Affordable Housing, Gentrification, and Bendrification

Minneapolis is undergoing an affordable housing crisis, a crisis that affected residents feel all too painfully, but is virtually ignored or plastered over with lies by the City government. The City has been busy implementing its scheme for the construction of 25,000 new housing units, attracting investors and developments by pointing to the low vacancy rates. New condos and apartments keep going up. Older units are rehabbed, with "sizzle" added. Old apartment buildings are converted to condos. And as these new units go into the housing market, the rents go up and up. The new luxury housing units fill up, while those who can no long afford "market rate" or higher rents, are forced into other neighborhoods or third-ring suburbs.

A study by The Economist last year found that Minneapolis has the third highest cost of living of all North American cities. Much of the cost is related to high utility bills from heating and cooling. Housing costs are far lower than in cities like New York and San Francisco. However, since the cost of living here is already so high due to other factors, even a modest increase in rent can send it over the top.

You tell 'em. John. True in 1690, true today.

Over the past decade in the Wedge, thousands of "market rate" and luxury housing units have been built. Many other previously affordable units have been redone--often with more jazz than substance--and rented out at top dollar. Seven old houses have been torn down and replaced with upscale multi-unit rental buildings.

It's obvious that the City has facilitated wholesale gentrification in the neighborhood and in adjacent Uptown. Yet the faux-urbanist proponents of these thousands of new luxury condos and apartments don't like the word. Don't say the "g" word! We wouldn't want the new tenants to feel guilty about shoving out those of lesser means. We wouldn't want to tar these shiny new luxury pads with the brush of social irresponsibility. We wouldn't want to spotlight the fact that the City itself is the prime mover in the affordable housing crisis.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.

But that's what it is: gentrification, in basic terms, the process of an influx of wealthier people displacing people of more limited means. What is happening in the Wedge is different in significant ways from the gentrification that displaced thousands of residents in Los Angeles, Brooklyn and Harlem. First, the Wedge never had a significant cultural or racial minority population. Second, the Wedge is not a blighted area (as are indeed a number of Minneapolis neighborhoods that the City doesn't give a hoot about.) But it is gentrification nonetheless.


The first wave of gentrification took place in the 1970s, when the Wedge was on the skids, the Haight-Ashbury of the Twin Cities. Young people (myself included) bought old, often ramshackle houses and started to fix them up. LHENA was formed, and Wedge activists re-routed commuter traffic, put in a neighborhood park, started Minnesota's first food co-op, called in housing violations by slumlords--and in so doing, made the neighborhood a safer, more attractive place to live. Of course, housing values and rents went up. You can call this "revitalization", but it fills the definition of gentrification in that by closing down hippie pads, party houses, and drug-infested rooming houses, property became more valuable, and some residents were inevitably forced out.

Wedge housing prices and rents remained stable for three decades, going up in step with the Twin Cities real estate market. And then came the Great Upscale Development Boom described above. In the three and a half years since Lisa Bender became City Council representative for the Tenth Ward, the process of displacement and skyrocketing rents has accelerated to a fever pitch. 

Editorial commentary added to a sign at a new development in Brooklyn.

While the rest of us have been busy going to work, maintaining our homes, feeding our families, paying our taxes, a coalition of City Council members led by CM Bender and supported by City Planning has been busy delivering big parcels of neighborhood real estate to developers. The usual justification for this is "Density!". Using their perverted version of Urbanist theory, the apologists for gentrification keep repeating the rubric that to be great, urban Minneapolis must increase density, access to public transportation, walkability, green living, and above all, density. (Did I already say that?) To them, the New Minneapolis belongs to people like themselves: young, white, privileged, ex-suburbanites who are doing the City a favor by driving out the old NIMBYs and embarrassingly unhip segments of the population like the poor, people of color, and pensioners.

An arnarchist meme. I wonder why a bicycle is included. Hahaha. By Anarchomemes

Last November, I wrote about the City's plan to implement the so-called "Pedestrian Overlay" on Wedge commercial streets ("Pedestrian Overlay Blues"), making the point that this deceptively named plan in reality will primarily benefit the Big Cheeses--the developers who are building the  Density Paradise engineered by CM Bender and pals. Since then, it's become obvious that the City's elimination of street parking in favor of bike lanes and up-against-the-pavement multi-story commercial buildings will be wiping out scores of small businesses. Up and down Lyndale and Hennepin, down Nicollet and across 38th Street, the City is preparing to erase hundreds of parking spaces, spaces that are the commercial life blood of established neighborhood small businesses. Add to that the City's press to implement a $15 minimum wage, and you can kiss dozens of neighborhood restaurants and service businesses goodbye. It's maddening that the City claims to want to help the poor, struggling workers, yet in reality forces them out of the area into inferior housing and puts their employers out of business. Lose, lose. Except, of course, for the developers, the corporate landlords, the investors , the bankers, and the City, which seals its image as the Hip Capital of the Midwest.

Here today, GROM tomorrow/ Gentrification at work in Greenwich Village, NYC: A neighborhood greengrocer and pizza shop replaced by a hip GROM, which will be replaced by something hipper in a year or so.

Yet CM Bender has the gall to get up in public and claim repeatedly that she's the champion of renters and affordable housing. This kind of bald-faced hypocrisy (doing just the opposite of what you're bragging about doing) led one former resident driven out of town by the City's bullshit to coin the term Bendrification. The Bendrificators don't like that term any more than they like the term "gentrification." Both are nevertheless real, and apt.

