In May of this year, Hennepin County released their new plan for the Lowry Avenue Corridor. With virtually no public attention, awareness or input, the County is pushing to get the Minneapolis City Council to approve the plan this week. Calls from neighborhood organizations and Citizen Advisory Committee members to slow the process down in order to allow for neighborhood-specific input appear to have been ignored. One very poorly attended public hearing was held in June. It was called on very short notice and no notice was provided to affected citizens along Lowry.
Parts of the plan are very positive--especially for the areas west of Lyndale in north Minneapolis and east of Central in northeast Minneapolis. In those areas there is a focus on improving commercial nodes and the addition of greenery and various design strategies to spruce up Lowry. No properties would need to be acquired and most of the proposed design amenities appear to be non-controversial and to have the potential to help revitalize Lowry Avenue. So it is understandable that residents and neighborhood groups along those parts of Lowry (such as Windom Park in northeast and Fulton in north) are generally supportive of the Lowry Plan. However, without being based on any substantive citizen input, the plan calls for MORE THAN DOUBLING the current width of Lowry between Lyndale and Central, basically cutting a huge new swath through existing homes and businesses in this whole area. This would have a major and devastating impact on my neighborhood --Holland-the only neighborhood that runs along both sides of Lowry (between Central Avenue and University Avenue). Widening Lowry just between Central and University may require the destruction of up to 70 housing units (plus many more units between University and Lyndale) as well as a the loss of a variety of neighborhood businesses and institutions. Holland has been trying very hard to create new affordable housing and to maintain and improve our existing housing stock. The loss of this much housing would be a tremendous blow to those efforts and to the cause of affordable housing throughout the city. While the County is trying to gain citizen support by calling the corridor plan the "Lowry Greenway" it would be more accurate to call it the "Lowry Truckway." The greenway label disguises the essential feature of the plan for this area--which is to use Lowry to accommodate and facilitate high-speed truck traffic between rail yards, industrial sites, and I-94. Alternatives exist for most of this truck traffic using Central, University and I-694. At present, many vehicles travel far faster than the posted 30-mph, contributing to the perception of Lowry as unfriendly to pedestrians and bicyclists and dangerous to children. Rather than addressing this issue, the plan's call for widening Lowry is likely to result in even higher speeds on Lowry. The published plan suffers from serious inconsistencies and errors. The number of housing units inventoried in the "First Parcel Analysis" underestimates the actual number of housing units along Lowry in Holland by almost 40%. This calls into question other data included in the Plan. Architectural drawings show new infill housing all along the Avenue but a close examination of the plan guidelines vs. available space reveals that there is inadequate room for such new housing through most of Holland unless additional parcels further off Lowry are also taken. It would not be appropriate for the City Council to vote on the Plan based on such misleading data. In order to gain public acceptance for widening Lowry for automobile/truck traffic, the plan includes an off-road bike/multi-use trail. But this concept is not well-thought out. Off-road bike trails seldom work well when there are cross streets every (short) block. Bikers would still be close to noisy high-speed auto\truck traffic. The failure to replace the narrow BNSF railroad viaduct leaves in place the major bottleneck/disincentive to biking on Lowry. If the viaduct is not widened, it makes little sense (especially for bikers and pedestrians) to widen the rest of Lowry. While there is a vastly preferable bike route proposal for 27th Avenue, (just north of Lowry), between Marshall and Central, the planners did not even look at that alternative. A short distance south of Lowry there are other potential east-west bike routes in the planning stages, further reducing the need for a Lowry bike path. The public participation process that did occur, through the Lowry Citizen Advisory Committee, was manipulated and inadequate. The planning process did not include a wide variety of neighborhood residents from the areas to suffer the greatest impacts. Only two or three Holland residents were involved and the concerns they raised were basically ignored. Most participants came from the areas east of Central or west of Lyndale where the plan is much less controversial and does not require the acquisition of private property. It was the planners and county officials who set the framework for the plan based on their priorities (apparently, increased traffic flow and the removal of low-cost housing and businesses from the Avenue). This did not come out of the citizen input process. The planners are trying to justify their plans as based on what citizens identified as desirable along Lowry-wider sidewalks, greenery, and a bike trail-but in fact the few involved citizens had no opportunity to carefully analyze the trade-offs and alternatives involved or to consider the street widening issue. The amount of housing to be lost or number of businesses to be impacted was never revealed at any of the public consultations (and it is now obvious the county doesn't even know how much housing is to be lost). When citizens brought up ideas for real alternatives that were in conflict with the county's pre-set agenda they were instantly dismissed. An example was a suggestion to apply traffic calming techniques along Lowry similar to what is successfully being done in other parts of the city (such as S. 50th St. in south Minneapolis). While improvements to Lowry are needed and desirable, they do not require a more than doubling of the width of Lowry and the massive loss of housing and businesses called for in Lowry Corridor Plan. Many alternatives exist-and should be explored in close consultation with local residents, block clubs, and neighborhood groups. The Lowry Corridor Plan should not be approved until such a neighborhood-level process has occurred and needed changes have been incorporated. My neighborhood has recently held several block club meetings about the Plan and our general meeting on July 11 (7pm at the Northeast Library) will be devoted to a discussion of the Plan in order to provide input to City and County officials and planners. However, despite knowing about this meeting for some time, and despite the calls from other neighborhood groups, such at Bottineau, to slow the process down, the County is trying to push the plan through as quickly as possible. In a recent column in the Northeaster, County Commissioner Mark Stenglein, the main force behind the Lowry Plan, emphasized his commitment to affordable housing and his belief that the our most important affordable housing resource is the housing that already exists. I am hoping that Mr. Stenglein will attend our meeting on July 11th and turn his attention to the affordable housing to be lost along Lowry-and the public dollars to be wasted--if his Plan is implemented according to the current concept. Bruce Shoemaker Holland Neighborhood _______________________________________ 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
