Star Tribune
July 30, 2005
By Susan E. Peterson
When Martha Ripley, one of the nation's first female doctors, founded the Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis in 1886, it sparked a revolution in the care of mothers and babies.
Now a Minneapolis nonprofit is hoping the historic Ripley hospital property will again serve as a catalyst for positive change in the North Side's long-neglected Harrison neighborhood.
The Central Community Housing Trust (CCHT) is renovating the cluster of buildings on the corner of Glenwood and Penn Avenues into 60 units of rental and owner-occupied housing as well as a memorial garden. The $15 million project will be called Ripley Gardens.
"We have an opportunity not only to promote development in north Minneapolis, but to celebrate one of our founding mothers," said Gina Ciganik, director of special projects for CCHT.
Ripley Gardens is one of several historic properties in Minneapolis undergoing renovation into housing. The Sears building in south Minneapolis is being converted into rental and condo housing units, as well as office and retail space, and the Cream of Wheat building in northeast Minneapolis and the Northern Bag Co. warehouse on Washington Avenue N. are being turned into lofts and condos.
Part of the reason for the renewed interest in historic buildings is that housing prices have risen to a point where developers can justify the higher cost of doing a historic conversion. These tend to cost more since developers have to try to preserve the character of the building.
What's more, most of the more desirable conversions in the warehouse district have already been done, so developers are looking beyond downtown.
CCHT is no stranger to projects in historic buildings. Among its 24 projects with 1,252 units of affordable housing, it renovated the old St. Barnabas Hospital in downtown Minneapolis into 39 efficiencies for homeless and at-risk youths and 13 units for low-income working adults.
The 1.9-acre Ripley site, listed on the national and state historic registers, contains three buildings that will be converted to rental housing for low- and moderate-income working people:
• The Martha G. Ripley Memorial Building, the stately main hospital, was completed in 1915, soon after Dr. Ripley's death, and contains her ashes in the cornerstone. After renovation, it will include 17 units of rental housing, ranging from efficiencies to two-bedroom apartments.
• The Emily Paddock Cottage, built in 1910, housed the nursing staff and later was a home for unwed mothers. It will include three three-bedroom family rental units.
• The Babies' Bungalow, also built in 1910, served as an isolation and intensive care unit for sick babies. The small, cozy building with a stone foundation will become a one-bedroom rental unit.
In addition, eight owner-occupied townhouses will be built along one side of the site, and two new buildings with a total of 31 rental units will be built toward the rear of the site. To preserve as much open green space as possible, an underground parking ramp will accommodate residents' needs.
Rents will range from $380 to $400 for studios, $830 to $1,150 for one- and two-bedroom units and $950 to $980 for three-bedroom apartments. Half of the units will be rent-restricted for eligible households earning about $16,000 to $40,000; the rest will rent at market rates. Prices for the townhouses haven't been set yet.
CCHT has a number of partners on the project, including Enterprise Social Investment Corp., the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, the Northway Community Trust and Restore America, a partnership of HGTV and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. And the nonprofit has worked closely with the Harrison Neighborhood Association, which helped persuade the planners to include for-sale townhouses as well rental housing in the project.
Architects have had to work around the existing buildings. For example, neighbors had initially hoped the project would include a small commercial node on the corner of Glenwood and Penn, but that idea was quashed by the National Register of Historic Places, which didn't want the view of the main buildings obstructed, Ciganik said.
The site's historic designation brought other complications, said architect Kim Bretheim of Minneapolis-based LBH. While most of the restrictions apply to the buildings' exterior appearance and the grounds, the historical gurus also wanted to preserve the hospital's wide main corridor.
"That meant less space in the dwelling units, which had to fit where the old rooms were," Bretheim said.
The project also will restore the hospital's main entrance, which had been turned into a window sometime after the hospital became a nursing home in the 1950s. "It's a unique project, with three historic buildings that each have to be respected in their own right," Breitheim said. "And the project really doesn't work without doing the new construction as well."
Workers are tackling asbestos abatement in the three historic buildings now, with heavy construction expected to start this fall. Completion is expected by January 2007, Ciganik said.
"It's a great project," said Minneapolis Council Member Natalie Johnson Lee, who represents the Harrison neighborhood. "It takes a blighted corner, where the buildings were boarded and vacant for quite a long time ... and brings more residents to the area to strengthen the community."
She said that with the Ripley Gardens anchoring one side of the neighborhood and International Market Square, which recently added residential units, on the other, "it begins to give energy, excitement and more vitality to the area, and spawns interest in more commercial development."
