Downtown Minneapolis is undergoing a residential population explosion, and we think it’s about time to get reacquainted.

January 2007

January 2007 Special Sections

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Like many cities across the country, Minneapolis is experiencing a boom in its downtown residential population, fueled largely by the increasing number of young professionals, empty nesters, and singles who want to live close to work, shops, restaurants, theaters, museums, and bars.

Census data from 2000 puts the total downtown Minneapolis population at 30,038. A survey by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and the Fannie Mae Foundation predicts that those numbers will grow 19.7 percent by 2010.

Sam Grabarski, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, has his own prediction. “We expect the downtown residential population will grow to as many as 50,000 people over the next ten to fifteen years,” he says.

Throughout downtown, forty condos with 6,488 units are either in the development or selling stages, although a recent cooling off may put some of those projects on hold or convert them to rentals instead. Typically, downtown  had a residential base made up primarily of older homeowners, explains Mary Bujold, president of Minneapolis-based Maxfield Research, which tracks housing trends. What changed in the recent build out was an increase in lower-priced units that allowed more young people to buy instead of rent.

“Now we’re seeing just a lot more of everybody than we have in the past,” Bujold says. “Empty nesters, seniors, young people, middle-aged people from out of town or residents. It’s becoming a much larger, balanced, and diverse base.”

On the following pages, we will introduce you (or reintroduce, as the case may be) to downtown’s five major neighborhoods: Downtown East/West, Loring Park, Elliot Park, North Loop, and East Bank/Nicollet Island/Marcy Holmes. We’ll also give you the scoop on thirty-six residential developments just completed, under construction, or in the planning stages.