Don't Mess Around with the Demolition Men

1963-1975: 100+ Wedge houses wrecked for apartment buildings.
1975-2015: 0 Wedge houses wrecked for apartment buildings.
February 2015-February 2016: Wedge houses wrecked for apartment buildings:

2320 Colfax
2316 Colfax
2808 Colfax
2743 Dupont
2809 Girard
2815 Girard
2821 Girard
2424 Lyndale
*2008 Bryant 
*slated for demo soon

Michael Lander and At Home Apartments brought the first two down for what is now Motiv Apartments. But all the rest are the work of Drew Levin and Danny Perkins of KLP Realty (a.k.a. D&D Reality Holdings, DDMZ Real Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard Avenue, Farkas Wagner).

Along with their financial partner, Steven Kalin, Levin and Perkins own dozens of properties in Minneapolis, including 26 in the Wedge:
         1008 W. 26th Street
         2344 Aldrich Ave. S.
         2008, 2113, 2612 Bryant
         2612, 2621, 2808, 2814 Colfax
         2521, 2557, 2612, 2644, 2701, 2725, 2743 Dupont
         2812 Fremont
         2700, 2709, 2715, 2809, 2815, 2821, 2828, 2832 Girard
         2424 Lyndale

Do their names sound familiar? That may be because Drew Levin and Danny Perkins are the stars of HGTV's "Renovate to Rent" series, described on the network website this way: "Real estate agent Drew Levin and his partner, contractor Danny Perkins, have been friends since college and now run a successful renovation business together.  They strategically buy old or foreclosed homes in desirable locations, but rather than flipping them for a quick profit, they Renovate to Rent.  Using specific design plans, they transform these homes to attract top rental dollar.  Even though they’re young, they already own and manage over 70 homes, and the number just keeps growing."

But instead of flipping seven of these "for a quick profit," they are demolishing them and building apartment buildings for even bigger profits.

Last year, KLP wrecked this 1880s duplex at 2743 Dupont:

And replaced it with this four-story thing that towers over its neighbors:

Then they wrecked this bungalow on 2800 block of Girard and the two houses to its north for an apartment building now under construction:

2821 Girard Ave. S. before demo by KLP

The living room of 2821

The new DUMP, er, KLP apartment building on 2800 block of Girard

                                                             Bette Davis comments.
The next wrecking is planned for 2424 Lyndale Ave. S. The replacement appears to be a clone of the 2743 monstrosity.

 2424 Lyndale before demo

UPDATE: 2424 Lyndale being wrecked, March 7, 2016

KLP's most recent project, their second Wedge apartment building, is slated to replace the house at 2008 Bryant Ave. S.  Plans for the new building show a  four-story stucco box containing 10 units with small, cramped rooms, covering most of the lot. Despite the fact that the building will house at least 10 tenants and as many as 20, plans call for only two parking spaces. That's because the orthodoxy of Minneapolis City Planning insists that everyone should be walking, biking, or taking mass transportation, not driving. If you are a tenant with a car, you'll just have to join the melee for spaces out on the streets of the Wedge.
 

Bummer: Your car is wedged in so tight, you can't get your bike onto your car's bike carrier. At 4 p.m. today I walked the 2800 blocks of Fremont and Girard. There was not one open parking space on these blocks.

KLP's demolitions and replacements with new higher-density apartment buildings have been done with the approval of the City of Minneapolis, notably of 10th Ward Council Member Lisa Bender. Again, planning orthodoxy demands that the City provide medium- and high-density housing for the 50,000 new residents it hopes to attract. But for some reason, this high density housing winds up being built in the Wedge by demolishing and rebuilding, rather than on the North Side, where scores of lots remain vacant. And the new Wedge apartment units are far from affordable; instead, the new ones replace ones that did have modest rents.


When will the wrecking end in the Minneapolis? It's hard to say. Perhaps when this fantasy-driven high-density building craze ends in a crash, perhaps when the area zoned for higher density is filled.  What area is this?  Take a look at this zoning map. Any building outside the pale yellow area is potentially in danger. The areas most in danger are the Wedge apex north of 26th Street and the area just north of the Greenway.

Endangered: the remaining houses on the 2700 and 2800 blocks of Girard and other blocks around 28th Street.

For decades the neighborhood association repeatedly petitioned the City to downzone the area north of 26th. It hasn't happened yet, and given the current political climate, certainly won't in the near future. The City wants more young affluent suburbanites and well-to-do retirees and fewer of the motley assortment of renters of modest means.

This afternoon the City Council sent a clear signal to neighborhoods in approving the Graves hotel at Emerson and Lake in Uptown: Whatever developers want, they get. The City has scrapped the Small Area Plan, zoning, and environmental concerns in favor of a development which, at six-stories, is way out of scale with the surrounding houses. It will certainly lower the property values and attractiveness of the houses around it, but who cares? Density is all.

The rising sun illuminates the six-story hotel coming to Emerson and Lake. No traffic, no traffic lights, no nearby buildings, no trash. Just an empty horizon full of promise.

