Full link to article can be found here

Across downtown Minneapolis, office tenants have been battling in bags tournaments, sipping cocktails at building-wide happy hours and even playing Nintendo over bowls of cereal.

The idea is that the companies can use the fun programming in their building to help keep and attract new employees in a tight labor market. 
That tight labor market also extends to the manufacturing sector, and Northern Stacks, a 1.8 million-square-foot industrial park in Fridley, has taken a page from the downtown office market’s playbook.

Owners Hyde Development and M.A. Mortenson Co. have hired The Musicant Group to create a community management platform for the roughly 1,200 workers at Northern Stacks. Musicant is the same Minneapolis company behind the lawn-game heavy Turf Club at the SPS Tower and the cereal bar and Nintendo projector at the former TCF atrium building, 801 Marquette. The firm has also organized in-building farmers markets and outdoor yoga for its clients. 

“The goal was to bring the same amenity package you get in an office building to an industrial building,” said Paul Hyde, CEO of Minneapolis-based Hyde Development. 

Musicant surveyed Northern Stacks tenants and learned that employees wanted better food options and they also wanted to have a better sense of community with their neighboring tenants. 
The programming started a month ago with Musicant bringing in food trucks every Friday. 

“People have expressed a desire for more food options because they find themselves further out of downtown, so there aren’t quite as many options available,” said Musicant Community Manager Samatha Trelstad. 
Tenants have tried over the years to get the trucks to come out, but couldn’t promise them a campus of 1,200 people and an email blast to all employees in the business park. 

“So far, with the trucks, it’s just been letting the truck owners know about the population of the site, and they’ve been willing to come and give it a shot,” Trelstad said. 

Up next is an NFL pick-em league, a happy hour that rotates through some of the employers’ spaces, lawn games, a potluck and volunteer drives. Hyde said he’s got three companies interested in opening a brewery in Northern Stacks. A taproom would be used as a happy hour site, as well. 

Musicant has also curated a patio furniture package that each tenant could buy for its patio space. Hyde and Mortenson are offering a grant to help pay for the furniture. 

Musicant has done similar programming at eight downtown office buildings, but this is the company’s first industrial park. Industrial parks tend to have more hourly employees than a downtown office building, so Musicant tailored the programming to the tenants. In this case, that meant more virtual contests like March Madness brackets and "The Bachelor" pools, plus after-hours events.

But ultimately, it’s a similar offering, said Max Musicant, principal and founder of the firm. “Both of them have similar points of departure in that we’re creating great places to work for the tenants in the building and creating experiences that they can’t get anywhere else. That contributes to creativity, productivity, wellness, community and social experiences — bringing people together.” 

Bringing people together was a big thing for tenants.

“A pleasant surprise was that we saw strong desire for community in the buildings because what’s different in an industrial park is that instead of having lots of tenants on one footprint with shared space, the industrial park is spread out,” Trelstad said. “Tenants don’t come to one central location to get to know each other.”

Mortenson and Hyde are also teaming up on another industrial park in Brighton, Colo. That park is under construction and will also get the Musicant treatment when it opens this fall. Hyde intends to add the programming to his entire Twin Cities portfolio.

Nick Halter
Senior Reporter/Broadcaster
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

This Little Free Library guest post comes from Max Musicant, founder and principal of The Musicant Group, an award-winning placemaking firm dedicated to “creating places where people feel alive.” Here, he writes about their latest project: Friendly Front Yards.

August 1st was National Night Out – one of the best evenings of the year for our neighborhoods. Across the country countless people come together in streets, sidewalks, and parks to spend a warm summer night together with food, fun, and conversation.

Why can’t every night be National Night Out? The answer is that it can be!

Over the last two years, from seeds planted in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Friendly Front Yard (FFY) placemaking movement has grown; transforming American front lawns into places that bring people together and strengthen communities.

This impulse is nothing new for those with Little Free Libraries in their yards – it’s what we’re all about! But through the practice of placemaking you can leverage your LFL to create an even friendlier yard, meet your neighbors, and build community! By one measure those that utilized the Friendly Front Yard approach met, on average, five new neighbors!

