HometownSource Blogs

Maybe Judy Tschumper and I get along because neither of us took to retirement very well and, as she puts it, we “would rather wear out than rust out.”

We also share a fondness for the idea that cities should have “gathering places” where everybody knows your name.

Judy and I met several years ago when I was writing about development for the Star Tribune and Judy was Burnsville’s director of economic development. She was the city official charged with turning Burnsville’s dream of a downtown into a reality known as Heart of the City.

A couple years before I took  early retirement from the daily newspaper, Judy retired from her city job. And about as quickly as I abandoned retirement for a job managing Thisweek Newspapers and the Dakota County Tribune, Judy signed on as the part-time executive director of the Downtown Lakeville Business Association.

We have spent many pleasant times together at meetings and events that promote the revitalization of Lakeville’s historic downtown. I thought about Judy the other day while reading a Pioneer Press story that pretty much declared Heart of the City a failure – suggesting that it’s much more difficult to create a downtown from scratch, as Burnsville did, than to revitalize one that has some history, as does Lakeville’s.

To be sure, Heart  of the City has had its fits and starts. After securing millions in state, county and federal grants to replace a blighted section of Nicollet Avenue with new condos, apartments, offices and shops, the city of Burnsville struggled for years to land an arts center. Finally, a slim majority of the City Council decided to build the Performing Arts Center with public money rather than relying on a private developer to make it happen.

With the PAC ready to open in a few months, we learn that the International Chefs’ Culinary Center on the second floor of the anchor building – Grande Market Square – is closing because not enough weddings, banquets and parties were being booked up there.

Despite the problems, who could argue, Judy Tschumper asks, that what’s on the avenue between Burnsville Parkway and Highway 13 isn’t much better than what was there before?

“It was a total blighted area,” she said over coffee at Jo-Jo’s Rise  & Wine, a coffee shop and wine bar across from the park where the arts center is rising.

Tschumper knows that downtowns take time and “patience.”

The historic downtown where Judy works now is a good example of the difficulty associated with developing a town center, even when there’s been one for a hundred years. Lakeville’s downtown, on Holyoke Avenue between 202nd and 210th streets, was a pretty humble place when I moved to the community in 1999.

Judy took on the job of chief downtown advocate for Lakeville about the time Jody Enggren Braun was closing the grocery her family had run for 100 years. The  independent downtown supermarket couldn’t compete with a Cub at Dodd and Cedar and a Rainbow at I-35 and Highway 50, not to mention another Cub that announced it would be opening in Heritage Commons shopping center just north of the downtown.

I remember the day I learned about the Cub opening and figured that was the end of plans we downtown Lakeville folks had for our historic, walkable cluster of independent shops.

“Larry, I never would have been able to do Heart of the City if it weren’t for the Cub,” Tschumper said of the Cub that anchors the north end of Burnsville’s downtown.

Downtown Lakeville now is growing with a hockey center where Enggren’s used to be and lots of other new businesses, including boutiques, a candy store and wine bar – and a big Cub north of downtown that draws folks to Lakeville’s south side.

Judy can be romantic about downtowns, but her experience in Burnsville taught her to be practical. Heart of the City was to be big-box-free also, but Tschumper, Mayor Elizabeth Kautz and other Heart of the City supporters came to understand that the big boxes, such as Cub, attract customers for the little boxes.

“Plans change along the way,” Tschumper said.

Tschumper learned about changing plans when, as a young wife and mom living in Lexington, Ky., her husband died. So Tschumper  moved with her daughter back to her native Minnesota to pursue jobs ranging from secretarial to eventually managing Burnsville’s pioneering effort at developing a downtown.

She believes restaurants and other businesses will move to Heart of the City once the PAC opens, pointing with pride to the effect the Lakeville Area Arts Center has had on downtown Lakeville.

The downtown thing is going on throughout Dakota County. Eagan, the county’s largest city, is trying to create a walkable shopping, living, playing space on Highway 13 where the old Cedarvale Mall was torn down. Rosemount has engaged in debates over eminent domain and public spending related to that city’s desire to expand and revitalize its historic downtown.

And in Apple Valley, where Tschumper has lived for more than 30 years, an old pumpkin patch was supposed to have been transformed by now into a village center with shops, housing and parkland on Galaxie Avenue. It’s a long way from being the city’s new downtown, still looking more like a pumpkin patch than a town center.

Tschumper said it will take patience for Apple Valley to  move  its town center from 42 and Cedar to 154th and Galaxie and for  Eagan to create a community gathering spot on Highway 13 and for  Rosemount to get beyond  local opposition to buying property for downtown expansion.

But she says the effort is worth it, pointing proudly to what’s happening on Nicollet in Burnsville and Holyoke in Lakeville. It’s what happens in small towns, like Caledonia, Minn., where Tschumper grew up.

“Everybody knows everybody,” in downtowns, she said. “That’s huge.”

Larry Werner is editor and general manager of Thisweek Newspapers. He is at larry.werner@ecm-inc.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it