The first-ever East Bank Neighborhoods Partnership (EBNP) meeting was Tuesday night with association members and city staff giving updates about the two future construction projects in the area, the creation of more green spaces and the EBNP itself.
EBNP was created in October after neighborhood associations from Marcy-Holmes, Southeast Como and Nicollet Island voted to merge into one organization. With declining financial support from the city, association members decided to go forward with the merger to combine financial resources.
“These three organizations found that their funding from the city was diminishing year by year and thought it would be better to merge so that we would have a strong administrative support for all the activities that were happening in these neighborhoods,” EBNP Interim President Ted Tucker said in the meeting. “So this is a merging of associations, not of neighborhoods. You’ve got to remember that.”
Tucker said the new board of directors will be elected in November and consist of 15 members with six at-large directors.
The three neighborhoods will elect three directors to work alongside the six at-large directors, Tucker said. At least two of the at-large directors must be renters, and if a seat is not filled by a renter, the seat will remain vacant, he added.
“We’re doing our best to broaden the representation,” Tucker said. “Above all, to get more students to live here just for a few years, but still are a very important part of the community. And above all, have more renters.”
Presenters at the first EBNP included representatives from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, Minneapolis Public Works and more.
Three years of construction around Dinkytown
Public Works Transportation Planner Mallory Rickbeil, along with engineer Spencer Evert, overviewed future construction on Fourth Street and University Avenue. The construction project aims to repave streets, add protected bike lanes and update intersections to comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) standards, according to Hennepin County.
Rickbeil said planners used crash data from 2017 to 2022 to identify the places and intersections where vehicle accidents commonly occur. She said around 46% of crashes involved a pedestrian or cyclist in these areas.
“We prioritize our project based on where are the crashes? What is the severity of crashes and where are they located on multi-modal corridors? When do they involve pedestrians and people who are running bicycles?” Rickbeil said in the meeting.
A final concept of construction will be finalized in July, Rickbeil said, while construction will begin in 2026 and resurfacing in 2028.
Alongside the pedestrian improvement project, SRF Consulting engineer Joshua Colas presented construction plans for University Avenue and Fourth Street construction to make roads smoother, update ADA standards, extend pavement life and improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, cars and cyclists.
“We’re looking to bring enhancements for safety, for comfort, for visibility, for those that are walking, and the bikes that are also motorists as well,” Colas said in the meeting. “How we’re going to do that is that we’re actually going to be reconstructing the roadway and also in a place in the bridges, bring them up to standard and also extend them along, jamming up the life of you.”
MnDOT is wrapping up the preliminary designs of the two roads with construction scheduled for 2027 and 2028.
“I’m just really happy to bring improvements here, and hopefully these are the results that the communities have ever seen,” Colas said in the meeting.
From industrial to green
The Grand Rounds Missing Link project would add parks, trails and parkways to connect the city’s greenspace with around $6 million in funding already approved for the project, Project Manager Julie Aldrich said.
Landscape Architect for the project Andrew Montgomery showed the audience how to use the project’s interactive map. Connecting the city’s greenspace would first require removing two portions of the industrial parkway to turn it into a green space, Montgomery said.
“We’re really excited about this location,” Montgomery said in the meeting. “There’s some park expansion opportunities. And really this portion will be the only portion of the grand rounds that goes through an industrial area. So it’ll have kind of a unique character.”
Montgomery said other improvements include a Bus Rapid Transit plaza and future park spaces dedicated to pedestrian and cyclist use within the missing link section of the Grand Rounds. He added a way the community can help is to be vocal about wanting these improvements.
“Being vocal and being present are two really great ways to help the park board kind of keep that energy visible to the community at large and to our commissioners,” Montgomery said. “We’d certainly appreciate that.”
