After spending far too much time with the cast of characters from last week’s Zoning and Planning meeting in the editing room (ICYMI: I’m a prominent local anthropologist and documentarian), one thing struck me as particularly notable: Council Member Lisa Goodman calling YIMBYs a bunch of Republicans.
Goodman found a very provocative way to say projects like the Sons of Norway redevelopment will “increase prices” for homes in surrounding areas:
I’m mostly concerned about the impact of projects like this on our future affordable housing goals. It’s almost like we have this Republicanesque kind of trickle-down theory going on. That if you just build a lot more, then that will free up units at the lower level…
Aside from Goodman’s “Republicanesque” and “trickle-down” slurs, I think this is a reasonable, though incomplete, characterization of a YIMBY argument. I do think building a crapload of homes of all kinds and sizes — especially on giant parking lots — is helpful! Hopefully a lot of this new housing comes with less parking, smaller setbacks, in medium-sized buildings without elevators, among other things that keep housing costs lower. I believe more housing supply puts pressure on landlords by giving tenants options, and makes it less enticing for developers to purchase, renovate, and raise rents in older apartment buildings. In addition to this, I believe we need more public money to subsidize housing for people the market can’t possibly serve. The scale of the problem is too big to pretend these solutions are all mutually exclusive.
It’s disappointing that a city council member is legitimizing arguments that make it easier for well-meaning people to oppose new housing during a housing shortage. Vacancy rates remain historically low as our population grows — hovering around 3%! Lisa Goodman represents some of the most expensive real estate in Minneapolis and many of those neighborhoods have been walled off from more housing for decades by exclusionary zoning. Instead of leading, she’s pandering to people’s fears.
We’ve tried the “no new housing” approach as prices have risen; Lisa Goodman should know it’s only made things worse in her ward. It’s an embarrassing pander to tell exceptionally well-off people that more housing in their neighborhood will cause gentrification. And it makes less sense when you consider Lisa Goodman and residents in opposition to the Sons of Norway project explicitly promoted the idea of fewer units on the site; this would necessarily have made each unit more expensive.
Council President Lisa Bender rebutted the notion of a new wave of gentrification in East Calhoun by rattling off the eye-popping “for sale” prices of single-family homes in the neighborhood (from $500,000 to 1.2M), helping to make the subtle point that Lisa Goodman is full of it. Bender added:
I can’t in good conscience as an elected official in the city of Minneapolis force a developer to build multi-million dollar homes at this location. It just isn’t consistent with any of our policies, or the promises that I made when I ran for office. It doesn’t make sense to me to say that we could only build 38 units here. Imagine how expensive those units would be: millions of dollars.
[In fairness to Lisa Bender, she spoke before Goodman, so Bender isn’t entirely responsible for making the subtle point that Goodman is “full of it.” Blame Lisa Goodman.]
While Lisa Goodman will happily grab credit for disbursing meager affordable housing funds to a few subsidized projects each year, she is hardly an advocate for those who’ve experienced rising housing costs in Minneapolis during her 20 years in office.
When publicly-subsidized affordable youth housing was proposed near the bustling and exceedingly urban intersection of Hennepin and Franklin Avenues last year, Goodman pressured the developer to lop a few stories off the top, causing the proposal to have fewer units. The project is controversial among some wealthy residents of Lowry Hill, both for the size of the building and because it would house young people just out of foster care. One quote among many from an actual neighborhood meeting: “When you go on the nextdoor website we get a lot of kids breaking into cars to sell things to buy a hit of drugs… Are these kids curfewed?”
While campaigning for re-election last year, Goodman called the idea of allowing people in duplexes, triplexes and small apartment buildings to live near her wealthy constituents “unconscionable.” A notable sentiment because this is the sort of housing that’s least expensive to build and live in. Goodman thought it more essential to defend exclusionary zoning; she talked about her opposition to new housing in terms of protecting the “investment” of the well-off:
When you buy a house, which is your single biggest investment, one of the things that you take into consideration is the location and what the neighborhood looks and feels like surrounding you. To upend that and make a dramatic change without the neighborhood and neighbors agreeing to it is, I think, unconscionable.
