>From today's StarTribune article on the site for the new library building:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/1616870.html "Are any wild cards likely to surface? Yes. City Council Member (Lisa) Goodman, whose ward includes both blocks, plans to suggest closing off Nicollet Mall to make the north site larger. And Mayor R.T. Rybak has called for "out-of-the-box" thinking." [TB] Closing off Nicollet Mall is clearly some of the out-of-the-box thinking the Mayor is looking for. Let's make the entire mall from Washington Avenue down to Grant Street, even the I-94 bridge a pedestrian mall with no traffic other than a shuttle bus. I offer the 14th Street Mall in Denver as an example. The free bus is a natural gas bus with none of the deseil exhaust that comes from your typical MTCO bus. Buses run on parallel and cross streets (as does their LRT line). While I don't know if this would add enough land for the footprint the Library Board wants, I don't want to see us accept less than the best library facility we can have to make add room for the housing and retail planned for the opposite block. As long is the Library Board is responsible for libraries, we should let them make the decisions on the Library and the use of the land they already own. Terrell Brown Loring Park terrell@terrellbrown .org _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
