Please, please don't drum up opposition to the Gutherie using the River
site. If you do, the Jackals may go back to their first plan, which was to
destroy Parade Park with their expansion.
Those of us who stood up for Minnehaha Park are exhausted. We really don't
want to climb into the maw of another SAVE OUR PARK! campaign, if we don't
have to. Give us a break, will you?
Let the rich eat their cake. The Parks belong to the People.
Mary Jo Iverson
Highland Park
----- Original Message -----
From: "timothy connolly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 1:19 PM
Subject: riverfront
> 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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