But Lisa Goodman has not always pushed for very strictly interpreting the zoning code to the benefit of the most disgruntled and privileged neighbors. In 2016, Goodman justified her vote to approve a remarkably generous variance for a 600% increase in floor area ratio (FAR) for the 40-story Alatus tower (zoned for 4-stories in a historic district, oh my!), by saying: “We are in a position in the city — whether I campaigned on it or not, and frankly I didn’t — that we should increase density in our city.“ Not even noted Fan of Tall Buildings in the Middle of Major American Cities, Nick Magrino, could stomach that departure from the zoning code — he voted against it.
Compare the 2016 “Alatus Tower Lisa Goodman” to the 2018 “Sons of Norway Lisa Goodman.”
Quibbled over a single story, saying that four stories — not five — was essential to comply with the small area plan by achieving a “graceful” stepdown from east to west.
Said housing advocates were “Republicanesque” trickle-downers driving the gentrification of Minneapolis.
I think 2018 Lisa Goodman would rip 2016 Lisa Goodman to shreds for disrespecting the neighborhood and gentrifying Minneapolis beyond recognition.
So my point is, watch my new film [STREAM IT TODAY!]. And please send thoughts and prayers to Neighbors for East Bank Livability, the group who tried their darnedest to stop the 40-story Alatus tower, and who are still screaming at their TV screens a week after watching Lisa Goodman put her whole heart into defending East Calhoun from a 5-story building.
It was bound to happen. After a year spent enduring the daily trauma inflicted on our country by its own president, concerned residents have adopted the language of resistance to Donald Trump and applied it to the perceived atrocity of new apartments in their backyard.
The subject of my latest documentary film is the Sons of Norway redevelopment project on Lake Street between Holmes and Humboldt Avenues. The concerns are the same as they’ve always been — traffic, parking, too many people! — but it may be harder for some viewers to take seriously (and could make young children uncomfortable).
One person manufactured their own personal Elizabeth Warren moment by declaring, “Nevertheless I will persist.” A guy from New York bragged about fighting against Trump in the old days, then told the City Council about Giulian’s destruction of the Upper West Side. Lisa Goodman called people who acknowledge that we are experiencing an actual housing shortage “Republicanesque” trickle-downers. Local development politics have officially been nationalized!
People from across the Twin Cities flocked to Arby’s Island in Uptown Friday night to celebrate the memory of a fallen icon: a fast food sign that lit the corner of Lake St and Emerson Ave for more than 47 years.
Organizer Noah Hevey billed the event as a candle light vigil. Rather than mournful, the atmosphere was friendly and celebratory as the temperature hovered around zero degrees. The image of the old Arby’s sign was projected onto a screen in the parking lot while attendees displayed cardboard signs and lit candles in remembrance.
Arby’s Restaurant Group provided free t-shirts and the Moxy hotel provided Arby’s signature roast beef sandwiches, which were enjoyed afterwards in the lounge across the street.
A statement from Arby’s president Rob Lynch offered “condolences for the loss of a community icon.” The statement explained the reason for the restaurant’s closing was the unwillingness of the property owner to offer a 10-year lease.
Lynch continued, “Tonight we bid farewell to the Uptown Arby’s and its beautiful sign, but this doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. We have more than 60 Arby’s restaurants in Minneapolis and surrounding areas within 3 to 5 miles of here.”
Printed lyrics to a parody version of Danny Boy were distributed to the crowd. The music started, and it went like this:
Oh Arby’s Sign, the meats, the meats are calling
With curly fries and all the tasty sides
The sign is gone and now I will be bawling
‘Tis you ’tis you, must go and I must bide But come ye back when hunger’s in the belly Or when the city’s hushed and white with snow ‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow Oh Arby’s sign, oh Arby’s sign, I love you so Of you I dream, oh when the night is falling And then I’m fed, as fed I may well be I pray you find the place where I am lying And kneel and place an Arby’s there for me And I will know the sixty other metro locations And so my plate still warm and sweet shall be For you shall serve and show me that you love me And I will eat in peace, oh Arby’s come to me
With rumors swirling about the fate of the Wedge neighborhood’s most beloved fast food restaurant, I was present for the final hours of the Uptown Arby’s. Joined by four of my best Twitter friends, we ate curly fries and reminisced about the good times.