You don't have to just take my word for it. When you eat at local neighborhood cafes, ask the proprietors what they think of the Bendificators' plans for the commercial streets of South Minneapolis. Ask the small business owners on Lyndale Avenue in the Wedge what they think about the City's plans for biggering (or should the "i" be a "u"?) the streetscape. Ask business owners and residents of Hennepin south of Lake Street what they think of the City's plans to redo the street at their expense. Talk to former Wedge residents displaced by tenants who can--at least for a year or two--pay the "market rate" rent. And you'll find out the cost of Bendrification to renters, businesses, and property owners in the 10th Ward.

Anti-gentrification sign in San Francisco.

Pedestrian Overlay Blues: I'm on the pavement, Thinking 'bout the government

Dependable Tire at 2604 Lyndale Ave. S. in 1961--Hennepin County Library Collection

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself"― Andy Warhol

The 2016 election is over. Those who followed it are exhausted, dismayed, bummed, whatever. During the bruising campaign, many people, including myself, were only half-heartedly following what has been going on down at Minneapolis City Hall. But while we were distracted, much has been happening down there that needs our attention.

Council Chambers at Minneapolis City Hall

First and foremost, citizen input is being shut down at an alarming rate. Gone are the days of developers taking proposals to neighborhood groups for lengthy discussion (for example, the months of ongoing debate about the demolition of the Orth House for Motiv Apartments). Instead, developers go directly to City Planning, the Planning Commission, and City Zoning and Planning Committee, and have their proposals rubber-stamped virtually without public comment. Then the proposal is put on the consent agenda, the Council votes on it without a public hearing, and voila, done and done! Slick.


Take, for instance, the so-called "Hennepin Lyndale Nicollet PO (Pedestrian Overlay) Study," introduced by the City at a quiet "kickoff" on June 1, 2016. (Read the details of this proposal on the City web site here.). This proposed zoning change is very complex and has many parts. Although it's called a "study", it's not; no official studies of related issues were done. In addition, the word "pedestrian" is misleading because the zoning changes relate to future development on these streets, not pedestrian issues. The Planning Commission did hold a public hearing, but during the day when most people are working. At the hearing the PC spent so much time on another  agenda item proposed by the PC  itself that they had little time for discussion about the PO "Study". The commission refused to hold an additional public hearing and placed it on the consent agenda at City Zoning and Planning. Done and done.

Most people would rather have their eye poked with a stick than have to read and digest all of the details posted on the website. So here it is in a nutshell: The PO zoning proposal represents the City's ongoing campaign to facilitate new developments on these commercial streets, on Lyndale Avenue in particular. Cars are out. Goodbye parking spaces, car-related businesses, and drive-through facilities. Hello, even more parking nightmares inside the neighborhood. Green spaces are out; pavement is in. Small businesses in small buildings are out; commercial rentals in large buildings hastily and cheaply built, of similar uninspired design, all with the same setback are in. Goodbye, houses and small commercial buildings. Hello, new four-story and some six-story commercial buildings.

Existing car-related business will stay, but they will not be allowed to change anything on their sites. Same for fast-food outlets of all stripe, even hipster favorites like Chipotle. (Is the City frustrated and angry that the 1980's McDonald's at Hennepin and Lagoon is hogging a prime development site with its big parking lot and drive-through? If only they could get around the grandfathering protections!)

Looking out on Lagoon from inside the Uptown McDonald's

Some people might find this vision of big, new developments on Lyndale Avenue appealing, but that's beside the point. The big problem is that the City is promoting and rushing through this major change with no regard for critically important related issues. No research has been done on the impact of this zoning change on the environment, traffic flow, affordable rents, water drainage, area small businesses, and property taxes. At stake are so many quality of life issues for the adjoining neighborhoods, the Wedge in particular. To make matters worse, if passed, this PO cannot be challenged by an appeal because it will then be part of the zoning code, a City sacred cow.

 Forgive me if this sounds cynical, but my perception is that if you write comments--comments critical of City planning and development proposals, they more than likely go directly into the virtual wastebasket at City Hall. If some criticisms are too hot to ignore, a city planner is given the task of plannersplaining the justification to an unenlightened public. If there is a public hearing, some CMs, notably CM Lisa Bender, chair of Z&P, make their contempt for citizens known by looking at the cell phones in their laps throughout public testimony. It's no wonder people give up on citizen participation.

Northeast corner, Lake and Lyndale, 1974--Minnesota Historical Society

Want change? There will always be change. The important thing is who manages, controls, and benefits from the changes. The future is very uncertain for the nation, state, and our city. Power-drunk, development-happy City officials are making Minneapolis less liveable by the month, especially for people of modest and limited means--which means most of us. Banks, developers, and real estate brokers and speculators are the ones benefiting from these changes, not homeowners and small business owners and landlords.

Prepare yourself for the upcoming city and state election campaigns. Decide what you want your community to look like five years from now. And, please, don't say you're moving to Canada. Trust me, they don't want you.

Minneapolis, love it and stay here.

Reurbanism. Saving places. National Trust for Historic Preservation

Saving Plastic Bags, Destroying Buildings. Happy Earth Day from the City of Minneapolis!

Happy Earth Day, Citizens of Minneapolis. Your City government wants you to help make our city a Zero Waste city. On the City website, a page is devoted to ways you can be a "Zero Hero" and reduce environmental waste. 

