Chancellor Square is the designation of a six-square-block portion of downtown Bismarck between 4th and 6th Streets, and Broadway and Thayer Avenues. The Square was formally dedicated in 1976 as an Urban Renewal project. Until 2017, Chancellor Square was well known for its one-way traffic loop.
Chancellor Square was originally an attempt to turn downtown Bismarck into a pedestrian friendly shopping center at a time when major retailers J.C. Penney, Sears, Woolworth, and local department store A.W. Lucas were downtown destinations. Its goal was to complement nearby Kirkwood Mall, rather than compete with it. The then-smaller Kirkwood Mall had just opened three years prior and Gateway Mall was years away from development.
History
Chancellor Square was first announced before a crowd of 75 people at the Four Seasons Grand Pacific Hotel Hall on June 27, 1973. The idea conceptualized a “mini-mall with green space and diagonal parking, climatized skyways, a park surrounding the train depot, and even double-decker buses shuttling shoppers between downtown and Kirkwood Mall.”
The following month, the Bismarck Urban Renewal Agency authorized Hodne-Stageberg Partners Inc. to proceed with the preliminary design.
The City Commission greenlit the project on May 14, 1974, contingent on addressing two concerns. The first concern was eliminating a curb cut at Kokkeler Jewelers, which the retailer objected to because of access concerns to its parking lot. The other was an underground vault at the Cowan Building beneath Broadway Avenue.
In the end, the completed Chancellor Square project was less elaborate than the original planned cityscape. The six blocks of climate-controlled skyways never came to fruition. Chancellor Square’s most significant impact was converting the downtown stretches of 4th and 6th Streets, and of Thayer and Broadway Avenues to one-ways, creating a square loop. As well, diagonal parking was added with light bollards lining the nearby curbs. Built-in benches were constructed and an estimated 1,500 trees and shrubs were planted, including 89 ash trees. Curbs were bumped out at crossings to improve pedestrian safety. Lastly, new signs were erected featuring a leaf design from the Square’s official logo.
Initial reaction to Chancellor Square ahead of completion was negative-to-mixed, but news reports following its dedication painted a more positive reception. If citizens were welcoming to Chancellor Square in the beginning, this positive reception quickly faded. By 1994, efforts were already being taken to restore the downtown one-way loop to two-way traffic, which was ultimately done away with in 2017.
Downtown’s first skyway was constructed along with the Galleria parking ramp in 1983. Medcenter One began construction of a skyway over Rosser Avenue in 1991. Attempts to complete the skyway network continued, as late as 1999.