Employees confirmed that the Arby’s at 1116 West Lake Street is closing, and speculated about a new apartment building taking the place of the single-story drive-thru restaurant. A wistful young cashier spoke of the coworkers he won’t get to see anymore.
Over the last year, the Uptown Arby’s has seen neighboring properties transformed. The former parking lot across the street has become Uptown’s only hotel — or what some residents loudly complain will be a sex hotel (the Star Tribune found photos on the hotel’s website featuring “half-dressed patrons jumping on beds”). One block to the west, on the site of a former single-story retail building, stands a new apartment building with a small-format Target store operating on the ground floor.
As we imagine what the future holds for this odd triangular patch of land, let’s take a look back at how Uptown’s geography has evolved over the years. In the mid-1960s, Lagoon Avenue was constructed north of Lake Street, cutting city blocks in half and creating what we know now as the “Arby’s Island” triangle.
You may currently be hearing a lot about a couple of open and competitive Minnesota State House seats this year: 62A and 62B. If you’re like me, those numbers are geographically incomprehensible. You may be asking, what is the difference between a 62A and a 62B? Who is running in which of these districts? How can I get involved? First, a brief explanation of district naming conventions. The “62” represents Senate District 62, which is one of 67 senate districts in Minnesota. The “A” and “B” come from dividing a senate district into two house districts. In this way, 67 senate districts are subdivided into 134 house districts.
62A goes roughly from Lyndale Ave on the west to Hiawatha on the East; and from I-94 on the north, to Lake Street on the south.
62B, as explained in this candidate write-up in the Southwest Journal “includes the Lyndale, Kingfield, Central, Bryant and Regina neighborhoods, most of Powderhorn Park and Field and a portion of Tangletown.”
62B candidate forum – Friday, February 2, 6:30 – 8:30 PM, Sabathani Community Center.
DFL Caucus night is February 6. Caucuses are terrible, but you can be one of an exclusive few who decide which candidate is best positioned to win in November.
Google now has an app that will match your face to fine art. I have determined you can point your phone’s camera at a computer screen to match Minneapolis politicians to faces in old paintings. Disclaimer: much like DNA testing services provided by sites like ancestry.com, these results are not 100% genetically accurate.
Kevin Reich, Ward 1.
Cam Gordon, Ward 2.
Steve Fletcher, Ward 3.
Phillipe Cunningham, Ward 4.
Jeremiah Ellison, Ward 5.
Abdi Warsame, Ward 6.
Lisa Goodman, Ward 7.
Andrea Jenkins, Ward 8.
Alondra Cano, Ward 9.
Council President Lisa Bender, Ward 10.
Jeremy Schroeder, Ward 11.
Andrew Johnson, Ward 12.
Linea Palmisano, Ward 13.
Mayor Jacob Frey.
The ubiquitous unflattering Star Tribune photo of former Mayor Betsy Hodges shows a 50% genetic match to a boy playing the bagpipes.
Former City Council President Barb Johnson.
Former mayoral candidate Tom Hoch.
I tried to run the eerily human face of Andrew Johnson’s dog through the Google fine art machine, but it couldn’t find a match. However, Wedge LIVE computers calculate that Andrew Johnson’s dog is a 99% genetic match to a painting of an Ewok.
It’s very likely Lisa Bender will become Council President. The other candidate is Andrea Jenkins.
The public vote for president is traditionally unanimous once it becomes clear which candidate has majority support. Privately Bender has had seven of 13 votes secured for a while: incumbents Cam Gordon and Andrew Johnson, joined by new members Steve Fletcher, Phillipe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison, and Jeremy Schroeder.
