Perhaps we wouldn't even have to have this argument if we
thought of Minneapolis as having multiple downtowns.
Russ Peterson
St. Michael
Russell W. Peterson, RA, CID
Founder
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R U S S E L L P E T E R S O N D E S I G N
Architecture / Interior Design / Strategic Planning
"You can only fly if you stretch your wings."
Metro Minneapolis - Saint Michael
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13715 Forty-Seventh Street Northeast
Saint Michael, Minnesota 55376
(763) 497-1003 phone & fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
David Brauer
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 11:03 AM
To: Mpls list
Subject: RE: [Mpls] Fifth ward race
Carol writes:
>I get very tired of the old story about the "neighborhood"
person sold out
>to the evil downtown developers. It is an easy, simple
line that
>"neighborhood" people throw around in whisper campaigns to
try to hurt
>incumbents.
This works both ways; I also think incumbent-defenders
unfairly erect a
straw man of "neighborhood" people who want to pillage and
sack downtown.
Look, it's NOT downtown-bashing to criticize a mega-million
Target Store
subsidy (when the office towers would have been built for no
public
subsidy), or the desperate move of the Shubert Theater to
create a
mega-subsidized prefab entertainment zone on Block E, or the
prospect of
subsidizing City Center while the same owners try to skate
on their Gaviidae
loans (part of the previous decade's attempt at neighborhood
uplift.) The
ballpark is also on this list.
These are legitimate things to criticize, and does not
render said critic a
"downtown basher." They, too, view downtown as an economic
necessity and a
cultural hot spot, albeit a more organic place better able
to prosper with
public investment limited to public infrastructure, private
businesses built
with private dollars, and a more laissez-faire attitude
about culture that
lets it spring up rather than directing it like a crazed
traffic cop. This
may be a vision you can pick apart, but "downtown-bashing"
it is not.
Having plunked Jackie Cherryhomes on the cover of the Twin
Cities Reader in
1989, I can tell you she would not have been elected in the
5th supporting
everything she does today. True, the 5th ward voters have
re-elected her -
perhaps their vision has changed with her. But I do think
Natalie Johnson
Lee is within her rights to question Jackie's evolution,
without being
branded as destructive. (Also, while I have heard the
whisper campaigns
Carol refers to, Ms. Lee is hardly whispering these days).
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
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_______________________________________________
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