Reading the Wedge Development Vision

A document with a point of view

The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association has published a Wedge development vision that opens by retelling the neighborhood's origins, naming Thomas Lowry, the transit leader who installed the horse-drawn streetcars that first ran through the area in the 1880s, and explaining the wedge-shaped boundaries that gave the neighborhood its nickname.

From there the document turns to the future, setting out the kinds of development residents would welcome along the Lyndale and Hennepin corridors and within the neighborhood's interior blocks. It is less a regulation than a statement of preference, a way for the neighborhood to speak with one voice to developers and the city.

The vision sits alongside the association's broader mission to advance a vision for the neighborhood, language that appears across LHENA's materials.

Why a vision matters here

The Wedge has absorbed decades of development pressure because of its location next to Uptown, its transit access and its walkability. A published vision gives the neighborhood leverage in conversations that might otherwise happen without it.

It also reflects a neighborhood that has thought carefully about density, having lived with it longer than most.

A neighborhood without a stated position on growth tends to get one imposed on it.

A document with a point of view

When a neighborhood publishes its own development vision, it is making a statement: growth is coming, and the Wedge intends to have a say in its shape. LHENA's planning work, including the action plans it has approved at neighborhood-wide meetings over the years, lays out where the association wants density, what it wants protected, and how it wants new buildings to meet the street.

LHENA — the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association, pronounced 'Lee-Nah' — is the volunteer-led nonprofit recognized by the City of Minneapolis as the Wedge's official neighborhood organization, one of dozens across the city. Its mission is to provide a structure for neighborhood leadership and participation, to facilitate the equitable sharing of resources, and to advance a vision for the neighborhood. A written vision turns that mission into something concrete that residents, developers and city planners can all point to.