By applying these 5 strategies to your front yard, you too can create community, one front yard at a time:

1. Semi-enclosure and permeability
Spaces that are too open make us feel exposed; too closed and we can feel safe, but cut off. The semi-enclosure of a good porch or a cozy booth at a restaurant feels good. These spaces allow you to choose whether to be social or private. Create semi-enclosures through rows of pots, low shrubs or walls, trellises, or the overhangs of trees.

2. Have several things to do
If there is nothing to do, there is no reason to be somewhere. Think about what you and your family want to do: read, sleep, eat, grill, garden, play, etc. and then create the conditions where those can happen in the front yard.

3. Consider sunlight and shade
Sun in the morning comes from the east when it is cooler. In late afternoon and evening it shines from the south and west when it is hotter. Consider how activity areas interact with the sunny and shady parts of your space and if additions such as shade or movable elements are needed.

4. Have (moveable) seating
If you can’t sit down comfortably you won’t want to stay very long in your front yard. Place movable seating so you can constantly adjust the arrangement to accommodate any view, group, or use.

5. Protect your back
Having a structure behind you – like a house, ledge, tree, or hedge – makes one feel comfortable. Protecting your back prevents being (and the anxiety of being) surprised and ensures a good view out to a larger vista. In general, have your back at least perpendicular and not directly facing the street or an active pathway.

Bonus! Boundaries that bind
This strategy ties the other 5 together. Boundaries are too often thought of as dividers, but they can and should bind two sides together harmoniously. Celebrate and enhance the boundary places where two things meet: grass and path, house and yard, garden and hill. The possibilities are endless! Make these boundaries special places in of themselves and watch your yard come to life before you.
With these strategies, you and your neighbors can create places where you want to be, where children play, where food is eaten and prepared, where relationships are formed, and where serendipity becomes the norm.
​
For more information and to download your free Friendly Front Yard toolkit, visit www.friendlyfronts.com.

To read the full blog, go here.

Written for Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA)

The war for talent is on. Savvy tenants are looking for workplaces and entire buildings to be places that their employees want to be and that keep them productive. Employees increasingly want experiences more than things. We see this in consumer purchasing habits, with more being spent on the experiences of travel, restaurants, and activities relative to hard durable goods.

The same thing holds for the 21st century office environment. To stay competitive, today’s office building needs to provide more than just amenities and one-off events. The focus now needs to be on delivering compelling daily experiences that facilitate creativity, connection, and wellness for tenants.

These experiences are best delivered in the common areas: atriums, plazas, skyways, and even elevator bays. These spaces drive the brand for the building as every tenant and guest has to pass through them. And, because they are solely cared for by the property management team, valuable experiences can be easily delivered in a way that benefits every tenant.

Here in the Twin Cities, we’ve all seen the multi-million dollar transformations of common areas in buildings like Capella Tower and Washington Square. But can these value-added experiences be created without a major capital overhaul?

The answer is yes!

How to Create Valuable Experiences
Valuable experiences are created by the interplay between the physical environment, the management of that environment, and the activities, uses, and events that occur within that environment.

We can determine what the right combination of these elements to create value, by thinking through what people want to be able to do in your building’s common areas. Once you have developed this list, examine your common area spaces; are they conducive to fostering the uses, activities, and experiences your tenants’ desire?

Let’s see how this process was used and value created in an existing space, with a relatively modest budget.

Case Study: 333 South 7th Street
In 2014 CBRE management and leasing team wanted more out of the ½ outdoor lawn area of the 333 S. 7th Street tower. The space was attractive and well maintained – befitting a Class A building – but the space was not used for much; as a pathway to the building, as a place for a smoke break, and the occasional tenant event. In their effort to make it a valuable place, they engaged The Musicant Group.

The Approach

Engagement and Research
Rather than rolling out a fully formed initiative right away, we engaged with tenants through interviews and online surveys to determine what they wanted. We discovered that tenants wanted movable seating that would allow them to enjoy the lawn alone or in groups and more things to do in the space itself. We then engaged with building engineers and security personnel to ensure that any future improvements were scaled to meet their existing capacity.

Rollout and Messaging
We took the feedback from all parties and determined that outdoor beach chairs and lawn games were the most value-added elements to introduce. We then paired these additions with a multichannel communications effort – naming the space “The Turf Club”, adding signage, and email promotions – to spread enthusiasm and excitement about the place and the experiences therein.

