The border between Seward and Phillips has been a
source of confusion back to 1954 or so if you watched
the last Zoning and Planning Committee meeting on TV
and the presentation made by Fred Neet of the planning
department. It affects more neighborhoods than just
Seward and North Phillips (Ventura Village)
Over the past 48 years the boundary between Phillips
and Seward AND all the other neighborhoods that share
the Soo Line rail lines or Hiawatha as a border has
been shown on maps as both Hiawatha and the Soo Line
rail lines. It has bounced back and forth between
those two boundaries depending on the year and the
map.
The maps NRP has FROM THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT which
were dated from early 1990 to late 1990 showed the Soo
Line Rail lines as the boundary.
In 1998, Darren Jablonsky, former Executive Director
of the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization called me
and alerted me that Darryl Stokesbury of the planning
department was changing the boundary between the
neighborhoods that face Hiawatha from the Soo Line
rail lines to the middle of Hiawatha. He was very
upset that this decision was being made WITHOUT any
public meetings. I believe this also had a significant
impact on the Standish Ericcson neighborhood because
the shopping mall at 50th and Minnehaha Parkway was
technically in their neighborhood using the Soo Line
rail lines as the official neighborhood border. The
neighborhood had or was going to invest NRP funds into
that shopping mall. I believe people in this
neighborhood raised the border issue as well to what
seemed to be no avail.
During this time, the People of Phillips had just been
decertified by the city and the Phillips Citizen
Participation activity was such that no capacity
existed to deal with a problem of this magnitude
during that time.
When I called Darryl Stokesbury, he told me the change
was being made in preparation for the census. That
seemed extremely odd to me considering the geographic
area in question had no people living in it.
In investigating this issue further, it appeared as if
former Council Member Joan Campbell was pushing for
this change. The Franklin LRT station would be
located in North Phillips (soon to be Ventura Village
neighborhood) if the Soo Line Rail was used as the
border. The station would be in Seward if Hiawatha was
used. The border was in fact changed by the planning
department to Hiawatha (WITH NO PUBLIC MEETINGS) and
Seward was awarded the contract to conduct planning
activities surrounding the Franklin LRT station. The
planning area not only included Franklin and Hiawatha,
it stretched all the way over to 11th Av. which is
nearly half way into Ventura Village or North
Phillips.
People in Ventura Village complained loudly that they
were given very little input to the plan that was
produced by David Fey. Considering the plan extended
half way through the Phillips neighborhood on the
Northern border, the neighborhood should have been
consulted in a much more significant way than they
were. Any complaints people in Ventura Village
registered were by and large ignored.
In addition, Ventura Village used NRP funds to pay for
a Master Development Plan that outlined a
significantly different look for the area in question
between Hiawatha and the Soo Line Rail. The Ventura
Village plan called for adding hi-rise affordable
housing buildings that would have provided a great
deal of housing opportunties. Now, it appears there
will be LRT shops and yards there. Ventura Village
pushed to have the shops and yards remain further
south of this area along Hiawatha. Their pleas fell on
deaf ears.
Joan Campbell was very visible and forceful in her
role to plan the LRT routes and stations as they were
planned in Cedar Riverside and at Franklin.
In the Zoning and Planning Committee meeting last
week, Council member Dean Zimmerman stated that during
a Seward tree planting project, the neighborhood
planted trees only to the Soo Line rail corridor
instead of all the way to Hiawatha. If Seward truly
believed its neighborhood boundaries were Hiawatha,
why didn't the neighborhood plant the trees all the
way to its border?
As Paul Harvey says "Now you have the rest of the
story". This one has a long and twisted history. The
long and short of it is that Seward and Ventura
Village will need to discuss this and come to some
sort of agreement or plan to address this issue by the
council meeting next Friday. Either way, it is my
hope that the City Council will grant Ventura Village
their long awaited request for independent
neighborhood status whatever the Eastern boundary will
be.
Barb Lickness
Whittier
(NRP Staff to all of the neighborhoods that border
Hiawatha and the Soo Line Rail lines except for Seward
and Standish Ericcson.)
=====
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the
world. Indeed,
it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
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