I have a hard time believing Mary Tyler Moore would have wanted to be the poster girl for the prolonged Nicollet Mall construction project. Had she, or her most famous television producer character Mary Richards, attended the city’s March 31 press conference to kick off “the final stretch of the project’s construction” (i.e. justification of a third summer of bulldozers and barricades), I’d like to think she would have called the city out on the length of the project and probed into how, after nearly three years, the new trees, benches, and artwork will solve downtown's bigger issues, like empty storefronts and safety concerns.
But there on a billboard is the statue of Mary, casting a shadow over Hennepin Avenue as she throws her (hard) hat toward the sky. Next to her are the words to her iconic theme song, “We’re going to make it after all.”
I understand the attempt to put an endearing face on a construction mess. After all, the Mary statue itself has been displaced by the torn-up Nicollet Mall. And I appreciate the city’s acknowledgement that this project has taken a really, really, really long time.
Then I read the smaller print on the billboard: “The New Nicollet. Substantially complete Nov. 2017.”
Substantially complete. Substantially? So what they’re saying is, not completely complete? Not even by November? Not entirely?
Who approved this? Who thought this was the best way to address the fact that there will still be loose ends on Nicollet, even at the end of the year? Why wouldn’t you just say, “coming soon” or “later this year” or “November 2017,” or NOTHING. But substantially? With that, they've just undermined any feelings of patience and sympathy for the scope and complications of completing this project by emphasizing the fact that it’s still not going to be entirely done, even when they're saying it’s going to be done. Or, mostly done.
Too harsh? Aaron Keller is my litmus test. Keller is managing principal of Capsule, the Minneapolis-based agency that worked with the Mpls downtown council on its recent rebranding. (Not the Nicollet Mall campaign.) He, too, thought “substantially” was an odd choice, at best.
“Substantially is a $50 word where a 5 cent one would suffice,” Keller says. And then, in true Keller creative form, he batted out nine alternative taglines over email, including: “A new walk, just around the bend” and “A new arrival in Mpls, just in time for the holidays.”
Instead of feeling optimistic that the end is in sight, that one word—substantially—has left us wondering what won’t be done.
So I asked Steve Cramer, president and CEO of Mpls downtown council and the Downtown Improvement District. Why that phrase, “substantially complete?”
"Substantially complete means Nicollet Mall will no longer be a construction site after November," Cramer says. "To the public it will look complete, even though a few trees will still need to be planted in spring 2018."
Well that doesn’t sound so bad. Why didn't they just say that? "Construction ends this fall! New greens for spring!" Too much detail for a billboard, perhaps, but it seems like if all that separates substantially complete from complete is some trees, people would understand the city heralding November as an end to construction. It would be enough.
A press kit about the new Nicollet Mall campaign, which was developed by creative agency Gabriel deGrood Bendt (GdB), describes how the campaign will start with “a nod toward the continued construction phase and tongue in cheek slogans alluding to the community’s ‘patience’ (their quotations, not mine) for the project.”
I’m not sure if “substantially” is the part they consider tongue in cheek, or if it’s simply hedging bets so that if people complain the work is not completely finished by Thanksgiving, the city can remind us that they never said it would be. Either way, I’m guessing those are smirks, not smiles, on the faces of people passing under the billboards.
Substantially, anyway.
