Minneapolis Neighborhoods - Unofficial Districts

Unofficial Districts

Many of the major business districts of the city sit on major thoroughfares, and since these thoroughfares also form the boundaries of official neighborhoods, local identity may not correspond with these official neighborhoods. Lake Street, running the entire length of the city in south Minneapolis is a string of commercial districts which includes Uptown, Lyn-Lake and Midtown, while forming the border of 12 neighborhoods. Other streets with similar linking and bordering qualities include Nicollet Avenue, stringing together Nicollet Mall, Eat Street south of Franklin Avenue, and smaller districts south of Lake Street; Central Avenue, which links downtown to Old St Anthony Village via the Third Avenue Bridge and then continues on to form a core commercial district of Northeast around Lowry Avenue; and University Avenue, which joins Old St Anthony to Dinkytown, and then continues into Midway and the State Capitol in Saint Paul.

Uptown is probably the most well-known business district in Minneapolis besides downtown, centered at the intersection of West Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, but it is not officially recognized as it includes parts of four neighborhoods: CARAG, ECCO, East Isles, and Lowry Hill East. The Uptown Business Association is focused on the area within a few blocks of Lake and Hennepin, but the "Uptown" identity can stretch as far north as Franklin Avenue, and as far east as Lyndale Avenue, where it now merges into Lyn-Lake.

Eat Street is the newest of Minneapolis's commercial district, formed in the late 1990s to promote the international variety of restaurants along Nicollet Avenue South within three blocks of 26th Street. Nicollet was historically the "Main Street" of the Whittier neighborhood, but was cut off from Lake Street by construction of a K-Mart. The named district was an effort to give the neighborhood a fresh identity.

The Old St. Anthony district, commonly known as Northeast, straddles the neighborhoods of Marcy-Holmes, and Nicollet Island/East Bank, both of which are part of the University community, rather than Northeast. It was the downtown for the city of St. Anthony before it joined Minneapolis in 1872.

Dinkytown is the coined name for an area just north of the University of Minnesota within the official Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, heavily populated by students. A row of historic fraternity houses along University Avenue is referred to as "frat row." Similarly, Stadium Village on the east end of campus is named for the now-demolished Memorial Stadium and is officially part of Prospect Park neighborhood (the name makes sense again now that nearby TCF Bank Stadium was completed in 2009).

The Warehouse District was a 19th and early 20th-century rail and truck shipping center for the region. In the 1970s and 1980s it became an artists quarter, and then a nightlife and entertainment district, which the southern portion (between I-394 and Hennepin Ave) remains. The district is largely within the North Loop neighborhood, but the heart of the entertainment district lies in the Downtown West neighborhood.

As the Mississippi riverfront downtown has been redeveloped since the 1980s, there have been several attempts at "rebranding" it. The "Mississippi Mile" spanned both sides of the river, but never really caught on locally. Saint Anthony Main, the name of the commercial development, came to refer to the section of the East Bank around it. More recently, people have come to refer to the West Bank between 3rd Avenue and the University as "The Mills District", though the name more properly applies to both sides of the river

Some neighborhoods enjoy nicknames such as Lowry Hill East which known as "The Wedge" because of its shape. However the Wedge Co-op on Lyndale Avenue S is actually in the Whittier neighborhood. Local amenities are also taken on as nicknames. Minnehaha refers to the businesses by Minnehaha Falls rather than along Minnehaha Avenue, and Tower (Hill) which is located along University Avenue SE in Prospect Park refers to the Witch's Hat Tower.