Here are two of the tips offered on the page, with editorial comments highlighted in green: 

Buy It Durable and Maintain It To Last!

Long lasting, durable goods cost more at first but save money in the long run. Zero Heroes find that durable products break down less often too, meaning fewer repair bills. Like old houses built with pride from quality materials.

Creatively Reuse

Zero Hero creativity can play a big role in preventing waste. There are many things around the house that can have new uses.  Like the house itself. 

And here's a third tip I'd like to add:

Don't poison the neighborhood with airborne hazardous materials.

The City is to be commended for its excellent recycling program. But before we congratulate ourselves on saving the Earth by recycling pop cans and composting potato peels, we need to look at a very negative environmental impact that's totally ignored: the demolition of old houses. While the City concerns itself with recycling plastic grocery bags, it approves and encourages the demolition of well-built existing houses. These demolitions--seven in the Wedge alone during the last couple of years--send toxic particulates into the air and many hundreds of tons of building materials into the landfill.  

The energy saved by recycling plastic bags and aluminum cans represents a infinitesimal fraction of the energy saved by recycling buildings. Minneapolis is trashing hundreds of tons of building materials, destroying tons of embodied energy. And to make matters worse, the old buildings are replaced by stick-frame buildings, poorly designed, and thrown up as quickly as possible. Unlike the old houses, the new buildings aren't built to last, only built to last as long as developers and investors can make a buck out of them.  Putting up these new buildings requires the use of new, inferior materials and the energy required for construction--energy that would not have to be used if the old buildings had been recycled.

But you don't have to take my word for it.  A report produced by the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental benefit of building reuse. This groundbreaking study concludes that when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction.

 Some important findings in this study by the National Trust:

The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse

Reuse Matters. Building reuse typically offers greater environmental savings than demolition and new construction. It can take between 10 to 80 years for a new energy efficient building to overcome, through efficient operations, the climate change impacts created by its construction. The study finds that the majority of building types in different climates will take between 20-30 years to compensate for the initial carbon impacts from construction.
Scale Matters. Collectively, building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. Retrofitting, rather than demolishing and replacing, just 1% of the city of Portland’s office buildings and single family homes over the next ten years would help to meet 15% of their county’s total CO2 reduction targets over the next decade.  
Design Matters. The environmental benefits of reuse are maximized by minimizing the input of new construction materials. Renovation projects that require many new materials can reduce or even negate the benefits of reuse.
 The Bottom Line: Reusing existing buildings is good for the economy, the community and the environment. At a time when our country’s foreclosure and unemployment rates remain high, communities would be wise to reinvest in their existing building stock. Historic rehabilitation has a thirty-two year track record of creating 2 million jobs and generating $90 billion in private investment. Studies show residential rehabilitation creates 50% more jobs than new construction.

Now to turn to the "Don't Poison the Neighborhood" part. . .

A recent toxic demo on the North Side. (Photo by Brian Finstad)

North Side resident Brian Finstad, who recently witnessed a demo on Dupont Avenue with no lead containment (see photo), spent hours contacting various agencies about the toxic cloud spreading through the area. According to Brian, this is "not a problem of permitting, but of practices and enforcement." The negative environmental impact of these lead-spreading demolitions is "one of the great unstudied public health issues of urban neighborhoods." When 2320 and 2316 Colfax Avenue South were demolished, a similar environmental nightmare ensued.  One guy wrecked the houses with a backhoe, while another guy walked around with a garden hose. Pathetic.

A cloud of hazardous particulates floated through the Wedge for three days during the demo of the Orth House. (Photo by Anders Christensen)

So far, the City of Minneapolis has completely disregarded the environmental impact of the demolition of well-built existing houses to construct new middle- and high-density "market rate" apartment buildings. The City hypocritically keeps patting itself on the back for its zero-waste initiative while soldiering on for developers, approving demolitions and ignoring the environmentally harmful effects of these inept, unmonitored demolitions on  neighborhoods.

Until the City takes into consideration the unhealthy and wasteful impact of its market-driven obsession with commercial residential construction, Minneapolis won't be anywhere near achieving "zero waste" status. 

The greenest building is the one already built. Period.

Related links:
Sustainable Communities
Creating Sustainable Communities
Greening Older and Historic Buildings
Preservation Green Lab
National Main Street Center

--T.B.

Act Now. Appeal Hearing 2008 Bryant April 21st

UPDATE: APPEAL DENIED

In a unanimous vote, the Z&P Committee voted to deny the appeal. The Wedge neighbors who filed the appeal thank all who supported us. But this is only the initial skirmish in the war against the demolitions and ugly, unaffordable infill monstrosities by Drew Levin and Danny Perkins (a.k.a. LLCs KLP Realty, D&D Reality Holdings, DDMZ Real Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard Avenue, Farkas Wagner). Levin and Perkins and the City of Minneapolis have been put on notice. As CM Lisa Goodman said at the hearing, the opposition to these projects will continue and get stronger. And you can take that to the bank. Literally.

                         ____________________________

In the past 14 months, developers have bulldozed 7 buildings in the Wedge for high-rent apartment buildings. The City of Minneapolis is facilitating the destruction of affordable housing, replacing it with upscale rentals. Wedge development proposals breeze through City Hall without regard to zoning and other regulations.

