The Mighty, Mighty Edge Node

Continuing my observations on Anoka, Minnesota (the hometown of Garrison Keillor, and partial template for the fictional small town of Lake Wobegon):

I discovered the Riverdale Village Edge Node about three years ago, just as it was coming into nearly full flower. It became my regular "road office" while visiting my in-laws in Anoka because there's a Starbucks and Kinko's in proximity to one another - -  not to mention a Border's Book Store, Best Buy, Old Navy, Qdoba, Noodles, Target, Einstein's Bagels, etc. I was drawn by the Siren's call; all this stuff in one place was irresisible to me. I confess that I never considered exploring downtown Anoka for an adequate workspace with WiFi or a wired internet connection because the idea of taking a break wandering the stacks at Border's was just too hard to pass up.

From the Developers Diversified Realty website:

Riverdale Village is an 872,507 square foot hybrid shopping center consisting of a cluster of discount stores, lifestyle tenants and traditional mall anchor tenants, which combine to create a truly unique tenant mix in a convenient and easy-to-access, open-air format.

Well, that's one way to look at it.

From ground level, however, Riverdale Village is downright purgatorial; a bewildering maze of big box stores, chain restaurants, chain coffee shops, and asphalt that stretches in all directions with no discernible pattern and no regard for pedestrian traffic. You simply cannot safely walk from one place to another, even if you can clearly see the place you need to go. One must get back into a vehicle and attempt to negotiate the completely arbitrary-seeming network of curvey, loopy roads that seem to lead everywhere but where you're trying to go. This is not one-stop shopping; you need a car to get there, and you need a car to stay there.

If my mother-in-law is any indication of overall shopping behavior (and, in this case, she seems to represent the majority) Anoka's downtown is losing an incredible amount of traffic and business to Riverdale Village, which is only a mile down Highway 10/47 with two exits that deposit you into the middle of a commercial cornucopia.

Downtown Anoka - - at least to my mother-in-law and her contemporaries - -  is "too expensive, full of boutique stores." The Minnesota shopping ethic is much more in tune with Target, Wal-Mart, etc. They don't even bother with the cafes and lunch spots downtown anymore.

And, in this case, They're not only spurning Anoka's downtown - - they're spending money just over the city's border in Coon Rapids. Ouch.

An aside: Kinko's no longer offers free internet connections (tip: go to Panara, which does), but I used to spend hours at a desk there (generally the spacious corner space) working on whatever project was pending at the moment. Almost invariably, no matter what time of year I was in Anoka, an older gentleman would come in and park at the desk next to me with his laptop, portable printer and blueprints, and start working the phones on behalf of some sort of condo development in Florida. He would give me a familiar nod every now and then, recognizing me from months earlier, and months before that, etc. It was impossible not to hear him speak on his cel phone, and I noticed that his company's name changed nearly each time I crossed paths with him. He would sometimes wink at me if I got caught looking in his direction during one of those calls. It was very Glengarry Glen Ross.

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Comments

[Charlie D.]

That is one of the most ridiculous looking plazas I have ever seen. Could they possible have spaced the stores any further apart? Why must the parking be in the middle? If they simply flipped it around so that the stores were clumped together and the parking surrounded it, that would be a HUGE improvement!

[John Michlig]

True - but one has to wonder what sort of zoning regulations were being enforced as well regarding "parking spaces per store," etc. The city of Coon Rapids may be as much to blame.