During my tenure on the City Council during the very early days of this
discussion, the common knowledge was always that the County, Mayor, Abbott
Northwestern, Wells Fargo and the Met Council were for this fly-over because
it would so to speak, "beam these employees into the mother ship", as
opposed to having to drive through the neighborhood. At that time, and now,
I was very much against the fly-over because I believe when people see the
size of it they will have a bird. I remember Peter and I having an argument
at a public meeting about the flyover. I indicated that I was against it. He
not so politely indicated I should keep my opinions to myself.
I hope you told him to stuff it.
Eddie, you need any literature dropped in Whittier & Phillips, you let me
know.
You will note that there is no scale model of this project despite frequent
requests. The reason is, if people saw the scale of the flyover, in
relationship to their neighborhood they would probably be against it. Having
been the director of the Lake Street Council when the business community
first requested better Lake Street-35W access I can tell you this is not
what they had in mind. The business community only wanted exit and entrance
ramps on both sides of Lake Street.
Which would actually solve the problem quite nicely, but as we all
know the simple solutions never seem to make it out of the planning
stage. With regard to the Honeywell/Wells Fargo site, I can't believe
we're even considering a flyover ramp, since my fellow WF employees
are presently only "subjected" to a whole TWO F*CKING BLOCKS of
Minneapolis before sliding right onto the 28th street ramp.
The irony of all of this is that other city's like Milwaukee and Los Angeles
have torn these flyovers down. For a lot less money we could beautify the
neighborhood and make the driving experience pleasant not only for us, but
for employees of Abbott Northwestern and Wells Fargo also.
Agreed. Good Lord, for the kind of money we're talking about here we
could give the poor, frightened souls an armed escort from the Lake Street
exit over to the Abbott NW ramp on Elliot. Sheesh. I believe in doing what
we reasonably can to keep businesses in Minneapolis, but this is way
beyond reasonable.
Kevin Trainor
RPM Candidate HD 61A
East Phillips
www.taxpayersfortrainor.org
