3rd Ward resident John Akre wrote Re: [Mpls] Pedestrians
> ....
> A couple weeks ago I took a lunchtime stroll from downtown to
> where I work on the East bank of the river. After I passed the central
> library I encountered exactly three other pedestrians in the next 20
> minutes of my walk through Gateway Park, across the Hennepin Avenue
> bridge, Boom Island, and down Main Street to St. Anthony Main. This was
> during the noon hour on a sunny day!
Well, John, I'm not surprised that you didn't run into any pedestrians
at 1st and Hennepin, by the Towers Condo where I live. It is not
pedestrian-friendly anymore.
The 1st and Hennepin corner has been torn up for months by a Park Board
project financed, I understand, partly by Federal Reserve money. They
are re-engineering Gateway Park and it has been awful!
For those of you who don't know, Gateway Park is a small pocket park, a
little bit of green space, in Downtown. It is a triangular piece of
land north of Reliastar and west of the Towers, where Nicollet Avenue
once intersected Hennepin, between 1st St and what was once 2nd Street.
Long ago this is where the town center was, and the old City Hall.
Anyway, when the new Federal Reserve Building was built on the northwest
corner of the intersection of 1st and Hennepin, it incorporated a
stylized walkway to the river. It included wavy paving to suggest the
river, and some lighted pylons to do I don't know what. (It looks like
Albert Speer architecture to me.)
Anyway, someone's idea was to integrate the four corners of the
intersection by carrying the Federal Reserve's paving and lighted pylon
design onto the other three quadrants. Though they could only fit one
pylon each on the SW and NE corners, they squeezed 5 into Gateway Park,
right below some of our residents' bedroom windows. Of course the
paving is going to chew up some of the grassy space, but I'm sure it
will make the lords of the Federal Reserve feel they have made a mark on
the cityscape.
And there is more. The project was supposed to be done before winter,
and certainly before February. But all the virtually "only evenings and
weekends" construction crew managed to do before the snow fell was tear
up the sideway between the Towers and the bus stop on Hennepin Avenue,
and make the area into a impassible no-man's land of mud, equipment, and
construction materials. We have endured this mess for the winter. And
will have to live with this architectural bright idea for decades.
Oh, talk about people friendly. We **used** to have a bus stop right
outside our door. Apparently part of the city's plan has been to move
that stop across Hennepin, permanently, I believe. There are 500 units
in this building, many occupied by elderly, and now they have to cross
the street to catch the Rt 4 and 6 buses.
Actually, farther than just across the street. Apparently someone
doesn't want the buses to NE and SE to stop at 1st and Hennepin at all.
Tonight on my way to Como I found a sign across the street telling me
that the buses don't stop there anymore. I guess a regular regular bus
stop doesn't fit the plan. I had to walk one more light to get to a bus
stop/shelter that was actually on the Hennepin Avenue Bridge itself!
While waiting for the bus I got to commiserate with a retired woman from
St. Paul, who also had to walk the extra distance to the stop. We also
worried about how the bridge shook each time a a mail-carrying
18-wheeler exited the Post Office loading area next to the shelter.
Anyway John, I don't think the reinventors of Gateway Park and the bus
planners are worried about your and my concerns for pedestrians and bus
patrons. And they call it the **Park** Board?!?
Alan Shilepsky
Downtown
_______________________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy
Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more:
http://e-democracy.org/mpls
