Minneapolis is changing its land use rules! The Land Use Rezoning Study will guide what can be done where, and determine whether Minneapolis will have complete neighborhoods where people can easily access groceries, cafes, child care, health care, and other daily needs close to home.
👎 Right now city staff are only recommending small changes to existing rules. 👎
We need your help to encourage city staff and the council to allow more uses in more places throughout the city!
Public support for more flexibility in where we allow low-impact commercial uses is critical to changing the rules! We need you to let the Planning Commission and City Council know there is strong support for complete neighborhoods.
How you can help
- Fill out the survey on the Minneapolis 2040 website before Sunday, March 26th! https://minneapolis2040.com/implementation/land-use-rezoning-study/
- Talk at the Planning Commission public hearing on April 24, and City Council hearings in May.
The survey has 15 different questions which are directed to the different categories within the zoning code. Urban Neighborhood, Residential Mixed Use, Commercial Mixed Use, Downtown, Production, Transit and Parks. We have provided talking points for each category, and suggested points for the most important questions. You can use these suggestions as a starting point for writing some quick responses. Research shows that the most effective public comment strategy is a variety of different wording of similar points, instead of the same message copied and pasted (or sent on a postcard). Thank you for making our advocacy more effective by taking the time to write your response.
Learn more about the proposed changes on this city handout (10-15 minute read)
Suggested talking points are listed with the number of the question on the city survey.
- Question 1: Where should we have UN1, UN2, UN3?
- Urban Neighborhood 3 is currently applied to bus corridors, apply it to bike corridors as well.
- Question 4: Other Urban Neighborhood Comments?
- Allow Urban Neighborhoods to have commercial uses to create complete neighborhoods.
- Question 6: Residential Mixed Use, other comments?
- Residential Mixed Use 1 is applied along many goods and services corridors but only allows 5k square feet of commercial space in a building. This is not enough for a grocery store. A typical small grocery store is at least 10k square feet, and a large store like the Cub on 54th and Nicollet is upwards of 80k square feet. Either increase the general square footage of retail spaces, or make a special line for grocery stores that allows them to be viable. There are similar issues in Commercial Mixed Use, which would limit sites for new grocery stores. Comment on this in Question 10.
- Requiring mixed use is restrictive, allow but don’t mandate..
- Question 13/14: What industrial uses should be allowed?
- Yay! The changes to Production/Industrial uses look like they will help to prevent new pollution sources from being permitted. Please provide feedback! Environmental Justice is important, and this is the section with the most impact.
Want more in-depth answers? Read more HERE!
Please comment by March 24th! Or at our comment party on March 21st (postponed from Feb 21 due to weather).
This post has been revised on 2/18/2023 to reflect the City of Minneapolis public engagement deadline extension.
