The population center of the Twin Cities

👋 Nick here. I've been curious for a while about the Twin Cities' population centers.

The intrigue: Most of my family lives in the east metro and they make Minneapolis seem like a different country.

• So where is the middle of the seven-county Twin Cities metro, based on population?

Todd Graham, a forecaster for the Met Council, helped me out. He plugged census data into a software program to calculate the weighted average latitude and longitude.

Those coordinates: 44°57'30.6"N 93°15'21.2"W

• That's right by the Phillips Community Center, which is about a mile south of downtown Minneapolis.

I was a bit surprised. I thought the booming west metro would have pulled the central point into St. Louis Park.

Be smart: Maybe you should make the nearby Maria's Cafe — a Columbian restaurant — your new meeting spot. I haven't tried it, but it has a 4.4 rating on Google, with over 1,000 reviews.

Flashback: We reported last year that with the new census data, the central population of Minnesota is in Rogers.