An agency of the City has rubberstamped DDMZ's (a.k.a. Drew Levin and Danny Perkins) development project, 2008 Bryant Avenue Apartments, without proper review or consideration. At a rigged public hearing on March 8th, the City Planning Commission approved the Land Use Application, the Site Plan Review, and the process by which the CPC reached its decision.

      Bulldozed. Again.  Act Now!
    Appeal Hearing for a Development that's WRONG for the Wedge. 
Minneapolis Neighbors United has filed an appeal to be heard at the Zoning and Planning Committee Meeting.
   Thursday, April 21st. Room 317. City Hall. 9:30 a.m.

Grounds for the appeal:

 Plans for garbage and recycling storage and removal and snow removal are inadequate.

No landscape buffer at the south lot line and the inclusion of a rooftop deck potentially violate the neighbors' right to quiet enjoyment.

 Incorrect information in the Site Plan Review re: the Uptown Small Area Plan, Historic Preservation, and the Minneapolis City and Metropolitan Council Comprehensive Plans.

 Incomplete Site Plan Review. Methods of Alternative Compliance not provided and relevant public comment not included.

STOP Ugly, Unaffordable, Unsustainable Development

Contact the members of the members of the Z&P Committee and tell the City what you think of it rubberstamping the 2008 Bryant development proposal.
Please reference Permit #Bzz-7594 2008 Bryant Avenue Apts.

Email your comments by April 20th to : Councilcomment@minneapolismn.gov  --or--
Call the Z&P Members at 612.673-22XX: Lisa Bender (2210), Andrew Johnson (2212), Kevin Reich (2201), Barbara Johnson (2204), Abdi Warsame (2206), Lisa Goodman (2207)

                 Our Homes.  Our City.  Our Voices.

The historic Orth House, bulldozed February 2015. Affordable housing for 22 people, many of them Vietnam veterans.

What replaced it--Motiv Apartments, done in minimalist correctional facility style, with high $$$ rents. Only four out of 42 units rented to date. Ugly, unaffordable, unsustainable development.

--T.B.   
 
 


 

Daredevil, Gentrification, NIMBYs and the Neighborhood

NIMBY: "not in my backyard: used to express opposition by local citizens to the locating in their neighborhood of a civic project, as a jail, garbage dump, or drug rehabilitation center, that, though needed by the larger community, is considered unsightly, dangerous, or likely to lead to decreased property values."--Dictionary.com. 

Please note that the dictionary definition of NIMBY does not include people who resist the displacement of neighbors by luxury real estate development.


                                            *                          *                         *

Last year, Marvel's "Daredevil" leaped out of the small screen via Netflix to millions of viewers worldwide. The story of a blind New York native fighting to save his neighborhood, "Daredevil" was heralded as "TV's first gentrification-fighting superhero."

By day, the title figure is Matt Murdock, a young attorney. Murdock and his partner Foggy Nelson use their newly-formed practice to defend Hell's Kitchen residents of limited means who are being forced out of their homes by a big-time developer and his associates. Unlike billionaire superhero Bruce Wayne (Batman), Murdock operates frequently in the red (pun intended). He lives in a dingy warehouse walk-up flat. He and Foggy struggle to pay their bills and their assistant Karen's wages. Their clients are the poor, the down-on-their-luck, the marginalized.

Murdock is blind, but he can hear and smell exceptionally well.

Murdock's adversary is heavyweight real estate developer Wilson Fisk. A native of Hell's Kitchen, too, Fisk had a disadvantaged and dysfunctional childhood. His collaborators are heads of crime syndicates, bankers, and corrupt police and city officials. What he can't acquire through money, Fisk acquires through violence.

Unlike many superheroes, Daredevil frequently gets the crap beat out of him. One wonders how he can even walk the day after a fight--and sometimes, he can't. He's laid up for days recuperating from being battered, sliced and diced by criminals and those hired by uber-criminals  like Fisk. The human persona, Murdock, fights these same elements as a lawyer, and finds the violence spilling over into the daylight neighborhood as well.

Both Murdock and Fisk like to talk about "my city,"as if each feels he somehow owns it. Murdock doesn't like the old neighbors being replaced by affluent newcomers. He hates to see affordable, rent-controlled old apartment buildings replaced by luxury condos and lofts. He wants to save his city from the corrupting influence of big money and power. On the other hand, Fisk thinks he's doing "his city" a service by removing those who can't afford the fine dining, upscale living, and cultivated tastes of the upwardly mobile.

Fisk: Are you there? Can you hear me?
Daredevil: Who is this?
Fisk: I think you know. You've been asking about me. I thought it was time we spoke.
Daredevil: Say your name.
Fisk: You first. That's what I thought. You and I have a lot in common.
Daredevil: We're nothing alike.
Fisk: That's what you'll tell yourself.
Daredevil: You're feeding off this city like a cancer.
Fisk: I want to save this city, like you... only on a scale that matters.

Boom! There goes the neighborhood. Fisk blows up parts of Hell's Kitchen to seize it for development.

If Daredevil/Murdock lived in the Wedge, his attempts to stop the wrecking of old buildings and the building of thousands of high-rent units would be met with a cry of "NIMBY!" from local development supporters. NIMBY is a term accurately applied to hypocrites like the pro-fracking Exxon oil CEO who sued to stop fracking near his multi-million dollar home. NIMBYs want to stop half-way houses, Section 8 housing construction, thrift shops, but they aren't against luxury condos and trendy new apartments. The relentless cry of development boosters is a kind of NIMBY-Tourette's, the accusation hurled again and again at those who don't like the escalating wrecking and building of high-density high-rent units in the neighborhood. It's an egregious misuse of the term, designed to shut up complainants. And so far, that's what it's done.

