Franklin Avenue Envisioning Project

When three community groups in the Seward neighborhood decided to collectively apply for a Minneapolis Great Streets grant, they saw opportunity to transform their stretch of Franklin Avenue (from the Light Rail Transit Station to the Mississippi River) into a signature commercial corridor with a physical presence that showcased its distinct neighborhood values. Our role as design consultant was to work collaboratively with the community and its organizers to help them envision how changes could reinforce their collective core values, and build toward their vision of a distinct, safe, pedestrian-friendly, active and engaging public street. The starting point for this process was to assume and appreciate that the peopele who live and work in Seward understand best the experience of being on Franklin Avenue. Like open-source programming, the community-at-large are the “on-the-ground” experts who could contribute the most valuable and meainingful information to our process. Our work emerged from what we learned by listening and from our abiility to see opportunity in the complex urban context. Our desgin response was to synthesize conceptually the values and vision of the neighborhood, to distill opportunities and propose solutions and strategies, including smaller-scale interventions that have a big impact on how we experience this neighborhood’s most public street.