Visual Quality Improvement

Highlights of the Placemaking and Urban Design Framework Guide

July 2024

MnDOT engaged with the community about the potential improvements coming to East 7th St. and Arcade St., it became clear that the visual quality of the corridor was an essential improvement the community wanted to see. MnDOT sought and was granted a federal RAISE grant to improve the aesthetics and visual aspects of the corridor. A Visual Quality Advisory Committee (VQAC) consisting of community members was established. The VQAC helped the project team determine:

  • Community preferences and input for the corridor
  • Aesthetic and visual improvements
  • Safety conditions and overall comfortability

MnDOT has collected these findings and the Placemaking and Urban Design Framework Guide for the East 7th St. and Arcade St. improvement project is anticipated to be available in summer 2024.

Defining Features

The visual quality of the corridor can be impacted through three categories:

  • Design elements help minimize the impact on the surrounding environment and maximize aesthetic improvements (E.g. Lane alignments, pedestrian and cyclist facilities).

East 7th street road view with bike lanes, bus and turn lanes as well as trail.View full-size image

  • Aesthetic treatments enhance the appearance of necessary elements (E.g. surface finishes and pavement texture).

possible aesthetic features on sidewalksView full-size image

  • Aesthetic features enhance visual and social quality beyond basic items necessary to address safety, operations, and maintenance needs (E.g. decorative landscaping and street furniture).

Aesthetic features on the sidewalk, large bowl planter filled with orange and red colored flowers and greenery.View full-size image


Visual Quality Process

The visual quality process consisted of multiple components:

  1. A Visual Quality Advisory Committee (VQAC)
  2. A multi-day Community Design Workshop
  3. A Parameters Memo

Committee members attending a meeting with presenters.View full-size image
1. Visual Quality Advisory Committee (VQAC)

The VQAC consisted of community-driven members, dedicated to supporting and cultivating spaces and opportunities that enrich the communities they represent. The committee was able to:

  • Create a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to identify priorities for the corridor
  • Engage in a geographic exercise to understand priority locations for visual quality improvements
  • Share preferences in which intersections in the corridor to prioritize
  • Attend a two-day community design workshop to collaborate with the project team and architects to design visual quality concepts

Full room of community design workshop members listening to a presentation from project staff.View full-size image2. Community Design Workshop

Much of the feedback from the community was shared during large group presentations and applied to the Visual Quality Improvements broadly, rather than at specific locations. Feedback from the two-day workshop includes comments from the community. Suggestions included:

  • Partnering with community organizations to maintain plantings
  • Establishing a clear outline of maintenance expectations for the community
  • Using patterns and designs that reflect cultures in the area on concrete, benches and banners
  • Reserving space for public art in the corridor
  • Honoring the differences between East 7th and Arcade streets, while visually unifying both streets
  • Addressing visual quality at the intersections of Maryland Ave. and Arcade St.
  • Discussing visual quality improvements to the street with business owners
  • Integrating natural stone into landscaping
  • Visually connect to Phalen Regional Park by identifying natural resource themes in local cultures

Farnsworth Upper Campus – Pattern Design

The project continued to work with community members to develop potential patterns that could be seen throughout the corridor. To design the patterns, the project team partnered with VQAC member and Community Artist, Gita Ghei and Farnsworth Upper Campus 7th and 8th grade art students.

The student design workshops took place November 2023 during art class. Students were asked to come up with designs that they felt were representative of themselves and the East Side.

The student pattern design is currently being finalized in the Guide.

3. Parameters Memo

The project team consulted overlapping jurisdictions in the corridor to understand what elements could or couldn’t be changed and the maintenance implications of visual quality changes.

Please contact the project team for further access to the Aesthetics Parameters Memo.

Visual Composition

This section summarizes the visual preferences for the E. 7th St. and Arcade St. corridor. The project team has applied preferences to select locations given right-of-way availability, maintenance considerations, and renderings showing visual quality treatments in certain locations to demonstrate how the streets could look once the project is completed or with additional projects in the future.

There are three different timeframes that emerged from this process:

  • Immediate needs include aesthetic preferences to be incorporated into the construction package by the end of 2024.
  • Intermediate needs include aesthetic preferences to be incorporated into the planting phase of this project, after roadway construction.
  • Aspirational needs include the VQAC and community preferences for public art and other “add-on” visual elements outside the right-of-way, the planting phase of the project, and what the RAISE grant funds can support.

Visual Quality Design Concept Examples:

  • East 7th St. and Arcade St. (1)

East 7th Arcade intersection drawing depicting potential plantings and road featuresView full-size image

  • East 7th St. and Arcade St. (2)
Concept rendering of the corner of East 7th Arcade with lighting, benches, plantings and decorative sidewalk.View full-size image


  • Arcade St. and Neid Ln.

View full-size image

  • Arcade St. and Neid Ln. (Maintenance)
Arcade Street and Neid Ln rendering of the potential hardscapes and sidewalk decorations with benches and plantingsView full-size image
  • Arcade St. from Sims Ave. to Case Ave.

Arcade St. from Sims to Case Ave rendering showing potential locations for plantings, benches and concrete etchings.View full-size image

  • Arcade St. and Wheelock Pkwy.
Arcade Street and Wheelock Parkway intersection rendering showing areas for potential benches, drinking fountain/bottle filling station and plantings as well as road layout.View full-size image
  • Arcade St. and Wheelock Pkwy. (Maintenance)
Wheelock Parkway and Arcade Street rendering showing sidewalk, signals and benches along with a grassy boulevard.View full-size image

For a full list of Visual Quality Design Concepts please contact the project staff to request a copy of the Urban Design Framework Guide.

Potential Aesthetic Elements and Treatments

This section provides six proposed visual quality elements and treatments included in the visual quality design concepts for various locations:

  • Pavement
  • Furniture
  • Lighting
  • Gateway Monuments
  • Public Art
  • Vegetation

Maintenance

While $550k of federal RAISE grant will fund many immediate and intermediate needs, maintenance after installation is a critical concern for the VQAC and the community overall.

While MnDOT maintains trees along the corridor, MnDOT must enter partnerships with local jurisdictions, such as the City of St. Paul, to maintain any non-tree plantings. The City of St. Paul, however, has indicated they will not maintain non-tree planting, and therefore, a third-party maintenance partner must commit.

Depending on agreements made by all parties, three levels of maintenance vary for potential landscaping plans and are as follows:

  • Level 1 – No Maintenance Partner
Sidewalk with decorative edging that looks like brickView full-size image
  • Level 2 – Maintenance Partner and Lower-Maintenance Plantings

Street view from sidewalk showing a tree, decorative grasses. There is also a car parked and a Transit bus driving on the road.View full-size image

  • Level 3 – Maintenance Partner and Higher-Maintenance Plantings

View of sidewalk showing more complex plantings, boulder edges and brick inlayed pavers on the sidewalk.View full-size image



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