The vacant lot at 2601 Lyndale could soon get a grocery store and 75 apartments, but ten years ago it was a single story brick hardware store. Here’s how the store’s 2005 closing and the 2010 demolition was covered in the Wedge newspaper (all this old news was pirated without permission, as usual).
2007 plan that didn’t happen.
The long-vacant building was demolished in 2010.
2013 parking lot proposal for French Meadow.
A 2013 proposal to turn the vacant lot into a parking lot was supported by the Whittier Alliance. LHENA rejected it on the grounds that it would have required upzoning the parcel from C1 to C4 (to match the business using the parking lot), raising the unwelcome possibility of a large number of non-motorized residents
Slack chat transcripts are the latest digital-age innovation in lazy neighborhood journalism. Only on wedgelive dot com.
johneapolis [11:59 AM] yang giving shout out to constance vork on a historic matter. yang seems like he just got back from eating too many sliders at lunch. can’t clear his throat. HOLD UP, blong tried to make this historic?
410 W Broadway
fishmanpet [12:12 PM] is that the kemps thing? kemps wanted to tear down some buildings and pave paradise and put up a milk truck parking lot or some junk
johneapolis [12:12 PM] parking lot is a reasonable thing to oppose but… not historic.
fishmanpet [12:13 PM] it’s one of those things where the goal is good but the city lacks the tools to do anything but make it historic it seems like it should be pretty easy to say “don’t tear down buildings for parking lots” in the code
johneapolis [12:14 PM] i know… or don’t put a one story drive thru bank in this particular area lol yang talking about the history of white castle:
“historically significant as an early example of a white castle restaurant opening during the first year of the franchise’s expansion from kansas to minneapolis and coinciding with the company’s greatest period of growth from 1927 to 1930. the building is associated with broad patterns of cultural development in minneapolis… it might be on its last leg, but it still has a leg”
fishmanpet [12:25 PM] wait blong said that? that’s amazing johneapolis [12:24] seeds of a blog post: “bad zoning regulations force us to make laughable arguments about historicalness” let’s be proactive here zoning reform now: please, won’t you save blong from embarrassing himself?
Master Properties is proposing to build 76 apartments and a grocery store at 2601 Lyndale, in the space currently occupied by a vacant lot and four houses. At last night’s meeting of the Whittier Alliance neighborhood association, developer Don Gerberding said he has an agreement in place for all six parcels, and he plans to complete the purchase by the end of February. When asked, he indicated the development proposal was not contingent on the involvement of the specific retailer currently attached to the project.
Unit types would include studios, one- and two-bedrooms, with sizes ranging from 500 to 1200 square feet. The building would have four stories, a grocery store at street level, fitness and party rooms, a rooftop terrace, and two levels of underground parking totaling around 160 stalls (60 spots allocated to Aldi, 26 for the French Meadow restaurant across the street, and the rest for residents). Renderings show the parking entrance at the south side of the building, off Lyndale Avenue. Gerberding said rents would go for around $2 per square foot.
Unit sizes.
Recent Streetview of the corner.
Gerberding somewhat hilariously tried (or pretended to try) to conceal the identity of the grocery store under a thin layer of white-out. Criticism of the project was largely focused on the fact that it would house a “corporate” chain, rather than an independent local store. Some pushed the idea that “the neighborhood” is united against any incursion by a national chain. Maybe this is in some document outlining the core principles of the Whittier Alliance, but that’s not the same thing as representing a substantial portion of the neighborhood.
The inflexible attitude came off as unbearably snobbish, especially when talking about Aldi, a grocery store famous for steep discounts. While Whittier is home to the Wedge Co-op, the majority of residents who shop elsewhere would be better served by some retail diversity. There are plenty of people in Whittier and surrounding neighborhoods for whom affordable food closer to home is a pretty welcome amenity.
Some attendees expressed a desire for more three-bedroom units, as a means of providing affordable options for families. To emphasize her preference for larger units, Whittier Alliance President Erica Christ said, “I don’t think anyone in Whittier has a hard time finding a one-bedroom.” The 20-something renter seated next to her quietly let her know that, actually he’d had just that problem. Christ also mentioned her desire to move the four houses rather than demolish them, while Gerberding was skeptical about the houses being worthy of salvage.
There’s something happening in the Lyndale neighborhood. Many people think of Lyndale as the Rhode Island of our tri-neighborhood area. And these people are right, so it’s not worth trying to understand or explain the underlying issues (something about 17 dwelling units and a parking crisis). So let’s go straight to the videotape.
