Visual quality process
The visual quality process helps establish the community’s suggestions and recommendations regarding the visual characteristics of a reconstruction project.
Committee
The City of St. Louis Park helped establish a Visual Quality Advisory Committee (VQAC) comprised of community members, city and county representatives and community business leaders. The VQAC is the MnDOT project team’s direct link to suggestions, recommendations, concerns and input from the community. During the months preceding the reconstruction design phase, the committee works with MnDOT engineers, designers and the Visual Quality Management Team to discuss and establish visual characteristics, such as noise walls, vegetation and public art that align with the community’s identity and are consistent with the corridor’s aesthetics.
Members:
- Bob Tift, Benilde - St.Margaret's
- Bud Storm, Resident
- Carl Robertson St. Louis Park Planning Commission
- Curt Peterson, Resident
- David Hagford, Lutheran Church of the Reformation
- Jan Loftus, Sorensen Neighborhood
- Jason Fehring, Lutheran Church of the Reformation
- Jeanne Andersen, St. Louis Park Historical Society
- Jerry Frick, Financial Director Beth El Synagogue
- Patty Dittrich, St. Georges Episcopal Church
- Thom Miller, Birchwood Neighborhood
- Todd Olson, Groves Academy
Meetings and minutes
Upcoming meetings:
- Feb. 7, 2013
- March 7, 2013
- April 4, 2013
- May 2, 2013
- June 6, 2013
- Public open house date to be determined
Meetings held from 6 to 8 p.m. at:
St. Louis Park City Hall
5005 Minnetonka Blvd
St. Louis Park, 55416
Minutes:
- Jan. 3, 2013 - Major mainline structures
- Minutes (PDF)
- Dec. 6, 2012 - Identity, issues and ideas
- Minutes (PDF)
- Presentation (PPT)
Goals
- Develop a conceptual vision that responds to people who live, work and play in St. Louis Park and provides a narrative for designing the visual quality elements and how they relate to the surrounding community.
- Draft a Visual Quality Manual that articulates key visual quality elements, concepts and guidelines that may be used in the final design of the construction project. The key elements and recommendations of the manual are based on community geographic and demographic contexts and conform to MnDOT parameters.
Visual quality components
- Bridges
- Fending
- Grading and ponding
- Highway lighting
- Noise barriers
- Retaining wall
- Signs
- Exit ramps
- Pedestrian and bicycle facilities
- Streetscape on local streets
- Gateway elements
- Public art
- Vegetation
- Existing and future roadway layouts