Unlike NIMBYs, Wedge residents want more affordable housing for both renters and homeowners. But thanks to the City, the banks, the corporate media, and local developers, the Wedge is being crammed with high-priced units, units that are proving slow to fill up, with the more expensive places having the highest vacancy rates.

In a breathtaking display of hypocrisy, 10th Ward CM Lisa Bender and her supporters spout oral formulaic about "affordable housing" and "green living" while methodically destroying affordable housing and replacing it with unaffordable housing, raising rents and taxes--and sending thousands of tons of reusable buildings to the landfill. The City Planning Commission, City Council, CPED (Planning), and CM Bender have their chosen developers, Drew Levine and Danny Perkins (a.k.a. KLP Realty Holdings, D&D Realty Holdings, DDMZ REal Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard), whose projects are rubber-stamped without comment, no matter how far they stray from City zoning and other regulations. Yet CM Bender and her acolytes have the gall to call their detractors NIMBYs--which is the exact opposite of what those opposing her pet development projects are.

If you're going to call names, at least use an appropriate epithet, DIMBYs.

Case in point: 2008 Bryant Ave. S. The existing house was sold to KLP (Levin and Perkins) immediately after being listed, before any other interested parties could react. KLP quickly came up with plans for demolishing the house and replacing it with a four-story, ten-unit apartment box. The proposal--despite its requiring significant variances from the City zoning code--breezed easily through the first steps for approval by the City, through CPED and through the Planning Commission. No notices were sent to surrounding property owners, the City's new stealth policy about neighborhood development. Last Friday, March 28th,Wedge neighbors went to the Planning Commission hearing to see what would be said about KLP's 2008 Bryant proposal, #3 on the agenda.  They got there at 4:38 to find a note on the door advising them that items #1 and #3 had already been approved. When they went in, the commission members were discussing item #2.  The commission gave the reason that no one was there to testify, so why not just skip over #2, and approve #3 out of order? Right.

Daredevil looks down on the mean streets of Marvel's Hell's Kitchen

Wedge residents who are trying to stem the tide of luxury condos and high-rent apartments think of Minneapolis as "our city." We hate seeing a battalion of real estate speculators and developers bulldozing their way through our neighborhood. We hate it when many Wedge residents can no longer afford the rents or taxes on their homes. We hate it when our streetscapes are being littered with ticky-tacky architectural monstrosities. We hate it when our streets are becoming packed with vehicles. We hate it when Levin and Perkins acquire the homes of  resistant sellers by making offers that they can't refuse, premiums of tens of thousands of dollars that no other buyers can match. We don't want these things in our back yards for good reason.

But most of all, we hate it when we feel that the City is not listening to us, that citizens' voices are being methodically silenced in public discourse, that local government has gotten out of the control of City voters and into the control of moneyed interests. Sound familiar? This sense that government representatives on all levels are becoming increasingly disconnected from the people they allegedly represent is a loud complaint coming from both left and right wings in the current presidential campaigns. The ones that understandably don't want this situation to change are the ones who brought us to this sad pass in the first place--the political establishment. Both parties have a lot to answer for, but in Minneapolis, the one-party town, the party that needs to start listening to the electorate is the DFL. From where I sit, the only representative who is making an effort to listen to his constituents is Keith Ellison. For City officials, especially CM Bender, there's only self-righteous, self-serving political theater.

But--returning to Hell's Kitchen--don't kid yourself. The kind of gentrification we're seeing in the Wedge has been going on in New York neighborhoods for decades. The real Hell's Kitchen--not the Marvel one--has already been given over to the gentrifiers--the luxury developments, the upscale restaurants, the fitness centers. And that's what makes "Daredevil" so poignant, yet terrifying.

What is satisfying about the Netflix "Daredevil" narrative is that we can clearly identify who's fighting whom. Fisk is a larger-than-life figure, a powerful man who talks directly with those fighting him. He reminds the officials he's bought who's boss and what will happen to them if they don't perform. He does not hide behind a corporate veil. He doesn't play a real estate shell game using a dozen LLCs and multiple surrogates. He doesn't have private meetings with city officials to hide what he's really up to. Fisk stands up for what he believes in, no matter how twisted it may seem to others.

Fisk in his office. Prominently visible behind him is a copy of Robert Caro's 1974 biography of NYC urban planner Robert Moses.

Fisk may be a ruthless real estate developer, but his motives are pure. He loves Hell's Kitchen, his home since birth, and wants to improve it.  But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions--in his case, megalomaniacal good intentions. Venal Minneapolis city officials, armed with their corrupted version of current urban planning theory (a la Fisk and Robert Moses), have turned over the Wedge to rapacious developers. Who's going to stop them? Does anyone know Daredevil's phone number?

At the end of the second season, Daredevil is farther than ever from his goal of saving his neighborhood. He's nearly been killed, he's lost friends, he is battered and unsure of what to do next. But the satisfying thing about him is that though he may lose his way, he never doubts his goal of protecting his neighbors and neighborhood he loves from the ravages of greed and corruption.
 

                                      Whose city is it? Ours? Or the developers'?
 --T.B.

The City's Apartment Complex

Minneapolis has a serious obsessive-compulsive Apartment Complex.

