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on location: midwest ❖
Spoonbridge and Cherry, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Source of the Mississippi River, Itasca State Park
Explore Minnesota Tourism Photos
Mountain Adventure Golf and a 14-screen movie theater.
Mall of America, located 15 minutes from downtown Minneapolis
and St. Paul, features 520-plus shops that annually
draw more than 42 million visitors, including some four million
international guests. The mall’s Phase II plan calls for up an
additional 5.6 million square feet, with high-end hotel, retail and
medical facilities, including a Radisson Blu hotel opening in
2013. (mallofamerica.com)
Walker Art Center at 85. Established in 1927, the Walker
Art Center became the first public art gallery in the Upper Midwest
and began its focus on contemporary art in the 1940s. A
major expansion opened in 2005, and today the Walker is one
of the nation’s five most-visited modern/contemporary art museums
in the U.S. Besides featuring the works of major 20th
and 21st century artists, the museum is revered for the vitality
of its performing arts, film and education programs.
A vital force for bringing new visitors into the Walker has
been the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which
opened in 1988. Its centerpiece is Claes Oldenburg and Coosje
van Brugen’s Spoonbridge and Cherry, a whimsical symbol of
the Twin Cities. Together the garden and Walker Art Center attract
more than 600,000 visitors a year. (walkerart.org)
MSP Airport’s Terminal 1-Lindbergh at 50. Minneapolis-
St. Paul (MSP) International Airport has come a long way since
opening in 1962 with 24 aircraft gates on two concourses, or
“piers.” Today it has 117 gates on seven concourses. Airlines
carried about 33 million passengers to and from MSP last year,
compared to fewer than 2 million in 1962. On average, some
80,000 people a day now fly through Terminal 1-Lindbergh.
Of the seven airlines that served MSP when the terminal
opened, only United Airlines still exists. The others – Braniff,
Eastern, North Central, Northwest, Ozark and Western – succumbed
to acquisition, merger or liquidation. MSP became a
major hub in 1986 with the merger of the two largest carriers at
the airport, Northwest and Republic, creating the world’s fourth
largest airline. Although Delta Air Lines didn’t begin serving the
Twin Cities until 1984, it became the dominant carrier in 2008
when it acquired Northwest Airlines.
Because it was the only active terminal at MSP when it
opened for business in 1962, Terminal 1-Lindbergh wasn’t actually
named until 1985, when it was rededicated to famous
Minnesota aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Naming the terminal
had become necessary with the introduction of a second terminal
in 1986, the Hubert H. Humphrey International Charter
Terminal. A numeric designator was added to both terminal
names in 2010 in an effort to win approval from state and federal
highway officials for signs directing drivers to the correct
terminal for their airline. (mspairport.com)
42 April 2012 LeisureGroupTravel.com