Grand Avenue needs a sock shop
Rene Meyer-Grimberg and her whiteboard at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Victoria Street
What does Grand Avenue need? Some will say a place that sells socks and underwear. That’s one of the things Rene Meyer-Grimberg has learned from passersby at the corner of Grand Avenue and Victoria Street where she and her whiteboard can often be found.
Most recently, she’s been there to let residents and tourists know about the upcoming meeting on Friday. The St. Paul Planning Commission is closing the open comment period about the East Paul Grand Avenue Overlay District Zoning Amendments on April 12th, 2024 at 8:30 a.m. at City Hall with a public meeting. In plain terms, it’ll dictate building design such as height and distance from sidewalk. These things matter - our built environment impacts everything from how and where snow melts to how much sun streams through windows.
Dressed in red and with balloons, Rene is hard to miss on Grand Avenue. No one has told her to stand there and promote any agenda. And that’s hard to come by which is why we connected to tell her story. She’s a resident who has raised her family three blocks from Grand Avenue - who knows her neighbors in St. Paul and many of the business owners and landlords in the area (because they also live nearby). She cares about the trees that line the sidewalks as well as the shadows that the buildings cast onto the street.
The original car showroom inlay for Studebaker now where Cafe Latte resides
In just a couple minutes on the corner, you’ll learn the history of the main street from Rene. She can tell you about the car showrooms that lined Victoria Street as well as the places F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up going to. There’s also a history for how it came to be a main street crossroads as stolen land from the Native Americans that turned into scrip to pay US soldiers. And did you know the Cafe Latte space used to be a storage unit for the MN Opera in the 70s?
This is her social practice. Rene’s main questions to those that are curious enough to stop and chat - what do you think of the old buildings? How high would be too high? These are questions she started wondering herself when some of the shops she used to visit on Grand Avenue left. These questions led her to join Summit Hill Association and ultimately inspired her to engage with the street and its users directly. Rene finds that on the street she can chat with everyone who has a stake in Grand Avenue.
It’s important to note all that Rene is observant of while dedicating time to be present at the intersection. People are sharing their desires for the area. Below are some residential requests:
An independent shoe store
A place for kids and their parents to hang out
Venues that don’t cost money/carry alcohol
She’s also learning about traffic patterns as well as parking tendencies for visitors. People who don’t like malls, like to pull up and take care of business without a parking garage.
Through our conversation with Rene, we had a couple questions of our own come to mind:
What happens to an area when most buildings are owned by few (this could be national developers or local landlords)?
How can we create environments that support working and living close by?
What makes for transient communities?
You can connect with Rene on Instagram and Facebook where you can learn about other ways she invites the public to reflect on their built environments (next up, chess mob on Sunday!). And with regard to the meeting on Friday, if you can’t make it, written comments can also be submitted to spencer.miller-johnson@stpaul.gov by 4 pm on Thursday, April 11th 2024.