As discussed in the previous post, the City of Minneapolis has been on a toot in remaking the Wedge a neighborhood of high-density, absentee-owned investment properties. Outside the Greenway, the City's favored developers are Drew Levin and Danny Perkins (a.k.a. KLP, Farkas Wagner,
D&D Reality Holdings, DDMZ Real Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard Avenue, Turkey Guys, Renovate to Rent). They have wrecked four older buildings and are about to wreck a fifth for new apartment buildings.
In early March, KLP reduced this house at 2424 Lyndale Avenue South:

to this (remaining leaded windows and all):

 to make way for a building looking something like this:

Even though the old house had been owned by a succession of notable people, including Ralph M Wheelock (Minneapolis Tribune political editorial writer, Secretary to Minnesota Governor Adolph Eberhart, and chairman of the state prison board), the wrecking permit sailed through City government. No historical review, no comment about scale, no notice to surrounding property owners. 

On the 2000 block of Bryant, another proposal by Levin and Perkins to wreck and redevelop also breezed through City Hall.  KLP's proposed 10-unit apartment building at 2008 Bryant was approved by Planning without comment, despite a number of departures from zoning regulations:trash containers allowed on the property line, only two on-site parking spaces, severe reduction of the green space and landscaping next to a driveway, a tight 6' turning radius in a driveway. Variances such as these have been rejected by City planners in other neighborhoods, but in the Wedge anything goes for developers. (See UPDATE at end of post..)

 Many sections of the Zoning Code say, "as determined by Zoning Administrator." If there is a question about compliance for a Wedge project, it is referred to the zoning administration manager for the neighborhood, Jason Wittenberg--and surprise! Jason Wittenberg determines that the project doesn't have to comply. Wittenberg gives projects an easy pass, no matter how far they depart from the zoning code, while in other neighborhoods, they would have been subjected to serious scrutiny and required to comply. How has it come about that in the Wedge development projects sail through City Council and Planning without comment? Let me count the ways: 1. CM Lisa Bender and 2. Jason Wittenberg.

At 2008 Bryant a single family house on a single lot is going to be replaced with a four-story ticky-tacky stucco-panel box covering the entire lot, with only two parking spaces, accessed by a driveway shared with the single-family house next door. To CM Bender and CPED (Planning), as represented by Jason Wittenberg, this box on steroids is appropriate infill development in the North Wedge--whereas in other neighborhoods such as Marcy-Holmes or Linden Hills, it wouldn't have stood a chance of being passed "as is."

Let's look at an even more flagrant departure from zoning compliance: the Graves hotel proposal for the Lake and Emerson intersection just south of the Greenway. Despite being far from complying with existing zoning, the hotel proposal was approved, per usual, with nary a second glance, by Jason Wittenberg. On March 3rd, came the second of the 1-2 developer punch. The City Zoning and Planning Committee, chaired by CM Bender, denied an appeal by a neighbor who challenged the City Planning Commission’s decision to grant the hotel developers a conditional use permit for height, as well as several variances. 

The Graves hotel proposal, as envisioned by the developer.

Ignoring the Small Area Plan for Uptown, zoning, and environmental concerns, the Z&P committee gave the go-ahead for a 6-story, 123-room hotel with no on-site parking on a block surrounded by two-story residences.  Even former Hennepin County Attorney Tom Johnson, who represented the neighbors at the hearing, could not persuade the Z&P committee from approving this Incredible Hulk development in Uptown. If it's in Uptown, if it's in the Wedge, the City wants to keep on biggering and biggering.

"Biggering" by Noot

A list of the donors from the real estate industry and real estate development sector to each Minneapolis City Council member in 2015 is informative. At the top of the list is none other than CM Lisa Bender (Ward 10) with 25 out of 36 contributors from those industries (69.4%)..Second highest percentage of contributors from real estate and development is Kevin Reich (Ward 1) with 10/21 (47.62%), followed by Andrew Johnson (Ward 12) 23/65 (35.38%) and Lisa Goodman (Ward 7) 12/34 (35.29%). Jacob Frey (Ward 3) is fifth, with 67/223 (30.03%).  Seven other council members (Gordon, B. Johnson, Yang, Warsame, Cano, Quincy, Palmisano) list under 20% of their donors from these sectors. (In her report Ward 8 CM Glidden said she took no itemizable donations.) 

A short list of developer-donors to CM Bender:
Dan Oberpriller: CPM Development ($220M development pipeline). Also a principal in Lake & Knox, LLC, which pumped groundwater into Lake Calhoun
Nick & Breana Walton: CPM Development; the other principal in Lake & Knox. (See Dan Oberpriller.)
Michael Lander: Demolished two houses for Motiv apartments on the 2300 block of Colfax.
Richard Pakonen: Per PAK Props website: "real estate investment and development focused on urban and in-fill properties"
Andrew Levin, Daniel Perkins: See above.
*For a compete list of numbers of real estate/developer donors to CMs by ward, click here. 
Perhaps even more interesting is this statistic: 17 of CM Bender's real estate/developer donors contributed to no other council member but Bender in 2015. These donors are putting all their dollars into one council member's basket, Ms. Bender's in the 10th Ward (Wedge, Uptown). Hmm.

CM Lisa Bender, promoter of high-density development in the Wedge, is fond of boasting about her support for affordable housing. The standard definition of "affordable" housing is that it take up no more than 30% of household income. According to MNCompass's most recent figures, the median income for Wedge households is $48k. That means that to be affordable for half of Wedge households, housing should cost no more than $1,200 a month. 35% of Wedge households have a household income of $35,000 or less. Affordable rent for them is $875 or less. How many units are available for family housing in the new Wedge apartment buildings at these rates? Zero.

