The Andre Walesch Big Band performs at Open Streets Harvest Festival along Lowry Avenue.
It was a day of play on Lowry Avenue at Open Streets Harvest Festival.
Pestrians walking down the middle of the road. Bicyclists with no need to observe bike lane markings. Children hula hooping, playing four square and creating elaborate chalk drawings in the street.
These were only a few of the novel sights seen on a one-mile stretch of Lowry Avenue on the last day of summer during the Open Streets Harvest Festival. Organized to give people the opportunity to walk, bike, play, shop, skate and be active in a car-free environment, the event was a seven-hour celebration of community on a Saturday afternoon under sunny skies.
The get-together on Lowry was the last in a summer series of four Open Streets events hosted by the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition in partnership with the city and supported by community sponsors. Similar events took place earlier in the season on Lyndale Avenue South, Central Avenue Northeast and Minnehaha Avenue.
Ethan Fawley, Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition Executive Director, explained that Open Streets is an international phenomenon that started in Bogata, Colombia in the 1970s. “Ciclovía,” as the event is known there, is a day of free public activities in the streets designed to promote health and wellness. “Open Streets,” the United States version of the event, is now held in cities throughout the country. Fawley said that this is the third year of programming in Minneapolis.
All Open Streets celebrations are hyper-local in that they are planned and carried out by area organizations with a focus on promoting healthier communities. The Minneapolis Bike Coalition, dedicated to making Minneapolis “a better place for bicycling in all corners of the city” by advocating for more bike lanes, greenways and trails, represents just the sort of wellness-centric, community-minded ethic that is intrinsic to the Open Streets movement.
“We want to give people a chance to be healthy and active and imagine doing that on a daily or weekly basis,” said Fawley. “And we want people to be able to engage with and learn about their small businesses so we can promote people buying local.”
Serving as evidence of this last facet of the event, the Lowry Avenue Business Association and the five adjacent neighborhoods of Folwell, Webber-Camden, Jordan, Cleveland, Hawthorne and McKinley, were highly involved in the planning and support of programming. In fact, the business association’s fifth annual Harvest Fest was held in tandem with the Open Streets event, adding to its reach.
Local supermarkets and eateries offered everything from burgers and brats to halal meat at stands along the street. Fruits and vegetables were for sale in pop-up farmers markets. And keeping with the wellness theme, yoga and fitness studios held free classes for those making their way up and down Lowry.
Additionally, health screenings and medical information were made available in a “Q”mmuity mobile health unit, owned and operated by Southside Community Health Services. Info was also available from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Hennepin County Medical Center and North Memorial Clinic, three of the sponsors of the day’s happenings.
While maintaining a focus on health and fitness, much of the event’s activities were simply about fun. Musicians with a wide range of styles played throughout the day on four stages set up along the route. Wandering up and down the avenue allowed people to alternately hear everything from hip hop tracks to jazz standards to traditional songs.
Family-friendly, the event featured lots of fun for kids, including mobile ball pits, face painting, games and other activities. Meanwhile, many adult revelers enjoyed beverages in the parking lot of Tootie’s on Lowry and at other stops on the route, which extended from Emerson to Vincent Avenue.
All in all, the feel along Lowry Avenue was very unlike that experienced on a typical day. Usually clogged with traffic, the exhaust and horn honking were replaced, for one afternoon at least, with the delighted cries of children and the musical stylings of local artists.
According to Ethan Hawley, that is the point. “We want people to imagine what a street can be like with fewer cars and experience that,” he said.
This experience, Hawley suggests, can lead to a larger conversation about our neighborhoods. At such events, he says, there is “an opportunity to talk about streets and street design and how we can make a more bicycle-friendly city.”
Capping a great summer in the city, Open Streets Harvest Festival was a successful closing event to the season for the coalition by showing people what a community can be with vision and planning.