Andrea Jenkins had the support of Alondra Cano plus the four remaining incumbents who were part of President Barb Johnson’s coalition during the last term: Kevin Reich, Abdi Warsame, Lisa Goodman, and Linea Palmisano.
The council will also elect a Vice President, a Majority Leader, and a Minority Leader.
Who will lead new committees?
It’s important to note the obvious: large turnover on the council means large turnover on many committees, both in terms of membership and who chairs those committees.
Here are some committees to watch for changes (previous committee chairperson in parentheses):
Community Development & Regulatory Services (Goodman)
Transportation & Public Works (Reich)
Public Safety, Civil Rights & Emergency Management (Yang)
Zoning & Planning (Bender)
Ways & Means (Quincy)
Assuming Bender is elected president, she will not be back as chair of Zoning & Planning. Because Yang and Quincy were not reelected, they will definitely not be back as chairs of their respective committees. Lisa Goodman wields a ton of money and power from her position as chair of CDRS. Does she hold on to it?
Watch for the creation of new committees. An example from the beginning of last term: Community Development was combined with Regulatory Services as a gift from Barb Johnson to Lisa Goodman.
Can I purchase a shirt to commemorate this momentous quadrennial event?
Acme Comedy’s remaining parking lot was half-filled during a Friday show last June
In 2016, Acme Comedy Co was the subject of the most high-profile movement to save a parking lot in recent Minneapolis history. If the owner of an adjacent parking lot was allowed to turn it into apartments, Acme’s owner predicted he would be forced to move his business out of Minneapolis to a parking-rich suburb. Nationally-known comedians rallied to Acme’s defense. Nearly 6,000 people signed an online petition to save a parking lot — in order to save a beloved comedy institution.
This dynamic plays out on a smaller scale every week in neighborhoods across Minneapolis. Parking concerns are pervasive in a changing city. But people don’t usually pay attention long enough to check predictions against reality. We get headlines that say Neighborhood Threatened by Change. We never get the follow-up headline years later: Oops, Things Are Actually Just Fine.
So it’s important we honor bearded soothsayers like Peter Bajurny, who was right all along. There’s one less parking lot in Minneapolis but the comedy business is booming in the North Loop. Go have your obnoxious “I told you so” moment, Peter — you deserve it.
A duplex at 4257 Vincent Ave South was demolished recently. The land is zoned for single family, just like a lot of the Linden Hills neighborhood that surrounds it, so the duplex will be replaced with a single family home (I suspect this explains why nobody vigiled or tried to give the house a pedigree by researching a famous former resident). Many of the exclusive single-family neighborhoods that we know today, the kind dotted with small apartment buildings and grandfathered triplexes, have become that way because of some long-forgotten downzoning that made new multi-family housing illegal.
The house on Vincent Ave was grandfathered in as a legally non-conforming property, but now that the duplex is gone, it’s gone for good. Exclusionary single-family zoning means that conversions like this can only go in one direction, towards fewer units. If you think of housing like a game of musical chairs, wealthy Ward 13 just lost another chair. And our zoning code makes it really hard to build new chairs in the places where people most want to sit.
Stories of conversions from multi-unit to single-family homes were surprisingly common, and celebrated, when I documented the last 45 years of housing politics in the Wedge neighborhood. It’s not the story that usually comes to mind when people think of gentrification or displacement. It’s not the kind of big change people notice and complain about; it’s not six stories of apartments on a parking lot. It’s the slow, silent, unrelenting gentrification of a neighborhood — and we use the zoning code to encourage it.
Don’t let the apparent building boom in Minneapolis fool you — there has been a citywide, decades-long drift towards more restrictive zoning. Yes, we make room for big developers who build mega-buildings downtown. Yes, we build six-story buildings on certain major corridors, places lucky enough to survive the craze for downzoning over the last 45 years. This means we build the kind of housing (big buildings on pricey lots with dozens of units or more) that costs the most to build, and is therefore the most expensive to live in. This means we are largely a city that is off limits to affordable housing in our most desirable neighborhoods. This means many of our neighborhoods are unaffordable by design, and will remain so for decades into the future.
