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

Condominium Disequilibrium

Wedge housing has gone through a lot of changes since the neighborhood was platted in the 1880s. The first major change came after the Columbian Exposition of 1893. The "White City" of Colonial Revival style buildings made the fanciful, ornamented Queen Anne style unfashionable. By the early 20th century, the fairly new, large Victorian houses built along the streetcar lines in the Wedge were being abandoned by their original owners for newer homes in newer neighborhoods. Large apartments became the rage for upwardly mobile Minneapolis residents. On and around Hennepin Avenue, handsome brick apartment buildings starting going up. Many of these apartment buildings still line Hennepin, sharing the street front with commercial buildings.

In the early  20th century, two smaller apartment buildings were built on Emerson Avenue South near the corner of 25th and Hennepin: 2417 in 1905, and 2421, in 1907. 2417 contained eight units, 2421 had nine units. When new, they were the homes of the affluent. But as the years passed, the units grew shabbier, the maintenance minimal.  By 1970, the year that LHENA was founded, 2417 and 2421 had been made into one dwelling unit each, split up into 24 rooms with shared baths and kitchens, the equivalent of large rooming houses. The buildings had fallen into a serious state of disrepair with substandard living conditions for the numerous tenants.

2417-2421 Emerson Avenue South in 1978

In 1977, the two buildings were condemned. The next year, Kreisler Companies acquired the buildings and began rehab under the HUD Section 8 program for low-income housing. Each building was separated into a mixture of one-bedroom units for the elderly and two-bedroom units for families. A small children's play lot was added. The wooden fire escapes in the back were replaced by elevators. In 1979, applications were taken for low-income tenants, and the buildings became homes once again.

Twenty years later, when the condominium market was red hot, the buildings were converted into condominium units roughly the size of the original apartments. In 2000, units in the newly renovated buildings went on sale. Today, the units in these buildings are valued in the low-to-mid-$200,000s. For example, a 1800-square-foot, three-bedroom condo in 2421 recently sold for $246k ($135/sq.ft.).

2417-2421 Emerson Avenue South today

The Wedge has quite a few condominium units in a range of housing types from older duplexes and apartment buildings, to nearly-new construction. Currently, Zillow shows 9 comdos/townhomes for sale in the neighborhood. Five of these are pre-1970 construction; four were built after 2000. Two of the four newest condos are in foreclosure.

A 2bd/1ba, 950 sq.ft. condo in this building on Lyndale is listed at $175k

The least expensive condo ($99.9k) for sale in the Wedge is a 1bd/1ba 568 sq.ft ($176 sq.ft) unit in a 1959  2-1/2 story walkup on the 2700 block of Aldrich. Nearby on the 2800 block of Bryant Avenue is the most expensive at $450k. Built in 2005, this top-story 3bd/2ba, 1700 sq. ft. condo has been on the market for nearly 10 months. The price has been lowered by $15k since it went up for sale.

Listed for sale at $450k: The upper unit in this 2005 condo building .

Why is this condo so slow to sell when the housing inventory in Minneapolis is at its lowest since 2004?   For one, if a buyer can afford a home in the $400-450k bracket, there are some potentially more attractive options. For example, in nearby Whittier neighborhood, a 1912 foursquare house with 4bd/1.5ba, 2300 ft./sq., went on the market a few days ago for $410k. They are very different kinds of housing, but they are priced similarly, of similar size, in similar condition, within walking distance of each other.

You can bet that the Whittier house will not be on the market for nearly a year. One reason that the house will sell fast while the condo won't is the difference in lifestyle and taste of potential buyers. Condominium buyers can find similarly priced units in quieter, less congested areas of the city. Another important reason is value. The condo at 2421 Emerson of similar size mentioned above sold for $200k less than the Bryant condo. The 1907 building and the 100-year-old house in Whittier with original woodwork and appointments are simply more inviting to many than a modern minimalist apartment.

Dining area in the 2005 modern condominium

Formal dining room in the 1912 house.

Then there is the comparative cost of ownership. Monthly expenses for the condo will set a  new owner back about $2600 a month, not including utilities, whereas the house would cost about $1800--assuming similar down payments and mortgage interest rates.

When the housing the market tanked in 2008 after the global banking crisis, the real estate market went cold. It's gradually recovering, but is inhibited by the big banks' disinterest in lending money to individual homeowners when they can make so much more lending to corporate developers. The banks that were "too big to fail" are backing big, new developments, like apartment and condominium buildings and hotels.

According to Broker Sandy Loescher of Sandy Green Realty, another factor in the slow recovery of the housing market has been the effect of the banking crisis on those middle-aged people who lost their investments and homes at that time. Parents who once could afford to help their children with down payments for real estate and help paying off student loans now need financial help themselves.

One can't help but wonder in this volatile economy where all this is going. How long will the banks and government keep promoting the big and corporate over the small and individual? As long as the current group of officials remain in office.

 --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.