I’m the owner of Flower Bar at 2736 Lyndale Avenue. Flower Bar is a totally new floral concept inviting everyone to come and experience the joy of creating your very own floral arrangement right here in our store! We provide the flowers and some helpful tips; you provide the creativity.
Until just recently I was focused on growing my business, a new direction for me from my former career as an interior designer. Then I learned about potential changes coming to Lyndale Avenue.
I am not an activist. In fact, I had managed to get this far in my life without engaging in politics or the complexity of city policy.
But when I learned about plans which would remove parking on Lyndale Avenue in the name of promoting a carbon-free city, it made no sense to me.
I have employees who live blocks away from the shop and walk to work. Why are we eliminating convenient access to businesses for customers, which will in turn harm or destroy businesses like mine, businesses our employees can walk to?
There’s a good example of this on Hennepin Avenue between Lake Street and 31st Street, with board ed-up and empty retail space and owners unable to lease their spaces due to lack of convenient access. It seems we have tipped the scale of balance in the city, and logic and reason are no longer in play.
I started wondering. Is the city’s purpose in eliminating parking to encourage more biking and walking trips — which we all can support — or is it to get rid of the roads that are designed for cars? All cars? What about electric cars? Or perhaps shared-ride cars.
I had to get involved.
I went to the first public engagement meeting on August 24, 2023. There were only three other business owners in the room, and it seemed everyone else was a bike advocate. At that time, I was not aware that there was such a thing as a bike lobby, and only later did I learn of their clout.
Concerned with what we had heard at the meeting, another business owner and I spent the better part of three days walking from Franklin Avenue to 31st Street on both sides of Lyndale Avenue talking with fellow business owners and managers about the project.
Everyone we spoke to was either unaware of the project and if they did know about it, they had a very limited understanding of its scope. They did not realize that it might involve the loss of on-street parking, and a complete sidewalk-to-sidewalk tear out.
As a result of that spontaneous outreach, we have created an unofficial group called the Small Business Alliance, with 74 businesses involved. We are working together with neighborhood residents to try to keep parking on Lyndale Avenue as part of the redesign and to educate our group and others on how these design decisions are being made so that there will be a fairer engagement process with the community at large.
Lyndale Avenue businesses and property owners from Franklin Avenue to 31st Street pay $5,138,419 in property taxes, not to mention sales tax that they collect and pay on behalf of their patrons. Business owners and individual residents alike are at a very unfair disadvantage by being asked to compete with well-funded lobbying groups to get their opinions heard.
Members of the Small Business Alliance agree that losing parking means losing business! We have created a website to keep people informed: www.vibrantlyndale.org
You can also sign our petition here: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/vibrant-lyndale-needs-onstreet-parking/
Andrea Corbin, owner of Flower Bar, can be reached at 612-707- 6330 or at andrea@flowerbarexperience.com.