Continuous Improvement
And the process is never done! Every season we have reengaged with the management team and tenants to evaluate what worked, needs to be enhanced, dropped, and added. Through this process The Turf Club is now home to weekly concerts, outdoor fitness activities, monthly happy hours, and an ever-increasing amount of tenant events of all sizes.

Results
So what was the value created by taking this existing space and adding a modest, but targeted, amount of new furniture, fixtures, programs, management systems, and communications?

As a visitor to the space, it passes the smell test. During the summer months, the lawn is always filled with people: having meetings, grabbing lunch, taking a break, or discussing business over a game of bag toss, bocce, or ladder golf. Through end-of year surveys, we’ve found that due to the Turf Club:

• 94% of tenants reported being a more satisfied tenant
• 78% of tenants reported an increase their sense of community and connection within their  organization and the building as a whole
• 48% of tenants reported being more interested in coming into the office (0% less so)
• 37% of tenants reported being more likely to stay at their current company, all things being equal (0% less so)

Bob Traeger, General Manager of the building, states, “Tenants absolutely want to stay in this building and renew their leases, in large part, because of what we offer their employees through the 333 Turf Club”.  The leasing materials now feature the Turf Club front and center in making the pitch for being in the building.

Testimonials from tenant employees certainly bear this out:

• “The lawn became an active part of the building (and even my office), rather than an unused area that people were almost afraid to walk on. A lot more vitality to the building!”

• “Just the fact that it is available for use by our tenants and adds unique value to officing in this building.”
• “Although I wasn’t able to directly participate very much I LOVED seeing activity out there. Brightened my day.”

The Secret Sauce
To close, any space – outdoor or inside - can become a more valuable place. The secret sauce is the process that determines what tenants want to experience and delivering it through a combination of physical enhancements, programming, management systems, and communications.

By Max Musicant, Principal, The Musicant Group
​

Written for Metropolitian Council's Expert Articles:
​
What is a place? A place is a physical location, of any size, that is useful, meaningful, feels good to be in, and benefits those things around it. A place is formed through an interwoven system of physical elements, the stewardship of those elements, and the uses, activities, and experiences that happen within that environment. A good gauge of a place, is somewhere you’d feel comfortable spending 20 minutes in with nothing “to do”.

So what is “Place-making”? Placemaking then, is a lens through which any activity relating to the built environment happen, rather than something that is merely attached to “business as usual”. Through the comp plan process we collectively strive to create places of communal and commercial value within our communities and for the municipality as a whole. So how does a community most effectively do this?

How the Comprehensive Plan Can Foster the Creation of Places

Integrate and connect uses: More and more people are demanding a “one-drive life”, where they are willing to drive once or twice a day, but then want to access services, amenities, etc. on foot and bike. This is particularly important for youth and the elderly. Strategies to accomplish this include expanding networks of bike and pedestrian pathways (beyond just parks), expanding multi-use zoning, and eliminating parking minimums.

For a guide on how to create dynamic, integrated places at all scales, see: A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander

Every space as a social place: Over the last few decades, opportunities for serendipitous social interactions have been greatly reduced. It has reached a point where people are voting with their feet and now actively seeking out (and pay money for) places where they can be with and around other people. These places need not be limited to parks and special events though! Every space can be a social space: from strip malls to main streets, office buildings to front yards.

For a step-by-step guide on how to transform a front yard (or the yards of an entire neighborhood) from empty space, to a social place, see the (free) Friendly Front Yard Toolkit, developed by The Musicant Group

Stewardship: Physical spaces don’t take care of themselves and need active stewardship (and often programming) in order for them to live up to their fullest potential and value. Be sure to allocate sufficient resources for the care and activation of your community’s public and shared spaces.

Are your rules and regulations allowing “small good things” to happen easily? Small actions by small actors often are the seeds that lead to big positive changes. But if these “small good things” are burdened with too many hurdles, than many of these things will simply never come to fruition. Consider scaling event, small businesses, and other regulatory measures to the size of the activity – the smaller the scale, the more limited the process, the larger, vice versa.

Utilize Experiments and Pilot Projects: Using placemaking experiments and pilot projects can be a great way to test concepts, engage the community and build momentum for large-scale land-use, infrastructure, economic development and public space initiatives.

