Northfield signs instead of the ubiquitous orange construction signs to make them more distinctive, and giving more detailed information on access to businesses than is typical. Here’s Victor outlining the concept to the rest of the E. R. Team.

We’ll follow up with Heidi on the success of her efforts with MNDOT. Then we’ll move onto the Library Plaza construction work planned for later this summer.

If you have some thoughts, please let us know.

In the course of following Norman Butler’s efforts to relocate Chapati into the vacant Church of the Rock building, I became aware of Chapter 1306 of the 2003 Minnesota State Building Code. In my amateur summary, Chapter 1306 requires the installation of fire sprinklers in all projects, regardless of any other fire and safety elements that are part of the project.

Northfield apparently adopted Chapter 1306 in October of 2003, with no public discussion. The city also chose to include the Subparagraph 2 on New and Existing Buildings, which many architects, building owners, and contractors have told me is financially prohibitive for historic structures.

The problem with it appears to be that trying to reto-fit a sprinkler system into these projects can be aesthetically damaging and economically devastating for hundred year-old buildings.

In a rather unusual twist, the end of the chapter of Chapter 1306 requires that a municipality submit a copy of the ordinance adopting MSBC 1306 to the state within 15 days of adoption. Although Northfield apparently adopted 1306 in October of 2003, they did not submit the materials to the state until August of 2004.

A number of municipalities that adopted 1306 have “unadopted” it, including Hastings. Apparently the complete lack of flexibility of the requirements have proved unworkable in the city’s historic downtown.

The Northfield City Council will be discussing Chapter 1306 at Monday night’s meeting. Business and building owners, as well as architects and contractors, are urged to attend.

NDDC Board Member Keith Covey takes a shift at the table for Carleton’s Family and Parent weekend. The NDDC has distibuted hundreds of Downtown Welcome Bags at both St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges over the past two weeks to support the schools’ hospitality and to let the visitors know about opportunities in Downtown Northfield.

Over two dozen volunteers supported this effort, doing things like filling the bags, delivering the bags, and greeting visitors with a gift of a bag. The response from the families and parents has made it all worthwhile. They’ve told us that the town is making them feel welcome and they feel good about having their kids attend a school here in Northfield.

How could you not feel welcomed by a guy like Keith…

I have been meaning to share a concept with you for some time…in fact, since I read the January edition of Mainstreet News. It’s about the 16:62 Design Zone. It’s located in a funky old neighborhood of Pittsburgh. They had some cool historic buildings in need of a little investment and a community that wanted a certain kind of economic development

The business leaders believed that this combination of assets had real potential. They decided to promote the area to a specific market niche - businesses that focused on arts and design. The business owners got together to look at branding the district through a shared vision and to promote the neighborhood’s assets to attract similar businesses and, ultimately, bring more customers to the area for everyone.

The local non-profit community development corporation helped to bring the businesses together. They were more focused on getting the business owners’ support than asking them for funding. The branding strategy didn’t cost much because they were basically repackaging what already existed. The CDC just asked local business owners to go visit with their neighbors and get the word out and bring back ideas. Sound familiar Block Heads?

Since the program started in 2000, the effort has attracted 51 new businesses to the area, 30 of which have an arts and design focus. The area now is recognized throughout the region as the place to go for these types of goods and services. They call what they did “Building the Buzz”.

In my first blog about getting recognition as an Art Town, I noted that we have attracted a number of creative industries: arts and design, architecture and engineering, graphics and words. I suggested that they might be assets on which we could build as part of achieving the Art Town recognition. Perhaps there is more than one possibility for leveraging these assets, perhaps branding our downtown district would provide a synergistic boost for economic development.

I think it’s an idea that merits further consideration. Check it out at: 16:62 Design Zone.