In short, it is clear that regional and metropolitan accessibility has been the major factor in locating manufacturing and warehousing establishments. This accessibility is provided (1) by highway to the Minneapolis CBD and the bulk of the metropolitan area, (2) by highway to the trade hinterland west, southwest, and northwest of Minneapolis; and (3) by rail to the major markets and industrial areas of the East. For both (1) and (2), above, there is an evident advantage in location near a high-speed highway which is both a western circumferential and an urban distributor.

7. Summary of Locational Patterns

The Belt Line and related major highways have gathered a large amount of commercial and industrial development near their major intersections. However, the development has been the result of several different stimuli.

Of 458 acres (excluding the large quarry .in St. Louis Park), 40 acres have been developed for shopping center uses attributable mainly to residential growth. One hundred twenty-six acres are devoted to highway-oriented uses related primarily to traffic density on the highway and only secondarily to adjacent residential development. Two hundred ninety-two acres are used for manufacturing and warehousing establishments. They are concerned with highway access to the centers of the metropolitan complex and also with highway and rail access to the Twin Cities trade territory and the eastern manufacturing centers.

Furthermore, the spatial relationships between the commercial and industrial developments and the highway have depended in part upon the timing of highway construction relative to residential development and upon zoning regulations.

The Character of Development

In addition to their distinctive spatial patterns, the various Belt Line commercial and industrial uses have distinctive characteristics of structure and land parcel size. Three categories of development have been defined for the purpose of describing the physical appearance and value of building improvements in the study strip. The categories have been worked out from data accumulated in studies along T. H. 100 west and south of Minneapolis and in Faribault, Minnesota (see Appendix 2). The categories are defined as follows:

Tables 8 and 9 show what kinds of business are housed by each class of building. No shopping center uses are housed in Class I structures. Otherwise all three classes of structure are occupied by all use categories. This indicates a tendency for every quality of structure to serve every major use. The most common type of building is Class II. This class accounts for two-thirds of all structures and dominates every use except warehousing (Figure 27). On the other hand, there is a tendency for shopping center and warehousing uses to occupy the more valuable and attractive structures and highway-oriented service establishments or manufacturing establishments to occupy less valuable structures. Ninety-five per cent of the Class I structures house highway-oriented or manufacturing uses (Figure 28); 67 per cent of the Class III structures house shopping center and warehousing uses (Figure 29). Classes II and III include 100 per cent of the shopping center uses and 96 per cent of the warehousing. Classes I and II include 94 per cent of the highway-oriented uses and 84 per cent of the manufacturing uses.

Table 10 indicates that major uses also tend to be distinguished one from another by differences in parcel size. The average parcel size for manufacturing and warehousing establishments is larger than that for retail and service uses; and manufacturing and warehousing firms have also shown a clearer trend toward increasing the

size of their land parcels in the post war period. The large jump in average acreage per shopping center-type establishment in 1959 is the result of one development with a very large parking area which dominates a relatively small total. In its context the large jump cannot be taken as indicative of a long period trend.

Over the years, there has been a marked change in the kind of firm which has built manufacturing or warehousing facilities in the study strip. In the 1940's only grain elevators and a concrete-mixing plant located in the study strip. Since then, a great variety of companies have found the Belt Line area attractive. This change has accompanied the growth of the urban frontier up to and then far beyond the Belt Line. The changes can be noted in detail in Table 11. It is noteworthy that both the early grain elevators and the later manufacturing and distribution establishments represent a movement outward from the central city as a result of either expansion or replacement of old or obsolete facilities.

Classes of structure and parcel sizes differ between the Belt Line and the radial highways. Warehousing and manufacturing establishments which face the Belt Line account for only one-fourth of the to-

tal in the study strip. But they are newer. In fact, 75 per cent of warehousing and manufacturing structures were built after 1957. On the major radial highways, by contrast, only one-third of the buildings were erected that recently. As a result, the developments on the Belt Line tend to be larger (average 6. 5 acres compared to 3. 3 on the radials) and higher in value (50 per cent Class III, 8 per cent Class I, compared with 32 per cent Class III, 16 per cent Class I on the radial highways). In other words compared with those on the radial highways, establishments on the Belt Line are fewer but on the average newer, larger, and of higher value.

Most of the manufacturing and warehousing establishments in the study strip are in the highway-trackage belt either in the central part of St. Louis Park or in Golden Valley and the adjacent northern edge of St. Louis Park. Therefore those are the places where one must seek the explanation for the differences between industrial development fronting the Belt Line and that fronting the radials.

In the central part of St. Louis Park, the Belt Line cut through an already urbanized area in which public sewer and water were available as a result of prior urban development. As a result, early industrial growth in the Belt Line study strip was attracted to that area. But it was attracted mainly to locations on the radial routes. In that part of St. Louis Park there was an established precedent for residential use in the area through which the Belt Line passed.