For inspiration check out the Tactical Urbanism Guide.

By Max Musicant, Founder and Principal: Placemaker, The Musicant Group 

To read the full article, go here.

Are you looking for some tips and tricks to enhance your outdoor space? Summers are a great time of year to gather and bring people together to enjoy the outdoors.  Below are some helpful placemaking tips on how to easily, cheaply, and effectively transform spaces from front yards to plazas to patios.

1. Add (moveable) seating: if people can’t sit down comfortably they won't stick around. Let the user be able to place and move the seating whenever possible.
2. Protect your back: people like to have a structure behind them, so as not to be surprised, ideally with a view out to a larger space.
3. Have many things to do: if there is nothing to do, people wont be there. Be sure to consider all ages, cultures, and genders and their unique needs and desires.
4. Semi-enclosure feels good: allows users to choose whether to be social or private. Think of a good porch or a cozy booth at a restaurant.
5. Active edges make active interiors: if people don’t feel comfortable on the edge of a space, they won't venture into the middle.
6. Daylight and sunshine: sun in the morning feels good as it is cooler outside. In the afternoon the sun comes from the south and straight up above and is very hot, thus causing people to like shade. In the late afternoon and evening the sun comes from the west and is still often hot, with shade preferred. Consider what type of sun your spaces get and the type of shade (or lack thereof) most appropriate.

The Musicant Group hosted an interactive and creative placemaking experience at the Great River Gathering's 2016 closing event presented by the Saint Paul Riverfront Corporation.

The Everyday Equity in Design installation was presented by The Musicant Group with Friendly Streets Initiative and Metro Transit. The installation represented our physical environment and how it has a tremendous effect on how we feel and connect (or don't) with each other and our surroundings. Attendees experienced two of our society's most ubiquitous spaces - the front lawn and the bus stop - reimagined as places that are full of community, connection, and life.

The Great River Gathering is an annual celebration that brings together an influential and diverse group of civic leaders and community members, all of whom share a commitment to creating a world-class greater MSP region.

​Check out the photo album here.

The Musicant Group was honored to host three sessions on Transformative Placemaking at The Bush Foundation's 2016 BushConnect Conference held at the Guthrie Theater.

At these sessions, the participants got a practical introduction to Transformative Placemaking, a feeling-based, incremental process to creating places that mirror how organic life grows and continually adapts. They then learned how to apply this approach to any environment – from the mundane to the monumental. Finally, participants unleashed into the confines of bushCON to put theory into practice and create placemaking installations based on what they’ve learned.

bushCONNECT is a leadership networking event that builds stronger and more meaningful connections among leaders in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations that share the same geographic area.

#bushCON is powered by the The Bush Foundation in partnership with more than 40 organizations from the region. The day included inspiring talks, engaging small-group sessions, conversations with community leaders, and interactive networking experiences, all designed to inspire, equip and connect leaders for success. Learn more here.

Check out our photo album here.

The Musicant Group is excited to announce that it has been awarded a Knight Cities Challenge Grant in partnership with the Friendly Streets Initiative! 

This coming summer, we will create a platform of knowledge, action, and mutual support that will catalyze the transformation of large swaths of our cities into places full of community, connection, and opportunity.

We will do this by creating a data-driven placemaking toolkit to guide everyday citizens on the value of and process of transforming the most ubiquitous and underutilized space in our country: the American front lawn.

Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit: a platform for large-scale change will provide a step-by-step placemaking process that will enable citizens, first within St. Paul, then beyond, to turn their empty expanses of grass into places that they and their neighbors want to be.

The Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit will inspire and guide residents of all income levels and cultural backgrounds to turn their lawns into places where:

• Residents serendipitously meet their neighbors
• Children play
• Food is grown, prepared and eaten
• Social capital is built
• Civic issues are debated 
• Attachment to place is made

Our Data-driven Process
The toolkit will be developed, implemented, and disseminated in four phases in order to maximize its impact.

• First we will develop a draft toolkit based on The Musicant Group’s placemaking methodology.
• Second, our partner the Friendly Streets Initiative will then recruit 10-20 residents of the diverse Hamlin-Midway neighborhood of St. Paul to participate in a pilot project using the draft toolkit in the summer of 2016.
• Third, we will release the same draft toolkit to anyone interested in trying it out in their own lawns, with the commitment that they will provide us with feedback on how the process impacted their lives and how it could be improved.

