Roper: To save Nicollet Mall, we need more doors

Look at the fledgling Dayton’s Project, for example, where they can’t find tenants to occupy a gargantuan former department store. City Center’s sizable spaces are now boarded up. The glassy mall-facing retail spaces of IDS Center are all empty. I can count five restaurants that have cycled through a multistory space near 9th Street and Nicollet in the last decade.

I am told that retrofitting storefronts will be expensive and a tricky sell, partly since many of the building owners aren’t based here. It would also require a significant public-private partnership. Additional work would then be needed to entice small businesses. A 2023 report from the Minneapolis Foundation, “Downtown Next,” offers some strategies to address these hurdles.

And there are some potential sources of funding to incentivize the changes.

The city is redirecting about $6 million a year in taxes from certain buildings to a special “value capture” district that was supposed to pay for a streetcar on Nicollet and Central avenues. (The streetcar project is now dead, and a slight change in state law would loosen up that money.) City leaders also recently voted to impose a new 2% tax on hotel stays, which would generate about $6 million a year toward things that help boost tourism.

While we’re talking about storefronts, the city should get serious about another more basic problem that hurts the vitality of the mall: Windows.

The city has long had special rules for Nicollet Mall buildings, saying that their ground-level facades must have a lot of transparency. After all, seeing inside businesses makes cities more enjoyable to walk around. These rules have since been extended to much to downtown.