What's your vision for the Wedge and other Minneapolis neighborhoods? If the City and KLP get their way, we'll see more big, chintzy boxes out of scale with the neighborhood and fewer of the old houses that have been the trademark of the Wedge and other Uptown neighborhoods for decades.

        "Tied to the tracks and the train's fast coming
          Strapped to the wing with the engine running
          You say that this wasn't in your plan
          And don't mess around with the demolition man
          Tied to a chair, and the bomb is ticking
          This situation was not of your picking
          You say that this wasn't in your plan
          And don't mess around with the demolition man."
                  --from "Demolition Man" by Sting 1993

First to go down: 2320 Colfax, the Orth House

--T.B.

Zoned Out in Gopher City

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a conference on “Building the Urban Utopia: A Blueprint for the Competitive Global City.” The featured speakers were part of a contingent from Gopher City, MN:  Phillip Space, internationally renowned architect and author of “Den$ity for Dummies,” Gopher City Council Member Malcolm “Mal” Feasants, and city planner Uriah Heep IV.

MAL FEASANTS: I’m delighted to be invited to speak on the wonders of the high-density urban neighborhoods we’re rebuilding in Gopher City. The first step in this process is clearing old buildings, old people, bellyaching minorities, and the financially disadvantaged out of these neighborhoods to make way for new mixed-use commercial buildings and high density housing. It’s easy to do--We just ignore or crush any obstacle that gets in our way, like zoning ordinances or small-area plans. If a developer needs a variance or a zoning change for a new project, we just do it. That’s the beauty of being the government. As chair of the Gopher City Zoning and Planning Committee, I control what goes down and what goes up. The voters gave us a mandate, and we’re doing what’s good for them--even if some of them don’t appreciate it.

URIAH HEEP IV [M.A.,Ph.D. Stalinist Planning and Architecture]: The Gopher City Planning Department is proud to be part of the private-public partnership. We are pleased to assist any and all new development by providing the rationale needed to argue for bypassing regulations. We’re the go-to agency for developers. Who knows the city and its buildings better than we do? Who knows better how to spin the rhetoric, using all the buzzwords: “green”, “transportation nodes”, “bike-friendly”, “affordable”, and so forth? 

 The Chinese know how to do high-density development. Complete government control, planner paradise.“Harmonious Society! Long Live the People!”

PHILLIP SPACE [A.I.A., S.O.B.] May I take a moment to brag about a new project I’m designing, a six-story hotel that developer Hy Density has proposed for Gopher City’s Ro-dense Zone? It’s cheap, it’s right on the bus line, it’s easily accessible to downtown. Who cares if the current zoning doesn’t allow a hotel next to two-story-family housing? Who cares if it doesn’t suit the Ro-dense Zone small-area plan? Who cares if building it requires a conditional use permit and a floor area ratio variance? it’s what the City needs, and Mal, here, knows how to get past these pesky ordinances and get the thing built. We’ll put a bike rack for guests by the lobby entrance. No need for parking spaces. Cars are so 20th-century.

 MAL FEASANTS: One important undertaking we GC CM’s are working on is eliminating every way that citizens can comment on projects. We’re cutting out citizen review boards that allow residents free rein to bitch about what the City is doing or not doing. We still have tiresome hearings which can’t be scrapped--yet. BOR-ING. I would go out of my mind if I didn’t have my smart phone in my lap so I can tweet and look at Facebook posts while these old NIMBYs are cranking away. When they won’t shut up, I just cut the mic. The new Gopher City, love it or leave it. 

Gopher City Council Members at public hearing.

It's essential that we rid our cities of these old knee-jerk jerks who don't appreciate the Brave New World we're fashioning in the old neighborhoods. The time of these superannuated losers has passed and so should they. The new neighborhood belongs to the developers and the young and hip. If someone isn't fit enough to ride a bike or walk to a bus stop, they should be harassed into going somewhere else to die. 

PHILLIP SPACE: Hear, hear, Mal. That reminds me. I must tell you about a brilliant scheme my firm has developed to deal with both senile senior undesirables and our supporters who can't afford the rents in the new buildings. Let me announce the latest in minimalist urban pads: Troll Holes. These young male internet trolls don't have jobs, don't have friends, and don't have lives, so they don't need all the amenities required of hipsterdom. They live online. So we've designed small, windowless one-room underground units with high-speed internet access, so they can spend all their time launching anonymous attacks on the recalcitrant NIMBYs who are such a thorn in the side of the City and developers. The City can subsidize  rents in these Holes, for these young wits are providing an important service to local government. 

We've already cleared the neighborhood of annoying minorities who are always protesting for some lame reason or the other. In the big scheme of building the great metropolis, their lives certainly don't matter. And the poor? They're already on the streets or out in suburban ghettoes. Everyone else can pay up or move out.