In the Wedge neighborhood (my neighborhood), this trend has meant multiple successful rounds of downzoning. At times when downzoning failed, activists pushed for historic districts (while openly admitting that historic districts were a backdoor attempt to accomplish the goals of exclusionary zoning). But it’s important to recognize this point: to the degree the Wedge has any racial or income diversity, it’s largely because of the people living in apartment buildings constructed between 1950 and 1975. These two-and-a-half story walkups were so despised by certain noisy neighbors that the city gave in to activists and made it illegal to build them.
The city downzoned large swaths of south Minneapolis in 1975. Today we celebrate those old apartment buildings as Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing; we allocate precious public dollars to preserve them. We hope that, in the face of a housing shortage, with rental vacancy rates hovering near two percent, we can keep these affordable apartments out of the hands of investors who would renovate and upscale them. It’s a reminder that Minneapolis has failed to reckon with the ways our zoning practices work against our affordable housing policies.
That’s not to say there haven’t been small moves to reverse the trend. City Council Member Lisa Bender has legalized accessory dwelling units (or backyard/garage apartments) and eased minimum parking requirements. She also fixed a quirk in the zoning code that had effectively outlawed two-family dwellings in areas zoned in a two-family category (tale of backdoor downzoning: over the previous decades, minimum lot-size requirements had been increased to the point that you couldn’t build a duplex on a typical lot zoned for duplexes). None of this stuff would have happened without Lisa Bender as a champion; Minneapolis has led the way on land-use reforms over the last few years because of one person (which is impressive, but also scary when you imagine a world without her).
The politics of appeasing single-family voters can be compelling. Though I believe Lisa Bender is one of the most exceptional and principled elected officials in the country, both downzoning and historic districts have still come to my backyard in Ward 10 over the last four years (albeit in more limited forms than desired by some). It’s not because these are great ideas, but because energetic people got noisy to demand it.
The noise extends beyond my own backyard. A group of residents in downtown Minneapolis (who, in fairness, would tell you, “we don’t live in downtown!”), organized under the name Neighbors for East Bank Livability, sued to stop a 40-story condo tower. The punchline is that many of them live in 20 to 30 story condo towers. A judge ordered the group to post a $100,000 bond to offset developer costs in the event NEBL loses their legal fight (they will definitely lose their legal fight and all of this money). This money is in addition to legal fees they will incur. They had a surprisingly easy time raising (and flushing) all that money.
A group of residents in St Paul is fighting for low density zoning under the name Livable St Paul. Their cause involves the former site of an automobile manufacturing facility. Like their “Livable” counterparts in Minneapolis, they are well-funded and highly motivated. They disagree with the St. Paul City Council’s recent decision to allow medium- and high-density zoning at the Ford Site, including 20 percent affordable housing. They have reportedly collected enough petition signatures to put the Ford Site rezoning on next year’s ballot in St. Paul.
And then there are the smaller scale skirmishes. A few of my favorite examples, in case you missed them:
The unremarkable house in the Wedge that became the subject of a years-long battle, at city hall and in the courts, to stop a 4-story apartment building. Story includes cameo appearance by since-disgraced HGTV personality Nicole Curtis and a vigil 🕯️ in honor of a house.
Cases of outrageous NIMBYism are wacky (and fun, I admit), but by no means typical. As much as I’d like to report that needed zoning reforms are opposed exclusively by an army of fancy clowns, it’s just not the case. Many people are capable of writing reasonable-sounding anti-apartment emails to their city council member — emails that often do not imply renters are subhuman and sometimes do not compare city planners to Hitler. Chances are pretty good that when an elected official reads that low-key complaint about parking, they already agree with a lot of it. And even for more enlightened politicians, bad policy can feel essential to political survival when it’s backed up by a stream of highly charged resistance to even the smallest neighborhood change.
So it’s time to get noisy. Talk to your friends about zoning. Start the conversation with your city council member — let them know you exist and that you are engaged. The Minneapolis city council will adopt a new Comprehensive Plan in 2018. This is a key document that will guide future zoning reforms in Minneapolis. Ask your council member how they plan to lead in the fight against exclusionary zoning.
