i have been giving considerable thought to riverfront
development for many years. I remember in '69 when a
friend from Virginia passed through Minneapolis to
pick me up on our way to Aspen, Colorado where we had
plans to spend the summer. It was a great thrill for
R.D. to see the Mississippi River, something
heretofore I had taken for granted.
My father grew up on the near the Marshall/Lake bridge
and as a young teen I had climbed the ladders and
walked the catwalks of the old Milwaukee Road train
trestle. The summer after senior year we had climbed
down to the limestone piers upon which the trestle
rested and imbibed illegal substances, something I
would not advise anyone to do but also something I am
not ashamed to admit, recognizing it as part of
growing up and coming of age in an urban environment
with very little adult supervision. Thank god for my
permissive parents and the luck of the Irish that saw
me through those teen years.
My father owned a trucking business that had its main
Mpls. garage at the northern end of the Central/3rd Av
bridge where Winslow House now stands, behind Pracna
on Main and as a young boy I rode through downtown,
across the bridge, several times a day in summers. As
a young man in my 20's I worked for my maternal uncle
and my father in their respective businesses on
Nicollet Island before urban redevelopment displaced
them, not that we were unwilling to move.
Over the 40 years I've watched the riverfront there
have many changes, many to the good but with the net
result that the river has become a residential neigh-
bor hood for the more wealthy in our city. The less
well heeled among us are left to ride our bicycles or
walk along carefully designed paths. I suppose this is
fair. I don't know for sure.
Seven years ago I fought the city's plan to sell the
Hennepin Avenue Bridgehead site, an 8+ acre parcel to
the Federal Reserve Bank for the paltry sum of $6
million to build their new facility. Still in my mind
were artist's conceptions of what the site might look
like when the Great Northern railway sought a permit
to destroy their old terminal. At that time, the FRB
was building it's new building designed by Gunner
Birketts.
There was the sense that this land would be for "the
people". Alas, it never came to happen.
Keith Ford wrote this morning of development projects
on the riverfront, mentioning "affordable housing"
units in the Itasca and the fact that the city's only
commitment to "affordable housing" is in rental prop-
erties and not in home ownership.
I believe that policy is wrong. I am more than a
little sick of tax increment financing monies going to
insure profits for private development and land
speculators such as Brighton Development Corporation.
If the rich want to take the river for themselves and
leave the rest of us to peddle and walk through as we
do around the lakes of southwest Mpls. let them pay
for it.
Seven years ago I dreamed of a new central library on
the site now occupied by the Fed. Like the rich, I
wanted to sit by a window, read a good book, and steal
a glance of the river.
The idea that the Guthrie Theatre is to build near the
river is anathema to me. Here will be a place where
people will go sit inside a black box without windows
and chew up land that could be better used by all the
citizens of Mpls. What foolishness!
Karen Collier from this list wrote me what I felt was
a snotty little note last week after I took a poke at
LRT, skways, etc and suggested I had chosen the wrong
place to live and that I might be happier in a small
town somewhere. Why would I want to move when I live
in America's largest small town? Could there be
anyplace more provincially stupid than Minneapolis?
I better stop before I alienate everyone in town.
Tim Connolly
Ward 7
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