 A-hole online in a Troll Hole

URIAH HEEP IV: Great plan, Phil! Now, I’d like to congratulate Minneapolis on the fine job the government has done in converting antiquated cow-town Uptown into a wonder of urban planning. Uptown is very much like our awesomely hip Ro-dense Zone. Thirty years ago we threw out all the bozo small businesses there.  We used tax increment financing and got subsidies by selling the Feds on how the area was blighted. Man, what suckers! It’s taken 30 years, but now we have exactly what we wanted: a place for hipsters, yuppies, bros and suburbanites to party till they puke.

PHILLIP SPACE: Well, friends, it's been fun, but we gotta run. I need to check out several building sites to be bulldozed, and I trust that Mal and Uriah here will keep up the good work running interference for us architects and our developer employers. [Applause]  And remember, as a famous German once said, "The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

                 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
                                             Praise be to Nero's Neptune.
                                             The Titanic sails at dawn.
                                              Everybody's shouting,
                                              'Which side are you on?'
                                                      --Bob Dylan, "Desolation Row"  1965

                                                   
                             With a tip of the hat to Harry Sinclair Lewis of Gopher Prairie, MN.                                                   

--T.B.

Once Upon a Time

. . .there was an old streetcar suburb located just beyond downtown Minneapolis. It began its life in the 1880s with the arrival of Thomas Lowry's public transportation system, the horse-drawn streetcar lines. In 1884 new tracks were laid from the urban core southwards, past Lowry's mansion on the east slope of what is now known as Lowry Hill, down Lyndale Avenue, turning west onto 27th Street, then south onto Dupont Avenue.

A Minneapolis horse-drawn streetcar.

With the streetcar line came a host of builders who began platting and developing lots on and around the tracks. Before that, farms and fields filled the landscape east of the swamp that was later dredged to form Lake of the Isles. The building frenzy that ensued in the mid-1880s and ended with World War I filled the neighborhood with middle- and upper-middle-class homes. The designs of these large, handsome houses reflected the changing architectural fancies of the time: the playful Queen Anne, the decorous Colonial Revival, and the scaled-down, cozy Prairie School.

Victorian houses on the 2100 block of Hennepin Avenue South in the early 1900s.

The Depression brought major changes to the housing stock of the neighborhood. Some large, old residences became boarding and rooming houses; single-family homes were often occupied by multiple generations. In 1963 the City rezoned the neighborhood to allow the construction of two-and-a-half-story walkup apartment buildings. Scores of houses were wrecked; gardens and orchards became parking lots. The north-south streets were made into "paired one-way commuter corridors" to allow downtown workers coming from the south to speed through the neighborhood.

2747 Dupont Avenue S., a typical Wedge walkup apartment building of the 1960s, now condos.

A number of  residents, both established and newly arrived, grew alarmed at these City-made changes affecting all aspects of neighborhood life. The neighborhood took on a new identity as the Wedge. In 1970 these residents banded together to form the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association (LHENA) as a forum for discussing neighborhood concerns, a vehicle for solving problems, and a means of promoting community life.  As a result of their efforts, the core of the neighborhood was down-zoned to R-2, allowing only new single-family and duplex apartments. The one-way racetracks were turned back to two-way streets, with direct access from Hennepin Avenue cut off.

But the periphery of the Wedge remained zoned commercial or multiple-unit housing (R-6). Forty years later, with the encouragement of the City, developers again turned their attention to the Wedge. The entire commercial corridor along the former railroad tracks was cleared, the old buildings replaced with luxury condos and apartment buildings. When that area was filled, developers began eyeing the residential area zoned R-6. Aided by City Hall, the wrecking began.To date, five Wedge houses have been demolished. with another one slated to go down soon.  In the R-6 area, many properties are worth more as vacant land than with the buildings sitting on them. Predatory investors are buying up these hot Wedge properties in the expectation that they will be continue to get the backing and variances from City Hall they need to put in new higher-density luxury housing. This process will continue as long as developers own City government and/or the luxury housing market in Minneapolis tanks.

An ad welcoming "tarts" to the new Lime apartment complex on Lyndale Avenue South, 2013

For me, the most unfortunate part of the transition has been the loss of community spirit in the Wedge. LHENA meetings have become tense, filled with factional disputes. High-density advocate trolls make vicious ad hominem online attacks against those who don't agree with them. Citizens who speak critically of  development proposals at City Hall get ignored, or worse yet, sneered at. Forget dialogue.

The frenzy and debate surrounding the current candidates for president underscore for me just how weary Americans are becoming of a political process that seems rigged for the Establishment. From both right and left, American voters are speaking out against the business-as-usual which is part of every level of government.  We can't change the past, but we can make changes for the future.

Owner Sheldon Strom removing the asbestos siding on 2116 Bryant Ave. S., 1976

By telling the story of how residents came together four decades ago to make a decaying urban neighborhood into the sassy, funky Wedge, I hope to spur vigorous discussion about how we can best manage change in Minneapolis neighborhoods. It certainly won't be done by wringing our hands and talking about the Good Old Days. And it won't be done by getting involved in the so-called "citizen participation process."

Do we sit around and watch the march of the faux-urbanist developers, or do we stand up and get cracking? Time will tell.

“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.”
―Jean Vanier, "Community and Growth"

 --T.B.