Hey, wow! Alan. I do not recall approving anything like this and do not
believe it is a Park Board job. Sounds like lots of players are involved.
I will be forwarding your e-mail to staff just to see what our involvement
has been. Could the list refrain from lots of comments to this until I
find out some of the facts here.
Thanks,
Annie Young
Park Board Commissioner, at-large
Phillips neighborhood, Ward 6
At 10:23 PM 4/2/01 -0500, Alan Shilepsky wrote:
>
>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
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>Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy
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>
Annie Young
Ward 6 - East Phillips in Minneapolis
Citywide at-large Park Board Commissioner
Working to build a sustainable community
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