As reported by Nick Magrino, this neat-o tool lets you offer feedback on the Minneapolis Comprehensive Plan:
extremely neat-o: new comp plan feedback tool lets you identify specific areas where you’d like to expand housing and commercial choices, and opportunities to improve access for walking, biking, and transit @Mpls2040https://t.co/fjMDActkyjpic.twitter.com/NHJvT3yQe8
After being defeated in 2013, Council Member Tuthill transitioned directly from working as an elected official into an administrative position with the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) department. This allowed her to keep her old City Council email address, and become Meg Tuthill: Shadow Council Member.
One thing you learn when you request Meg Tuthill’s government emails is that she’s close with former colleague and current City Council Member Lisa Goodman (gives you a leg up when you’re looking for a job at CPED).
Here’s a conversation from January 2016, when Goodman wanted Tuthill to help her use the Healy Project to stop new multifamily housing in Goodman’s ward. Goodman wanted to “keep this out of the email” (a thing she said in an email) in order to avoid “litigation.”
Email related to multifamily housing proposal for 1900 Colfax.
The reason Goodman is seeking help from Tuthill’s friends at the Healy Project is because it’s the same tactic Tuthill used to fight apartments at 2320 Colfax during the latter part of her term on the council. There’s a reason Goodman is afraid of getting sued for organizing neighborhood opposition to a project she might have to vote on — she was sued for doing that very thing 10 years ago:
That pushed Hoyt over the edge. He filed his lawsuit on March 27, 2007.
Goodman hounded the Loring Park neighborhood group staff and board members to provide the group’s email list, so that she could send them the complaint. When they refused, she even threatened to cut off the group’s funding.
The court battle dragged on for two and a half years. Skolnick, Hoyt’s attorney, pursued a three-pronged legal strategy, essentially arguing that Goodman—and the city of Minneapolis—had deprived his client of fair and equal treatment.
The key question was whether Goodman had made up her mind before she voted on Parc Centrale. Unfortunately for Goodman, a flurry of email evidence showed she had taken a position, lobbied other council members, and even helped neighbors organize their opposition. She did all this weeks before she cast an official vote.
In another message, Tuthill consulted with Lisa Goodman via their government email accounts about Goodman’s rumored 2017 opponent, Will Bornstein. Bornstein is a former president of the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association, a group Tuthill has been involved with for five decades after helping found the organization in the early 1970s. (As it turns out, Will Bornstein did not run against Lisa Goodman in 2017.)
The Healy Project features prominently in Tuthill’s work life. In May 2015, Tuthill asks another city employee to help her edit a Healy Project tour invitation: “Would you please proof and make changes for me?”
Another thing you notice in these emails is that former Council Member Tuthill’s grudge against the current council member is keeping Tuthill from performing her job at the city. When Tuthill was asked in March 2016 to set up meetings with a number of city council members, Tuthill refuses to communicate with Lisa Bender’s office by responding: “Happy to do this. All but Bender. I’m sorry.” In another email Tuthill says, “Left messages for all the other [council members] except Bender.”
Other emails show a continued concern with Lisa Bender. In October 2015, Tuthill sent a message to the President and CEO of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, praising his performance in a radio debate with Lisa Bender.
The subject of the MPR discussion was Mayor Hodges’ proposed Working Families Agenda. Tuthill writes, “I want to thank you for your calm, reasonable approach to this disastrous idea from Glidden, Bender and Hodges.”
Referring to paid sick time, Tuthill tells him, “I find this frightening. Acting as a union for the private sector is not the job of government.”
One last thing to note: Meg Tuthill lives up to my stereotype of extremely concerned residents, wielding her influence at CPED to demand access to the Star Tribune comment section.
This has been your update on the once and future leader of the Ward 10 government-in-exile. The post-election period could be a wild ride (just like four years ago) as the Wedge neighborhood’s Tuthill faction grapples with the idea of another four years in the wilderness. Just keep in mind that our bike lane battles aren’t always about bike lanes.
