In a 30-year (1980-2010) population analysis of Northeast Minneapolis, perhaps the biggest news is no news at all: Northeast’s population, at roughly 35,000 through those decades, stayed almost exactly the same, declining by 130 people, about one-third of 1 percent.
Within that total, however, and within individual neighborhoods, significant changes were found:
- The Nicollet Island-East Bank Neighborhood, while small in actual numbers, had an enormous percentage growth, up 545 percent over the 30 years.
- Over the 30 years, seven Northeast neighborhoods lost population, six gained population.
- Ethnic diversity has grown in Northeast. In 1980, Northeast’s population was 97 percent White, in 2010, White people make up 69 percent of the population.
- The strongest gains in non-White population occurred in the most recent 20 years, and mostly among Black and Hispanic people (note that percentages might not appear to total 100; the Census data notes that Hispanic people can be of any race).
- Northeast neighborhoods with the highest percentage of White people are Nicollet Island-East Bank, Waite Park and St. Anthony West; neighborhoods with the highest percentage of non-White people are Beltrami, Bottineau and Holland.
- Northeast’s most populous neighborhoods are in its northeast corner: Windom Park, Audubon Park and Waite Park. Northeast’s smallest-population neighborhood is Northeast Park.
(Part of) The rest of the story
| Early data released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the City of Minneapolis provide 2010 figures for general population, for race and ethnicity, and for housing occupancy. This article tracks some of the population and race/ethnicity numbers from the 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 Census data. |
The strong population increase in the Nicollet Island-East Bank Neighborhood could be expected because several new housing developments greatly increased residential opportunities there. Only 14 of the neighborhood’s 203 residents in 1980 were non-White; in 2010, 210 of the 1,309 residents in 2010 were non-White.
Other neighborhoods with strong population gains over the past 30 years were Bottineau (44 percent), Beltrami (25 percent) and St. Anthony East (12 percent), during a time when Minneapolis’ overall population increased 3 percent (in the previous 30 years, 1950-1980, the city’s overall population declined 28 percent).
Holland and St. Anthony West also gained population. St. Anthony West gained population in the first two decades, then lost all but 109 of that gain in the past 10 years.
The steepest neighborhood population declines occurred in Audubon Park (16 percent), Northeast Park (12 percent) and Columbia Park (12 percent). Waite Park and Windom Park also lost population; Logan Park had a loss in population from 1980 to 1990, gained most of it back between 1990 and 2000, but lost that many and more in the past 10 years, making for an overall 30-year loss of 5 percent.
In 1980, 242 Hispanic people and 62 Black people lived in Northeast. By 1990, those numbers had grown to 554 and 478; and by 2000 they had more than quadrupled in 10 years, to 2,407 and 2,218. In the next 10 years, their numbers continue to grow, reaching 3,813 and 3,917 in 2010.
Between 1980 and 2000, Northeast’s Asian population grew from 256 to 1,327, then declined in the next 10 years to 1,098, ranging from 1 to 4 percent of Northeast’s overall population.
A total of 353 Native Americans lived in Northeast in 1980; that number grew to 853 in 1990 and declined in the next 20 years, to the 2010 figure of 560, ranging between 1 and 2 percent of the overall population.
In future editions:
- Population trends in St. Anthony, Columbia Heights and Hilltop
- Is Northeast getting older or younger (or both, or neither)?
- Households and housing statistics
Data for this article came from the U.S. Census Bureau and the City of Minneapolis.
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