Meanwhile, in Seattle,as in Minneapolis, the wrecking and gentrification continue.

The City government seems quite excited by the billions of dollars being invested in high-density real estate development in Minneapolis, the vast majority with "unaffordable" rents. The City aims to make way for 50,000 new residents, housing them in these new apartment complexes. In 2014-2015 around 9,000 new "market rate" housing units were added to Minneapolis. Over 20,000 more new units are in the works for the city.

Could there be too many "market rate" or above apartments being constructed in the city? Is this overbuilding going to wind up with some investors losing their shirts? The City Council and the City planning department (CPED), the banks, real estate investors and speculators don't seem to think so--or don't care.  If a development is planned for the Wedge or Uptown, the City is all for it. Anything goes. What, them worry about the billions of dollars in debt being accumulated by banks and investors in this current building boom?

Out of scale, unaffordable, noncompliant with zoning--the apartment building boom rolls through Uptown and the inner Wedge, enabled by CM Lisa Bender and Jason Wittenberg in particular and the City Council and CPED in general. Down with the old, up with the new. Round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. 
 

Les jeux sont faits.

UPDATE:

The Minneapolis City Planning Commission at its March 28^th meeting approved the Land Use Application, the Site Plan Review, and the process by which the CPC reached its decision.

Minneapolis Neighbors United has filed an appeal to be heard at the Zoning & Planning Committee Meeting,  Thursday, April 21^st. Rm 317 City Hall. 9:30 a.m.

Grounds for the appeal:

 Plans for garbage and recycling storage and removal and snow removal are inadequate.

No landscape buffer at the south lot line and the inclusion of a rooftop deck potentially violate the neighbors' right to quiet enjoyment.

 Incorrect information in the Site Plan Review re: the Uptown Small Area Plan, Historic Preservation, and the Minneapolis City and Metropolitan Council Comprehensive Plans.

 Incomplete Site Plan Review. Methods of Alternative Compliance not provided and relevant public comment not included.

--T.B,  

Let's Talk Turkeys

Let's talk turkey about Minneapolis real estate developers Drew Levin and Danny Perkins. Levin and Perkins acquired the nickname the "Turkey Guys"after their successful restaurant and catering business, Turkey to Go. They have gained national fame and adulation as the stars of the HGTV reality series, "Renovate to Rent."  They are major investment property owners in the city of Minneapolis.

Turkeys overrunning a neighborhood.

As developers, Levin (real estate broker) and Perkins (contractor) are on a steam-roll in the Wedge.Let's trot out some numbers: As mentioned in the previous post, Levin and Perkins, using several LLCs (KLP Realty, D&D Reality Holdings, DDMZ Real Estate, Lotterman-Madan, 2817 Girard Avenue, Farkas Wagner), have gobbled up 25 properties in the Wedge, with six of these already wrecked and a seventh slated for demo. Public records show that since their first purchases in the aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis, under the names of their various legal entities, they acquired over 80 properties in Minneapolis, taking out many millions of dollars in mortgages and loans. 

Levin and Perkins have taken out a total of $5,692,000 in loans for their Wedge properties. From public records, it's impossible to say how much of the debt has been paid off, how much is secondary financing, and how much of the bundled mortgages relate to Wedge properties. Steven Kalin is their most frequent lender, but they have also received substantial financial banking from these community banks: Merchants Bank, Anchor Bank, and Western Bank. They have also been bankrolled by regional Bremer Bank and Wells Fargo, a large national bank. Anchor Bank is their primary Wedge financial backer, lending them $2,651,500. (It would be interesting to find how much Anchor has loaned to individuals for home mortgages in the Wedge.)

KLP's (Levin and Perkins) first acquisition in the Wedge was 2613 Bryant Ave. S., purchased from Moneyapolis, LLC, for $215,000 in September 2008. This was the month that saw the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a sprawling global bank, a collapse which almost brought down the world’s financial system. The industry was saved by huge taxpayer-financed bailouts. But now chary of lending to individual home buyers, the "too-big-to-fail" banks have turned their corporate eyes to greener pastures, namely investment in real estate development.

2613 Bryant Avenue South

1.2 million people lost their homes through foreclosure during the 2008-2009 banking crisis. Investors quickly jumped on the opportunity to leverage a fortune out of the misfortune of others by buying up these properties  As indeed they brag on the HGTV website, starting in 2008, Levin and Perkins went out in search of foreclosed properties. A big bank is listed as the owner of four of the properties they bought in the Wedge: 2113 Bryant (Wells Fargo), 2612 Colfax (Capitol One), 2621 Colfax (US Bank), and 2814 Colfax (Bank of America). For another five properties the seller is listed as an LLC (Moneyapolis, Simple Living, Properties Ideal, Shree Investments, and TDL Properties).

In addition to their 25 Wedge properties, Levin and Perkins currently own 58 investment properties in Minneapolis, for a total of 83.  The owners of their current holdings are listed as one or more of the LLCs listed above, most commonly KLP.  On property purchases city-wide, 16 were from big banks; 8 purchases were from Fannie Mae, and 16 were from other LLCs. In some cases, one of their LLCs sold the building to another of their LLCs. And so these properties are transferred from one faceless entity to another, with a bewildering number of mortgages and other loans from banks, LLCs, and individuals.

