The Wake

The plastic tables outside the Purple Onion cafe contain nothing but snow and cigarette butts. Large windows that allow the Loring Pasta Bar to swell onto the sidewalk in the summer are shut. And thin winter sunlight illuminates the tightly clasped umbrellas on the sky-high patio at Annie’s Parlor. Still, signs that Dinkytown is a thriving community catering to students of the nearby University of Minnesota are unmistakable.

A woman stops at her bank on the corner before stepping into Avalon, a small gift shop on the main thoroughfare of the area. A car with the bumper sticker “Annoy a Republican, think for yourself” is parked in front of the shop, while a man with a bulging backpack and a bike with a flat tire walks to Erik’s Bike Shop, next to the Varsity Theater.

Wikipedia, the online public-driven encyclopedia, calls Dinkytown “an unofficial neighborhood” adjacent to the University of Minnesota that is a “small town-like area, with everything within walking distance.”

But just as the clattering streetcars that may have given Dinkytown its name have been forgotten (along with the old Bridegman’s ice cream shop and pharmacy), the “small town-like area,” the encyclopedia refers to may soon give way to chain restaurants and stores more likely to be found in newer suburban strip malls and food courts.

Corporate-backed stores like Starbucks and Bruegger’s Bagels have joined such mainstays as the McDonalds on 4th Street. Now that Kraus-Anderson, a company that traditionally has dealt with retailers like Cub Foods and Montogomery Ward, purchased the building that houses the Purple Onion, more chains are likely to follow.

“We’ve had tremendous pressure from national food tenants that would like to be in Dinkytown,” Kraus-Anderson’s Jim Stimmler says. Stimmler, who is listed on the Kraus- Anderson website as a realtor for the property that houses the Purple Onion, declined to say exactly which chains will be featured after the Purple Onion closes. However, Stimmler confirmed that there will be two national fast-food chains coming soon to the property.

Pat Weinberg, owner of the Purple Onion as well as other coffee shops around campus, declined to be interviewed for this story.

But while newer and better-known businesses appeal to some, most students feel that national chains take away the character that makes places like Dinkytown attractive in the first place.

Karen Gregory, a high school senior from Maple Grove who was visiting Espresso Royale, a locally owned coffee shop a block from the Purple Onion, called the small shops in the area “underappreciated” and added that Dinkytown felt like “the other Uptown.”

Uptown is a shopping district in South Minneapolis which recently acquired such trendy chain stores as American Eagle Outfitters and Panera Bread Company, and where yet another chain store, The Gap, has remained a prominent fixture for a number of years.

“I wouldn’t like Dinkytown if it gets too commercialized,” Gregory says.

More worrisome to Dinkytown small shop owners than corporate commercialization is the skyrocketing taxes and the resulting rent hikes. According to the City of Minneapolis property database, the total taxable value of the 324 14th Ave. S.E. property has more than doubled in the last 10 years. In 1997 the total taxable value of the building was $121,000, compared with $300,000 in 2004. Higher property values mean higher taxes, which means higher rent for area building tenants.

“My rent has more than doubled,” Skott Johnson, a local business owner of Autographics and president of the Dinkytown Business Association, says. According to Johnson, the end result of higher rent is “fewer and fewer ma-and-pa shops in places so unaffordable that only chains could afford them.”

Johnson, a University of Minnesota graduate, has been involved with the Dinkytown Business Association for about 25 years. He recalls a time when Dinkytown was a “great place to be.” The area had “numerous clothing stores and other small shops” that catered to the student community, he says. It was when students began getting cars and traveling other places to do their shopping that small businesses in the Dinkytown area began to suffer. “We just couldn’t compete with the suburban malls,” he says.

According to Johnson, the key to keeping a small business thriving in Dinkytown is by inhabiting the older and cheaper buildings in the area. But when chains move in and renovate the buildings, property values–and taxes–increase. A prime example, Johnson says, is the Loring Pasta Bar, located in the heart of Dinkytown.

The building that houses this elegant and unique restaurant used to be a pharmacy. After purchasing the building from the pharmacy, the owner of the Loring Pasta Bar put more than $2 million into the building. This promptly sent land values soaring, possibly paving the way for the chains that can afford to stay.

But some corporate chains do have some good effects on Dinkytown, Johnson says. “McDonald’s is fabulous to have here,” he says. Johnson describes how McDonald’s not only contributed financially to numerous local causes in the area, but also picked up garbage around the neighborhood. “What a great neighbor to have,” he adds.

In the meantime, across 4th Street from Johnson’s business, hammers ring loud as workers continue refurbishing the space in preparation for The Library, to be re-opened sometime in mid-December. The owner of the bar, John Schroeder, also owns bars in several cities in Texas. He says he chose this location because, like the bars he owns in Texas, he prefers to be in the vicinity of a college. And so, yet another new business will change the face of Dinkytown.

According to Ryan, a second year student at the University of Minnesota who lives in Dinkytown and works at Annie’s Parlor, the “nice village feel” is what sets Dinkytown apart from other neighborhoods. “I don’t want it to lose that,” he says.