To understand the vision behind Le Parisien, it’s useful to have in your head an image of developer Mark Dziuk (pronounced “juke”) on trips to France in the winter of 2004 and summer of 2005, walking the neighborhoods of Paris and surrounding towns, studying not only the architecture but how people interacted in spaces as they went about their daily business. (Dziuk is a principal both of Le Parisien, LLC, which owns the project, and Velocity Investments, Inc, the general contractor.)

Wearing through plenty of shoe leather along the way, he filled notebooks with his observations and snapped hundreds of digital images — stonework, rooflines, sidewalks, courtyards, parapets, doors, windows, tiles, floors, interplay of colors, shadows and light, night shots of store fronts, pedestrian traffic flow and, significantly, the prevalence of second-story retail.

Dziuk was determined to figure out how he could translate the aesthetics, comfortable charm and sense of community found in these French neighborhoods to a mixed-use project in the Twin Cities — and build it in accordance with “building biology” principles for creating a healthy living environment, incorporating green building practices and products.

A successful computer-biz entrepreneur-turned-developer, Dziuk speaks thoughtfully and passionately about urban planning, community life and environmental issues. An unabashed Francophile and fan of the writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell, Dziuk grew up on a farm in Osseo building chicken coops and fences, driving tractors, and cultivating hundreds of acres of potatoes. He also built decks in Hollywood for the likes of Louis Anderson and Tab Hunter. After selling his assistive computer technologies company (i.e., for people with special needs) three years ago, Dziuk, who lives with his family in Linden Hills, began incubating ideas for a mixed-use development that would reflect his commitment to a healthy, ecologicallysensitive lifestyle and community building.

Specifically, he wanted to create an environment for people like himself who loved European lifestyle but wanted to live in the Twin Cities. It’s important to note that Dziuk was after more than mere mimicry of French architectural details. He was adamant that his project not be infused with easy, Disneyesque theming.

While in France, Dziuk met with dozens of vendors, including manufacturers of kitchen appliances and the Hungarian herringbone hardwood parquet (cut from French white oak) floors for all 13 condos at Le Parisien. (Herringbone parquet was common in French apartments between about 1870 and 1930, but until Dziuk came along this manufacturer had not exported his product to the United States.)

Dziuk’s “aha” moment came toward the end of his research, atop the bell tower in the cathedral town of Chartres, about 60 miles south of Paris, where he had been retracing the steps of Joseph Campbell. As Dziuk was taking pictures of the courtyards below, he started visualizing for his Minneapolis project a second-story green-garden courtyard. At that point all his ideas began meshing and he conceived the design for Le Parisien as it appears in the painted rendering of the project.

Miller Hanson Partners of Minneapolis is the architectural firm helping bring Mark Dziuk’s vision to reality.