Transcripts

GARY: Minneapolis landmark, The Sears Store on Lake Street is closing. Sears has announced that the store, a lake in Chicago area fixture since 1928, will be closing at the end of the year. But officials say a new retail and office center may open at the site next year.

The Daley group, a Chicago development company that's building the midway marketplace in Saint Paul, says it's negotiating with Sears for the Minneapolis property. Longtime Star Tribune columnist Barbara Flanagan has watched Lake Street change a lot over the years, and she joins us now. Good afternoon, Barbara.

BARBARA FLANAGAN: Hello, Gary. I'm not running for anything except, I hope, light rail transit sometime in the near future.

[LAUGHTER]

GARY: It's probably fair to say that, at least parts of Lake Street, look like a war zone right now. But at one time, it was a real jewel in the city, was it not, Lake Street?

BARBARA FLANAGAN: I would say it was not exactly a stunning street, ever, because it was automobile row, but it was a very bustling street. It was a very busy street, and in a funny way, it was a very safe street. And interestingly, you went from, let's say, Laken Hennepin to the river and then across the river on to Saint Paul via that wonderful device known as the streetcar.

And you saw all these different neighborhoods evolving outside your window. And Bloomington was where the Scandinavians were. Still is a great Scandinavian grocery store there. Down toward the river, it seemed to be very academic because it was close to Augsburg, and so on, down at the Lake Street and Hennepin.

And, of course, it was, in the summertime, like a beach resort, because everybody walked around in their shirts headed down to the public beaches at Lake Calhoun. So it had a lot of different personalities along the stretch of it.

GARY: What happened?

BARBARA FLANAGAN: Well, I blame-- you really want to know my opinion, the great nag of the world? I have been outraged for years because the city council of Minneapolis, worrying about development in the city, gave away Nicollet Avenue to a Kmart store, and they closed off Nicollet, the longest street in the city of Minneapolis.

And that began kind of a, I don't know, decompression, so to speak. I don't know what happened, but things began to go downhill from there. Now, not at Laken Hennepin. That has become the great boom because of a very good developer named Ray Harris, who redid-- against much clamor from people who didn't understand what he was doing, he did this marvelous old building into a great shopping center there, Calhoun square.

And that became an anchor, and that's drawn. And it's a sidewalk cafe, heaven in the summertime around there. And I think Lyndale and Lake has picked up there, and they're doing their thing. Lots of ethnic restaurants around Lyndale and Lake. And Nicollet and Lake used to be such a great corner.

The baseball park for the Minneapolis Millers is right there and some great sports restaurants. And then they shut this down. And I was reading that Kmart may be shutting down a few stores, so maybe that will be one, and we can go and ram through it and open up Nicollet to the world again. I feel strongly on that subject. Also, the automobiles moved away.

GARY: It does sound like, at least from your perspective, things are going to get better or are getting better already.

BARBARA FLANAGAN: Well, I think they're definitely getting better. If you look along the street, you see that neighborhoods have stepped in to really attempt to bring back what was there. I mean, they fought against pornographic theaters that went into some of the places.

Some very nice theaters have moved in, and I'm saying live theater. As I say, some great ethnic restaurants along the route. A lot of still great, marvelous little shops to sell art, to sell lamps and electrical fixtures, to sell wallpaper. I mean, there's some great stores on Lake Street.

Plus, speaking of great restaurants, there's one landmark there, and that's Norris, which was Porky's drive-in in the '50s, and then the family that owned Porky's turned it into Norris. And there are two Norris, and one's at the East end of Lake Street, and one's at the extreme West end, and it's still where the home-cooked food reigns supreme.

I mean, if you haven't had their mashed potatoes and the turkey or their country fried steak, you better try it out because everybody's trying to copy. The big thing now is homemade, homey foods. Well, Norris has been doing it for years on Lake Street.

GARY: Very, very briefly, we're just about out of time, loss of Sears, a big deal or a little bump in the road?

BARBARA FLANAGAN: It's been more or less closed. I think people are shopping in the malls, and there's a Sears at the mega mall. There's a great Montgomery Ward's downtown. So they're there.