Minneapolis and the Minnesota Orchestra

There is a loft apartment for sale for over $2 million in an adaptively reused industrial building in the Mill District with a river view, near but not in, downtown Minneapolis (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/700-S-2nd-St-W70-Minneapolis-MN-55401/61624273_zpid/). Just try to wrap your mind around that, my elite, coastal friends. Let’s unpack this a bit. First, this means that some broker, who presumably knows the Minneapolis market thinks they can get over $2 million for an apartment, not a McMansion, not even a house – but an apartment in a dense-ish urban neighborhood in the mid-west. It also means that there are likely at least a couple of dozen people in the metro who have the capacity to come up with, let’s say $450,000 cash and the income to support a monthly mortgage payment (without taxes and operating costs) of roughly $13,000!!!!! And those are people want to live in a loft and not a single-family home. And, not in New York, or even Chicago. This is true, in a city where the conventional wisdom has given the downtown up for dead in the wake of the pandemic and the reaction to the murder of a Black citizen by a white police officer that became national news. At the same time, walking around the Nicolette Mall, once the 100% location in Minneapolis (and only a few hundred yards from that expensive loft), it is obvious that it is no longer the city’s commercial center.

What, my friends, is happening here?

It’s nuts. The forces of 21^st century capitalism have arbitrarily abandoned the traditional downtown, while market preferences have moved slightly, and only slightly, elsewhere. This is the destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate value on what can only be described as a post-pandemic whim. The action has moved only blocks away – with a couple of adjacent neighborhoods booming with activity. Some of this is as a result of work from home – with bobos (bourgeois bohemians) not wanting to get out of their pajamas and go to work in proximity with other people. Some of it is racism, in the wake of the George Floyd reckoning – a modern incarnation of white flight.  What’s particularly interesting about downtown Minneapolis is the havoc real estate capitalism has wreaked on the historic downtown. There aren’t many office buildings downtown that date to before the 80’s. Most of the office building stock is quite modern (glass and steel). There are very few early 20^th century masonry commercial structures left in the downtown. I would imagine part of the current market rejection of downtown is the characterlessness and soullessness of the efficient international style of commercial architecture from the period of 1980-2000. That emptiness of the exterior envelope is also reflected in the working environment contained inside these buildings – with most people employed in cubicles or open spaces. You certainly can’t blame middle management for wanting to abandon those white-collar industrial working conditions.

So, the Minneapolis bobos (the children who left Lake Woebegone for the Big City – all of whom regard themselves as being above average ) are working out of their six and seven figure loft apartments and meeting up with their colleagues in the numerous, lively North Loop and Mill District bars, restaurants and coffee shops leaving hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space untenanted. It is notable that Minneapolis was often ahead of the mid-century curve on urban revitalization for the last sixty or so years. My boss at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation went to Minneapolis in the 70’s to take a look at the recently pedestrianized Nicolette Mall – considered a huge success in keeping the downtown Dayton’s department store relevant. The Mall has now been ripped up and turned into a narrow street with wide sidewalks. Dayton’s is an empty shell (while it’s offspring, Target, has a store and its headquarters down the block on the former mall), except for the floor that is part of the skyway system – which remains publicly accessible – if empty.

Before SOHO became a mecca of consumerism, Minneapolis had the Warehouse District, where 19^th century commercial structures were converted into loft residences and work spaces in the early 80’s. The national artist housing consultancy, Artspace, was a moving force in the Warehouse District. Minneapolis had an early business improvement district attached to the mall (of where there was no visible evidence in my downtown walk around. Its street level office appeared to be empty and was locked up). The city had generous, well-known philanthropists, philanthropic companies, art collectors and sophisticated, cutting-edge patrons of the performing arts. It had large, dynamic museums and cultural institutions – including the Guthrie Theater and the Walker Art Center. Those institutions are still in place, but the philanthropic ecosystem that supported them is suffering from the disappearance of support of the arts by foundations and corporations. I am told upper-middle-class donors are besieged with requests for gifts.