No clear profile emerges of KLP when you look at public information associated with their properties: the addresses, buyers, sellers, loan amounts, and lenders. The list is filled with LLCs. Some properties have a series of five mortgages associated with them. Entities buy and sell the properties, passing them around, appearing at one address as a buyer, another as a seller. This befogged tangle of names and numbers is impossible to penetrate. 

The enormous number of properties that changed hands during the 2008-2009 financial crisis has created a nightmare for title companies that continues to this day. When a property is sold, title companies often have to sort through a list of owners, loans and liens, to determine if the property can be sold with clear title. This title mess creates more obfuscation of who's buying, who's selling, and who's financing a given property. It contributes to the confusing blizzard of data found in public records related to investment real estate. 

Graphic courtesy History of Economics Playground: Capitalism

In the 1960s much of the Wedge was absentee-owned. The 1963 upzoning brought dramatic changes. On just about every block, houses were wrecked for walkup apartment buildings. Absentee-owned houses became crash pads. One evening, an old couple, watching from the house they had occupied for 50 years, counted 400 revelers pouring in and out of the house next door. A drugged-up young man sprayed his neighbor's house with automatic weapon fire. A guy on LSD leaped from his apartment into the second-story window where a child was sleeping next door. Tenants rode motorcycles up the staircases of houses.

Thankfully, those awful days are long gone. Run-down houses were bought by homeowners who rehabbed or restored them. Condemned apartment buildings were made into Section 8 (low income) housing. Homeowners and renters banded together to stop crime, monitor absentee properties, and generally improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.  The Wedge was eclectic, funky, economically diverse, with affordable rents in a wide range of building types. Some have called this process of cleanup and rehab "gentrification", and in some ways, it was. However, it was nothing compared to the process of upscaling and gentrification under way right now.

A one-bedroom apartment in this older building on 26th and Bryant rents for $695.

Today the Wedge is being transformed into a high-density, absentee-owned area. Each home turned into investment property raises the number of renters. The most recent figures available show that 800 of the 3900 housing units in the Wedge were owner-occupied in 2013. Since then, scores of units have been added and are still being added on the Greenway, and now, with Michael Lander's and KLP's new apartment projects within the neighborhood, even more rental units will be available to rent. Obviously, the proportion of owner-occupied units to renter-occupied units is getting smaller and smaller.

These new apartments are "market rate" (what the market will bear), not by any stretch of the imagination "affordable." As more new apartments come on line city-wide, rents have increased by an average of 4.8 percent to $1,098 per month in 2015. Compare this average figure to rents in new Wedge apartments, for example, $1,795-$2,745 a month for a two-bedroom (877-1161 sq. ft.) in Flux Apartments on the Greenway, or $1,745 monthly for a two-bedroom unit (683 sq.ft.) in Motiv Apartments on 24th and Colfax. Thanks to these new apartments, in the Wedge the percentage of rent increase is likely higher than the city average.

One-bedroom apartments in this new Wedge apartment building rent for between $1539 and $2445 monthly

The duplexes next to my house and across the street were owner-occupied for decades. No longer. Turning family homes into rentals and new infill development raises rents and the value of the property as land (i.e., building sites), but lowers the value and attractiveness of older houses nearby. I've heard comments from two owners who sold their beautifully restored single-family houses and moved out of the Wedge that they saw "the handwriting on the wall." Not wanting to deal with increased congestion, construction chaos, and more absentee-owned buildings on the street, they felt they were gettin' out while the gettin' was good.

Increasing absentee-owned rental units in a neighborhood undermines a sense of community. Many renters are just passing through. The 2013 figures show that in that year, 35% of Wedge residents had lived there less than one year. It's hard to build relationships with your neighbors when they change so frequently. Knowing your neighbors is the key to community pride, including crime prevention and a sense of civic investment.

To return to where we started: It's very difficult to parse what all the figures and data about KLP's real estate investments mean. Just looking at all the loans, the addresses, the numerous banks, LLCs and private financial backers for KLP is enough to give anyone a migraine. It's a murky swamp of data that's impossible to see into. Economics is not an exact science, and there are many conflicting points of view. And certainly, one hesitates to accept the word of City officials who clearly are supporting their agenda. If residents protest, they are tarred with the NIMBY brush. The attitude of the City is: "This is going into your back yard, whatever argument you make. Whatever you say, we won't listen. If you don't like it, leave."

So, what can we see beyond the smoke and mirrors, political rhetoric and bureaucratic gobbledygook? One thing is as clear as the handwriting those fleeing the neighborhood saw on the proverbial wall: The Wedge has been targeted as a haven for investors, a place where owner-occupants are a rapidly dwindling demographic. Whether or not this is seen a good thing depends on whether you are an investor or resident, I suppose. It remains to be seen if these changes will make the interior of the Wedge more or less attractive to prospective tenants as well. From what I hear from my renter neighbors, they find the old, funky Wedge a great place to live.

On 28th Street, old and new buildings of compatible scale and design.

Around the corner, KLP's "sore thumb" infill (center) of incompatible scale and design.

One day, sooner or later, this latest apartment building boom will cease. By the time that happens, will the Wedge still be the Wedge or will it be just another nondescript absentee-owned real estate investment farm?

What is that thing blocking out the sun? It's the latest infill multi-unit apartment building! It's HUGE!

 --T.B.