What Can the Jordan Neighborhood Get From 26th Avenue Upgrades?

The contents of this post are not the position of the Jordan Area Community Council, and are my personal musing on the topic.

We are nearing the end of the beginning for the 26th Avenue Greenway/Bikeway.  As plans will soon be finalized, neighborhoods and interest groups are making their final pushes for amenities or tweaks to the project that benefit their goals.  Overall, this lobbying has produced good results   The "opportunity points" at the river, Farview Park, Nellie Stone Johnson School, and Theo Wirth Parkway are all great additions to the corridor.  And yet they all fall outside the boundaries of my neighborhood.

So I'm going to be unabashedly selfish here.  If the bikeway is getting potential improvements over the previous plan, is there a way for the Jordan neighborhood to benefit from that?  (Aside from the indirect benefit of having a better bike corridor overall, that is.)

Well...

26th Avenue Closure Showcases Poor Street Layout

Varying stretches of 26th Avenue North have been closed off due to construction as of late, and that closure has forced drivers and bikers to find alternate routes to cross this section of north Minneapolis.  Unfortunately, due to some very poor urban planning, those alternatives don't exist.  In between Emerson and Penn, there are no consistent thoroughfares to get people around the neighborhood.  Drivers either are forced onto Broadway or Lowry, or they wind up wandering through the convoluted side streets, likely breaking a few traffic laws along the way.

I tried to traverse the area by going a block north of 26th, only to find...