Streetscape Upgrades Continue
While much of the business activity in the North Loop has been temporarily scaled way back by the coronavirus outbreak, work is still progressing on major upgrades to the neighborhood streetscape.
New street lamp on 5th Avenue
New trees, LED street lamps and green grass now adorn areas that were quite stark and industrial-looking last year at this time—primarily along 3rd Street North and 5th and 6th Avenues.
It’s the final phase of a $9.3 million project to reconstruct and repave streets that had been among the most neglected in Minneapolis. In rebuilding and redesigning the streets, city crews created several new open spaces along the boulevard for trees and grass.
New sod on 3rd Street
They also pulled up tens of thousands of century-old bricks that had sunken and shifted in odd ways over the decades, sometimes covered in ugly patches of asphalt to smooth out the surface. Then after rebuilding the street and laying down a base layer of asphalt, they brought back 170,000 of the historic bricks to be placed on top of that solid surface instead of the bare ground that they originally were placed on in 1919.
For more updates on what’s happening in the North Loop, check our News Section.
By Mike Binkley, North Loop Neighborhood Association