The Daily Mall Reader: Apache Plaza Mall

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Big-box Paradox

Star Tribune - March 01, 2003

(Excerpt) City officials in St. Anthony Village, a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, had a small-town, downtown dream for the redevelopment of the aging Apache Plaza mall, which sits almost empty in the heart of this community of 8,000.

Minnesota's second-oldest enclosed shopping center (after Southdale in Edina) is scheduled to be razed and replaced by an urban village of housing, small shops, restaurants, walkways, ponds and an amphitheater along a meandering main street.

But a funny thing happened on the way from the first plan for this new-urbanist scene to the current conceptual drawing for St. Anthony's $150 million redevelopment project: The outline of a large discount retailer -- perhaps a Wal-Mart or Target -- was added to St. Anthony's pedestrian-friendly new downtown after city officials recognized some changing economic and political realities.

Read the full article here.