Gateway District Ballpark Site
Near Nicollet Mall and Washington Avenue, Downtown Minneapolis
A nice concept, but not very practical. This park would have been plunked down into the historic Gateway area of downtown Minneapolis, a place where bums and run-down bars used to be plentiful, before the blocks were totally leveled in the 60s for massive urban redevelopment. Looking back, there is no one who considers the redevelopment a success. It was, in fact, a devastating failure. Several of the buildings built during the redevelopment are now themselves long gone. Now there are scads of very bland highrise apartment buildings contrasting boldly with surface parking lots.
So the city is still trying to find ways to reuse this land effectively 40 years later, and somebody got the bright idea to put a ballpark on some of those surface lots.
Boinng.
I have deduced the location of this park from its position relative to those office buildings shown in the background. It looks like it would have been built on the site of the old Nicollet Hotel, on Washington Avenue, between Hennepin and the Nicollet Mall. It's hard to tell for sure, but the park might also have required the Minneapolis Public Library block to the south, and old Federal Reserve block to the east. It may also have been centered on the surface lot which is southeast of the Nicollet Hotel site.
No matter. This is really a terrible location due to the lack of infrastructure. There is ZERO parking near the site, and the only freeway connections require extensive navigation of the ponderous one-way street system. Beyond that, in the time since this plan was scrapped, the old Federal Reserve building has been extensively renovated, and the Public Library has begun planning to rebuild on their site.
It's true that the thought of going to a game in the Gateway neighborhood is enticing and nostalgic, but the reality is that it would have been a nightmare.
This view looks southwest toward the core of downtown Minneapolis.
This beautiful hotel once stood on the site.