Wells Fargo had their appeal granted at the Zoning & Planning Committee yesterday. The vote was unanimous to allow the new Lake & Humboldt Wells Fargo to exceed the parking maximum by eight spaces–for a total of 25. As a condition of the parking variance, the bank will need to commit to sharing their lot with the neighborhood or a local business during non-banking hours.
One neighbor, concerned about street parking, was there to testify that biking and busing for a bank employee or customer is “unrealistic.” She called out a collection of working-class heroes by name and described how they drive 2-3 miles to work from Linden Hills (camera pans to the brave faces of Adrian, Marsha, and Georgianne, presumably parked next to Michelle Obama). Not very shrewd of these folks to eschew a 13-minute bus ride in favor of enduring the daily Uptown a-park-olypse. (I enjoyed her testimony. Watch the video below.)
I can’t understand the argument that a bank will bring parking disaster to the neighborhood. Banks are open during banking hours. Banking hours coincide with the time of day that many residents, even non-bankers, will have driven their cars off to work and parked them in someone else’s neighborhood. Council Member Lisa Goodman seemed to be thinking along those lines when she asked the Wells Fargo representative what their plans were for the empty lot during off hours. Answer: keep it empty.
@MattyLangMSP@nickmagrino Saw a pedestrian taking out money from the drive-through ATM the other day. Would’ve made a great photo.
Council President Barb Johnson made the social engineering argument, saying we shouldn’t use the parking maximum to “force people to use a particular form of transportation.” I should remind you that Barb had no problem forcing people build more parking when she weakened reforms to parking minimum regulations last year. And then there was her usual anecdote about how hard it is to find parking on her Uptown shopping trips. You may remember last year when Barb griped about that one time she had to walk a block and a half in Ward 10.
Despite approving the extra parking, the committee was largely in agreement that this is a pretty terrible project for this location. “It needs density, it needs more than one story, and there’s way too much surface parking,” said Andrew Johnson. Lisa Bender described the sentiment she hears from the neighborhood association as a question of “how do we get this project to totally change into a different form that’s not a single story building surrounded by surface parking?” It’s too late for that. Uptown is stuck with this over-parked, single-story, drive-thru bank for decades.
Workers are currently gutting a 12-unit apartment building at 1207 West 25th Street, in preparation for a nearly $500,000 remodel. The building was purchased for just over $1 million by a Chicago company, Maven Real Estate Partners. The same company has permits to begin a similar remodel of the 22-unit building located at 1200 West Franklin, which they purchased for $1.7 million. Both buildings were purchased on July 21st, 2015.
I don’t know what the “Loon Express” sign is all about. I’m hoping for seven lanes of drive-thru falafels in the style of Wells Fargo. But more significantly, I think this proves a theory I’ve long had: if a fancy man wants to be your neighbor, he doesn’t always have to build new.
Year’s end means it’s time to clear out the draft folder on my blogspot. There were many times this year when I felt compelled to write a post, took the time to actually write it, but couldn’t pull the trigger. The following excerpt is from a draft entitled “Orthghazi II: The Screenshotting.” Written around the time of the 2320 Colfax demolition, it’s a tell-all about my experiences before and after writing this post. But I named too many names, and left it to languish. Until now.
***
Written in March of 2015.
Feb 24, 9:35 AM: The first photo of the demolition of 2320 Colfax is Tweeted. I hustle to the site for pictures and video. Healy Project people are already there.
Madeline from The Healy Project approached me, asked which side I was on. I told her, “The wrong one.” — Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) February 24, 2015
Feb 26, 1:22 PM: I try desperately to stay out of the Facebook cesspool. This causes domestic strain for @WedgeLIVE, as revealed in this social media conversation with @WedgePAL.
Feb 27, afternoon: I finally read some of Curtis’ posts and the comments underneath. Despite being long-ago desensitized to over-the-top Bender-bashing, it’s remarkably horrifying. I immediately get to screenshotting.
Feb 27, 4:13 PM: I press publish, anticipating the usual small audience for my groundbreaking screenshot journalism.
Feb 27, 5:06 PM: The post is very quickly the most viewed thing ever on the site. It dawns on me that I live in a neighborhood full of hardcore Rehab Addicts. I flashback to the time an unhappy reader sent me a 12-page PDF of my Tweets lifted off a website called TweetTunnel.com.
Feb 28, 3:10 PM: While out on assignment, I receive a tip via Twitter DM. It’s from @WedgeLADY.
Feb 28, 3:38 PM: In the comments, [name redacted] is expressing displeasure with Mayor Hodges for sharing my blog post (comment since deleted). The responsible resident tags a Nicole Curtis employee into the conversation. Curtis’ North Minneapolis rehab posse begins speaking with authority about the alleged “bullying” tactics I use against [organization redacted].
