Posts Tagged ‘Lake Street Council’
Lake Street Council Annual Meeting
by Joyce Wisdom and Chris Oien We had a great annual meeting on Tuesday March 16th! One of our favorite activities at this event is recognizing some of the many businesses and individuals who help make Lake Street great. This year we gave out six awards. Community Responsibility Awards went too Gandhi Mahal, Top Shelf, and Kathee Foran from In the Heart of the Beast Theatre. Capacity Building Awards went to Highpoint Center for Printmaking and Midtown Global Market”'s Taste Bud Tart. And our Startup & Innovation Award went to Sauce Spirits & Soundbar. Congratulations to all our awardees! Six people were elected to the Lake Street Council board. Council Member Gary Schiff, Marty Shimko from US Bank, and Debbie Tucker from Hennepin County were all re-elected for three year terms. Nubberd Gonzalez from Goodwill Easter Seals, Joe Gilpin from Wells Fargo, and and Trung Pham from Pham”'s Deli were newly elected to the board. To close, we featured a panel on [...]
Thinking Ahead Connecting a Midtown Greenway Streetcar to Lake Street
by Joyce Wisdom Thinking ahead to what the results would be of a new Streetcar system in the Midtown Greenway and envisioning strategies to meet those results before it becomes reality was the topic of a study by four CURA students from the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. Blending Midtown Greenway Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Streetcar Traffic with existing Lake Street businesses, traffic and culture Jeremy Jones, Simon Blenski, Nicole Doran, and Kyle Weimann presented the results of their study recently to a combined meeting of the Boards of the Midtown Greenway Coalition and the Lake Street Council. Here are their recommendations on connecting a new Midtown Greenway streetcar line with the existing Lake Street and vicinity business community and activity: Small businesses must be actively engaged to ensure the business ecosystem is not disrupted so that businesses are not priced out of the market. Encourage and support more commerce in the Greenway [...]
Latino Reflections on Lake Street
Interview by Alexandra Renken, university of Minnesota Student of Joyce Wisdom, Executive Director of Lake Street Council What broad transformations have you seen occur with Latino businesses on Lake Street (as a result of Lake Street resurfacing, city ordinances, etc.)? Just to be clear, it was not a resurfacing road project, but a once-every-50-years project that included replacing water, gas and electrical lines beneath the street. The street was dug out to the bottom, removing old cobblestones and rail track that had been buried for decades. While Lake Street was always open one-lane in each direction, there was no parking and huge holes to traverse from one side of the road to the other. Ethnic businesses of all kinds fared better than most others during our recent road construction because of their customer loyalty. That held true for Ingebretsen”'s Scandinavian customers as well as Saigon Garage”'s Southeast Asian customers, but perhaps not so strongly for [...]
