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An empty nester trades her big house for the urban village of Excelsior & Grand
By Meleah Maynard
Photo by David Bowman
Luckily, her keen-eyed friend was able to identify the promise hiding inside the hodge-podge of squares and rectangles laid out before them. “I couldn’t really make sense of anything,” Joanna says. “But my friend looked at the plan for the penthouse overlooking the park and said the space was going to be great.” Joanna was intrigued, but what really sold her on the place was the location. Part of a 15-acre, mixed-use development, the condo was just steps from coffee shops, restaurants, and upscale retailers built around tree-lined green space, complete with a courtyard that blends urban sensibility with town-square appeal. “I love how everything I need is right outside my door,” Joanna says. “I go to Starbucks and Panera, I like to meet friends for lunch or dinner at McCoys or Brix, and I do a lot of my shopping at Trader Joe’s.” ¶ In the world of designers and urban planners, there’s a term for this walkable lifestyle—New Urbanism. “It’s a movement to recreate the kinds of urban centers where you can live, work, eat, and shop in close proximity,” says Gary Wilson, asset manager for Plymouth-based TOLD Development Company, which oversaw the Excelsior & Grand project. “It’s all about building a community where you have great neighborhoods and great livability, like you see in Manhattan, for example, where you’ve got a row of brownstones right around the corner from a dry cleaner and a great restaurant.”
Once Joanna purchased her condo, she immediately listed her spacious, contemporary home near Cedar Lake in Minneapolis. Her realtor thought it could take more than a year to sell, but it sold in just 25 days. To bridge the nearly year-long gap before her condo would be finished, Joanna rented a condo in another part of the development, which allowed her to explore the area and be more involved in the creation of her new home. “It was really fun to see this place being built,” she says. “I took a lot of pictures as it was coming together and I got to enjoy what it’s like to be here. So I knew I really liked it even before I moved in.”
Photo by David Bowman
In the spacious, open-plan living area, a gently curving wall of 8-foot windows—stretching from the kitchen to the opposite end of the living room—offers a view of the treetops and park below. Stepping out onto the balcony—the smallest of the condo’s three—Joanna looks at the pool below and smiles. “I wake up in the morning and I come out here and I feel like I live at a resort,” she says.
To accommodate her love of cooking and entertaining, Joanna had the living room fireplace raised about 2 feet to make it visible from the kitchen and dining area. She also made sure that the flat-screen television, mounted on one of the living room’s few walls, was hinged on one side so it can be seen from anywhere in the room. Instead of carpet, she opted for wood floors in the kitchen, dining area, and living room to give the space a more modern feel that complements her soft-contemporary décor. Throughout the room, colorful glass sculptures she collected during trips to Venice over the past eight years sparkle and glow in the sunlight.
Now retired, Joanna still enjoys traveling, sometimes with the younger of her two daughters, who also recently moved into a loft in the development. Now she truly does have it all close at hand—home, community, and family.
Meleah Maynard is a Minneapolis freelance writer.
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