News tips/screenshots via DM were all the rage in early 2015.
Mar 1: WCCO and KMSP run stories about a Hodges-Curtis feud.
March 5, afternoon: Local Healy fans are all over my demolition video. I resist the urge to take it down.
Mar 5, 8:41 PM: Nicole Curtis shares my video with her Facebook fans. I won’t learn of this until hours later.
Mar 5, around 9:00 PM: After a day of watching the local Healy crew salivate over my demolition video, I sacrifice some journalistic integrity and make it private. This is done purely to spite those who’ve been calling me a bullying, senior-bashing, single-mom-threatening racist. The joy they got from using my video to complain about airborne debris was too much to bear. As a result, @WedgeLIVE becomes another piece of the Orthghazi conspiracy.
Mar 6, 11:36 AM: The source of the racism allegation (and of 12 pages of PDF’d Tweets) is telling tales in the Strib comment section. If anyone knows the whereabouts of the allegedly violent Ivy Leaguer, I’d love to hear his side of the story.
Linden Hills has a folk song! Inspired by true events, with references to the small area plan and envelopes full of cash and “compromising” photographs of a councilwoman. It’s everything you’d expect from Linden Hills. I have done my best to transcribe the lyrics below.
Minneapolis Police cleared out the protesters from street in front of the 4th Precinct this morning. Below is an account of the public hearing that was carefully orchestrated to justify it. Yesterday, the Minneapolis City Council’s Public Safety Committee took up the seemingly routine procedural matter of amending their meeting agenda. Council Member Palmisano–with a wink and a nod from committee chair Blong Yang who represents the area that includes the 4th Precinct–proposed they allow public testimony regarding the ongoing protests occurring in front of the 4th Precinct over the shooting of an unarmed man named Jamar Clark. This last minute addition to the agenda made it practically impossible to give testimony on the topic unless you were already present for the meeting.
Fortunately for opponents of the 4th Precinct protest, committee chair Blong Yang (and presumably others on the committee) made sure to invite a specially selected group to give testimony painting a uniformly negative picture of the protest (complaints of traffic, parking, crime, smoke, drugs, drinking, etc). The committee’s lone voice of dissent was CM Cam Gordon, who worried “if we take up this topic now, what about people who would have come if they knew they had an opportunity to give public comment and may not actually be here now?”
The man from the Police Federation whom Gordon singles out, is Lt. Bob Kroll. As a union president, Kroll is duty-bound (perhaps understandably so) to push the idea that his fellow officers are innocent of wrongdoing in the shooting death of the unarmed Jamar Clark. But Kroll has been particularly outspoken, using his platform not just to defend cops, but to go after the protests themselves. Speaking of the 4th Precinct protesters on television, he said that “we need to silence that vocal group of activists.” On talk radio he called the 4th Precinct protest a “local version of Benghazi.” That Yang’s committee would elevate the already well-amplified voice of Lt. Kroll, while going to great length to exclude dissenting voices, is disturbing.
Kroll, who is infamous for accusations of racism and brutality, called for Yang’s committee to “pull your mayor back and quit mis-micro-managing the police department and let people with experience on how to remove unlawful protesters in.” Before adjourning, Chair Yang indicated he was ready to forcibly end the protest: “I think we’ve taken a really good tact in terms of asking nicely, asking for voluntary removal. At some point it just has to be a little bit different than that because that tactic has not worked.”
There isn’t a rule against leaving an item off the committee’s published agenda and adding it at the last minute. I’m no parliamentarian, but there’s probably not a rule against stacking the room with your supporters, inviting a controversial police union leader to testify, and using that one-sided feedback to justify heavy-handed tactics against a peaceful protest. While it may not be technically against the rules, it is “embarrassingly undemocratic,” as Cam Gordon put it. Forget democracy, it was just plain embarrassing.
Even worse is this detail from Gordon’s aide Robin Garwood, who recounts how Yang had previously rejected the suggestion of allowing public testimony at their committee:
“I actually asked the committee chair more than a week ago whether it might be fruitful to open up some time on the committee’s agenda for a discussion of the Clark shooting and related protests, and was told in no uncertain terms that that would not happen.”
Council Members Yang, Council President Barb Johnson and their allies are sending the message that protesters stationed in front of the 4th Precinct should not expect to receive a fair and open airing of their grievances in front of the City Council. Bending the rules of the established political process so shamelessly against protesters seems like the wrong way to go about convincing them to give up their civil disobedience.
