Photo: Anne Deanovic/Nolan Mains
In this issue, devoted to the best of the best in Edina, I salute Nolan Mains—what I believe to be the best recent contribution toward enhancing community and making our town an excellent place to live.
The mission of supporting community is inherent to the Nolan Mains development. Co-developer Pete Deanovic of Buhl Investors focused on Edina’s downtown at 50th & France as an essential site where residents go to eat, shop, meet and have fun—and where they have been doing so for more than a century.
It’s named after Leo Nolan, whose popular Nolan’s Golf Terrace Café was across 50th Street from the Edina Theatre in the 1940s, in a stunning streamlined Art Deco building.
Deanovic preferred small businesses for the commercial spaces of Nolan Mains—shops and restaurants that offer interesting and unique options to the neighborhood and give shoppers, diners and owners the opportunity and environment to know each other personally.
The plaza at Nolan Mains has also become a space for community gatherings—from Friday night concerts every summer to pumpkin painting in October, and a petting zoo and flower garden celebrating spring every April, among many other annual events.
Whether you’re indulging in caramel sea salt ice cream, finding the perfect party dress, gathering with friends for afternoon tea, scoring the ideal gift, trying a new juice or savoring the best New Orleans cuisine at this end of the Mississippi, Nolan Mains is your destination.
Contributed by Laura Westlund, an Edina resident, tour guide at the Weisman Art Museum and an art hound for Minnesota Public Radio.
