Since the subject of moving two houses in my neighborhood became a list topic, I thought I'd share the email I sent to or neighborhood mailing list...
-- I'm afraid I have some bad news to report. It looks like our attempt to move the houses adjacent to Ace-Nicollet Hardware may end in failure, and the houses will be torn down. This is a huge disappointment to many of us who have worked hard to move the houses, and I want to provide you with an explanation why. In February, we endorsed a proposal by the Lyndale Neighborhood Development Corp. (LNDC) to move both houses to adjoining vacant lots on the 3400 block of 1st Ave. in Lyndale. Our hope was to take two houses that are now market-rate and make them affordable, by moving them into a community land trust. However, earlier this month, LNDC discovered that the 1st Ave. land - owned by Hennepin County - had been improperly filled in by whoever demo'd the residences there before. It's apparently an ugly story - there is all kinds of fly ash, construction debris and potentially heavy-metals are buried on the site...not the sort of thing you can build on, and may require tens of thousands of dollars of clean-up. The company that the did the fill is, of course, bankrupt. Councilmember Dan Niziolek is investigating what happened and will inform the neighborhoods soon. LNDC could not know the condition of the site because they did not own it. The owners, Hennepin County didn't check out the site until someone - us - wanted to build on it. Bottom line, though, is that we were already working with a tight time-frame with an April 30 deadline agreed to with Ace. It would have taken too much time to clean the land and too much money, so this catastrophe completely derailed any move there. In February, LNDC had mentioned the possibility of moving one house to another site in Lyndale, but they do not offer that as an option now. Time is apparently a consideration. The neighborhood board and Ace had agreed back in February to an April 30 deadline to get the houses off the lot (extended from the original March 30). The goal was to insure Ace's cooperation in negotiating a house-move deal while giving them a guarantee we wouldn't use negotiations to "string out the process" and delay their construction schedule for weeks and months. As board president, I'm sticking to our part of the bargain: we can't make the deadline, they can do the demo. Some hope did arise almost instantly after LNDC's announcement. Officials of the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) and Hennepin County got together to try to save one house. Their hope was to move the smaller one right next to Ace - which is in much better shape and thus less costly to move & rehab - to county-owned land at 3700 Stevens Ave. in Kingfield. 3700 Stevens was the site of a fire-damaged house that has recently been torn down. In the past several days, Project for Pride in Living (PPL) has been working hard to try to move the house, but they have had weeks, not months. There are many complicated issues in moving a house and PPL may need into May to pull it off - if anyone can pull it off. Just so everyone knows - the failure of the LNDC project was NOT Ace's fault; they had nothing to do with the bad soil and failure to monitor the original demolition company. PPL is still negotiating with Ace, but I think everyone should expect both houses will be torn down. This deal has consumed a lot of my time in the last two months, so I know as well as anyone how disappointed many of you must feel. I want to make it clear that the board approved the pro-parking lot recommendation knowing the houses might be torn down - then worked like hell to make sure they weren't. But the parking lot going up and the houses being demolished was always a possibility when we voted to recommend the upzoning to the City Council. You can logically say we should have denied the upzoning (and thus the lot) until we'd figured out how to save the houses. I can't speak for other board members on this, but we felt Ace deserved the parking lot as a neighborhood-stabilizing business, and we hoped good will would increase the chances of the houses being moved. (And Ace did agree to chip in $20,000 to the LNDC project.) The alternative was to oppose a valuable neighborhood business's request and doom any chance of a win-win (get the lot and move the houses). We chose to go with the former. There have been more than a few moments where I wish we'd done the latter - but neither is a very appetizing prospect. A few other quick things: 1. Although we appropriated $50,000 of NRP money to subsidize the move, none has been spent. If somehow PPL can move one house to 3700 Stevens, we'll spend up to $25,000 in subsidy. 2. If it still looks like the house can be moved, we have a meeting scheduled for nearby neighbors on Thursday, 7 p.m. April 18 at Arthur Knowles' house, 3706 1st. BUT... I'll let everyone know in advance whether this meeting is on. 3. If you feel we're all boneheads (or even if you don't), the door is wide open to help lead the neighborhood. Our Annual Meeting is Monday night, April 22, 7 p.m., at the King Park Center, 41st and Nicollet (with a 5:30-7 p.m. potluck; come anytime). You only need to live, work, or own property in the neighborhood to run for the board; it's a 2-year commitment, as little as two nights a month. You or someone else can put your name in nomination, then just tell the meeting why you're running and be prepared to answer some audience questions. If you have any questions about the Ace deal or about the board, please feel free to reply to this email. Again, we're all sorry about how this is turning out but rest assured, we have only tried to do what we thought was best for the residents, businesses and customers of our neighborhood. David Brauer President, Kingfield Neighborhood Association board _______________________________________ 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