Make no mistake, Minneapolis isn’t failing and isn’t an urban hellscape. It’s changing. Of course, the situation isn’t helped by the history of brutality and racism of the Minneapolis Police, and the destructive over-reaction of youngish, hipsterish, clueless left-wing activists who appear to believe in the Tinkerbell of good intentions – who now control the City Council and who remain in the “Defund the Police” camp, giving the leaders of local large businesses an excuse to move their operations out of the downtown.

Minneapolis has never had the demographic tidal wave that changed other older cities. It has a population of about 400,000, which is as much is its ever been. It is the unusual American majority white city at 61%. The Black population, which has been the focus of so much attention, is 16%. The fact that Black folks are a relatively small percentage of voters, and therefore, presumably not particularly politically powerful, makes it easy to understand the resiliency of a hostile police force.

Racial issues were in high relief in the physical geography of the downtown. In my walk around (in sub-freezing temps), the folks on the street level were mostly Black. In the ubiquitous skyways, the occupants were mostly white. Both spaces were sparsely populated. This was understandable on the sidewalk given how cold and windy it was at the end of February. Even I gave up on the outside after a few hours and retreated to the skyway. Street level restaurants on the mall a Friday lunch hour were almost empty, while skyway lunch places were doing some business (although there were a great many empty retail spaces there).

Downtown sidewalks were clean, and free of panhandling and camping. A change from my last, pre-pandemic trip is described here (https://www.theplacemaster.com/2017/07/17/delivering-compassion-to-the-homeless/). Buildings were uniformly well maintained and good looking at street level. But, as noted, they are mostly new. Because of the large number of parking structures (ramps, in midwest parlance), the downtown isn’t plagued with surface parking, which in many cities kills the energy of downtown. All of this makes empty commercial space all the more troubling. The conventional “clean and safe” solutions for urban revitalization aren’t going to cut it in downtown Minneapolis, as the reclaiming of the Mall for cars demonstrates. It is going to take a major cultural shift to bring activity and high occupancy back to these towers. The very nature of office work is probably going to have to change. Office work will need to be made more appealing to sophisticated knowledge workers. No more Taylor-esque minimization space per employee to shave costs. Private space for professionals will need to return to be the standard. Collective workspaces will have to be humanized (no, not just pool tables and snacks), in order to be more appealing than an MBA’s couch and pajamas. I would imagine it might help if bosses learned to be less predatory and obnoxious to their supervisees.  Yes, outdoor spaces (and in Minneapolis, the skyways) need to be made more inviting – but more fundamentally something about the nature of office work will need to change if the office towers of Minneapolis are going to be repopulated.

The Minnesota Orchestra has received more than its share of attention from the national classical music press (what’s left of it). Under its recently retired music director, Osmo Vänskä, it made critically acclaimed recordings of Nordic composers (which makes sense given the Scandinavian ethnic history of the region – lutefisk, anyone?). Last year Thomas Søndergård, a rising Swede took over the artistic leadership of the orchestra – maintaining the Nordic cast to the ensemble. The program I heard under Søndergård had the interesting idea of putting together two neo-Classical works of Stravinsky (the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and the Violin Concerto, with Isabelle Faust as soloist) with actual Classical symphonies of Mozart (No. 35, Haffner) and Hayden (No 92, Oxford). All used rather small forces for a symphony orchestra. Stravinsky’s mid-career attempts to channel the transparency and humor of 18^th century music might have revealed consonances with period compositions in the style gallant. But Søndergård’s performances lacked the essential character of either period. A real disappointment.

The orchestra plays in Orchestra Hall, a space right off the mall, that is as nondescript as its name. The facility is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary. The public spaces are oddly on various platform levels. The concert hall is essentially a shoe box shape, with scattered sound reflecting cubes on the rear wall and polygons on the ceiling. The sound of the hall is also as plain as the design. There is no distortion, and no particular warmth. It is an neutral, modern sonic experience. The hall neither adds nor detracts from the orchestra’s sound. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the richness and forwardness of the bass spectrum of Carnegie Hall’s famous acoutstic, for example, can be overwhelming – particularly in music from period of other than the 19^th Century.