We’ll then incorporate what we learned via the pilot project, and corresponding data, into a final Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit that would be released to the public free of charge in the Spring of 2017.​

Sign up to be the first to test our front lawn placemaking toolkit!

Transform your lawn into a center of community, connection, and invitation this summer! Help us test and refine our Front Lawn Placemaking Toolkit by signing up to receive a copy here.

Participation is not limited to any particular geography or type of dwelling unit. Renters and those in larger buildings are welcome and encouraged to participate. 

To learn more about the Front Yard Placemaking Toolkit, details of the project, and featured press, go here.

The Musicant Group is honored to announce that we are featured on page 10 of this impressive "Culturally Enriched Communities" report by University of Minnesota College of Design and the Urban Land Institute Minnesota (ULI MN)!  Thanks for showcasing our work and dedication to creating places where people want to be.

This report on moving toward culturally enriched communities is about how:

"The state of Minnesota consistently ranks among the top 10 states in the country in terms of quality of life, based on wellbeing indicators such as employment rates, education, income, safety, health, environment, civic engagement, accessibility to services, and housing (Hess & Frohlich, 2014). In parallel, the Greater Minneapolis and St Paul (MSP) region is noted among the country’s most innovative cities, for transportation infrastructure and economic development, programs to help immigrants start businesses and artists buy real estate as well as public health efforts (Eugenios, Hargreaves, & Rawlins, 2014). The MSP region has also been named by the researchers at Parenting Magazine as one of the top five places in the country to raise a family (Schmidt, n.d.). And, with over 180 parks within its boundaries, Minneapolis holds the title of the Nation’s best park system (The Trust for Public Land, 2015) and is ranked as one of the top biking cities in the country, with 92 miles of on-street bikeways and 85 miles of off-street bikeways (City of Minneapolis, 2015). The arts scene follows suit--the MSP region is second only to New York City in live theater per capita and is the third-largest theater market in the United States.

Positioning the state for a vibrant and prosperous future is tied to demographic projections that by 2040, close to 40% of Minnesota’s population will be people of color, many of them international immigrants (Metropolitan Council, 2012). In 2013, only about 18.1% of Minnesota residents were people of color versus 37.4% at the national level (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014).

Although Minnesota enjoys high ranks in many quality of life indicators, it also experiences disparities in health, education, and income between whites and people of color. Given that a diverse population is key to economic and cultural vitality, designers, planners, policy makers, housing developers, neighborhood organizers, and others who are striving to unravel how to integrate the state’s social, economic, cultural, environmental, and technological resources face multiple questions:

• How can Minnesota attract and retain a diverse population?
  
• How can communities support diverse needs and nurture in residents a feeling of value and commitment?
  
• In what ways can stereotypes and barriers for the creation of healthy and thriving communities break-down?
  
• How can design support culturally diverse businesses and development of homes and neighborhoods that support diverse ways of living?
  
• What kind of design interventions can create forums for public engagement that tap a community’s diversity and support health and well-being? And,
  
• How can the area’s multiculturalism be translated into income-generating opportunities?
  

Culturally Enriched Communities are an inherent part of planning processes that strengthen an area’s ability to plan for the growth in diversity in ways that can position the region to rank among the best in world while improving upon the indicators of uneven disparities.  Culturally Enriched Communities include environments that support diverse ways of living. Recognizing the potential that lies within each individual and group and how places, both public and private, can impact one’s ability to be the best that they can be, Culturally Enriched Communities allow for the creation of municipalities that can contribute to the prosperity and well-being of all people. The creation of Culturally Enriched Communities relies on planners, policy leaders, housing developers, and others who feel an obligation to understand those they are working with and are interested in the lives of others.

These decision makers recognize that people construct meaning in life through different ways, that is, how they cook, what they eat, what they wear, how they socialize, how they speak, how they pray, and how they play is diverse. Diverse ways of living are outcomes of numerous factors including distinct ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds, histories, religions, incomes, ages, gender, abilities, and circumstances. As a result, the design of public and private spaces must be adaptable and flexible, able to be easily adjusted to the multiplicity of lifestyles and needs that our region’s future will hold."

To read the full report, go here.