The ensemble itself offers an old school weight. The strings produce a great deal of volume, even in quieter passages. They are do not play with a high gloss finish or as a tight, well-schooled ensemble. There are certainly fine players among the winds and brasses – but this approach does not flatter music of the Classical period, which, in the shadow of high-quality period historically informed ensembles, many major orchestras now avoid. But this is the program the Minnesota Orchestra chose to present, and they did not do it justice. The performances were undistinguished. But that being said, the auditorium was nearly full, and the audience was enthusiastic – which in the current environment is no small thing. As a student of early music, and a traveler to orchestras across the country, my expectations are very different (and not better or worse) than those of Minnesota Orchestras patrons. Certainly, the performances were competent and professional. They were loud and enthusiastic, no doubt. What they weren’t, was nuanced or sensitive.

Why Søndergård chose this program is something of a mystery, since he seemed to have so little affinity or affection for this repertoire. I suppose all four pieces from these two parallel periods have similar aspects – but they shouldn’t sound uniform. In the Stravinsky concerto, Faust was often overpowered by the band, and while her playing was exact in pitch and rhythm, she also didn’t seem to get Stravinsky’s wit and compositional cleverness.  Textures were generally thick – even given the small forces. The orchestra ought to be bringing a different approach to either neo-classic or actual classic period works than the heaviness and solidity they might bring to Mahler or Bruckner. The Minnesotans who come to Orchestral Hall apparently don’t expect anything different.

The Stravinsky is about contrasting instrumental textures, balances and rhythmic crispness and vitality. The Hayden and Mozart should be about grace and elegance. Both Stravinsky and Hayden were the greatest of musical jokesters. Søndergård apparently disagrees and is among those who think bringing period knowledge to musical performance is a waste of time. His conducting was crisp and sharply defined. Often, his beating of time with his right hand was tiny. He left his gesturing for major changes in tempo or volume.

For those of us raised on the recorded music of the 50’s through the 70’s, that may be exactly what we expect to hear. The much-recorded Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics were of their time. They played in the same “serious,” shall we say, Germanic fashion, no matter the composer or period.

The trip to Minneapolis reminded me of what an abundant, wealthy country this is. Minneapolis remains a great, powerful city with many wealthy families and successful companies. Even given the tremendous inequality of income in this country, most Minnesotans, by any historical standard, live remarkably well. I visited the memorial square for George Floyd, south of the downtown – and enjoyed a very fine cappuccino and chocolate croissant in the hipsterish café facing the square. The homes surrounding the square may have been modest in comparison to the fancy downtown lofts or the palatial homes of suburban Burnsville, which I also drove through. But they were well maintained, and part of pleasant residential neighborhoods.

Downtown Minneapolis isn’t dead by any means. The vibrancy has just moved a few blocks away. Residents of across the metropolitan Twin Cities have a great many blessing (not the weather, perhaps), including a rich array of cultural, educational and medical institutions. But the arbitrary, fickleness of consumers is highly evident in the collapse of the city’s commercial center – and is unsurprising in our era of impending autocracy, very much driven by unjustified mid-western dissatisfaction with their economic and cultural situation, as well as by anger at the smug superiority of coastal elites. But just because the orchestra is kind of old fashioned, by my effete New York standards, doesn’t mean I necessarily think there is anything wrong with it. Nor is there anything fundamentally wrong with the economy of Minneapolis. We all, and I do mean all, should be grateful for what we have, and be considerably less wasteful with resources (like capriciously abandoning tens of thousands of square feet of late 20^th century office buildings). Especially those living in wildly expensive loft apartments with views of the Mississippi who are able to walk, but probably drive, to the symphony.