ROBERT VELEZ wrote:
I'm curious why 'revitalization' of Lake Street is linked to getting access off of 35W; Uptown got revitalized without freeway access, right?WM: Because the city council and Ray Harris wanted to attract an up-scale yuppie crowd from around the lakes and France Av. (trail to Edina).
It doesn't seem like a guarantee that additional "access" to Lake Street will revitalize areas that, I believe, people are currently afraid of.WM: The decisions around this revitalization, in 1996, were to brings jobs, particularly jobs that less skilled workers can do; to refurbish/reconfigure the Sears Building to attract people within a 3 mile radius for shopping, movies, small offices (dentists, lawyers). To make Lake and Chicago a going concern. The access to Lake St. is to accommodate bringing in goods and people to what is to become a "destination" district catering roughly to the Southside of Minneapolis. Heavier truck traffic will have to come in and putting that traffic on Lake St. is counter-productive because it gets in the way of shopping. Then too, the entire section of the Southside which used to be the railroad yards for the Milwaukee Road is being reconfigured for light industry and a major LRT line. In the long run, that it helps the hospital and Welles Fargo may become incidental. This was inevitable once the Greenway was in and took up the space once devoted to trains and convertible to a roadway.
I think the Sears tower development might be the key to revitalizing the area of Lake from 35W to Cedar (or at least Bloomington). A significant investment in that building to turn it into the 'crown jewel' of Midtown (that is what that area is dubbed now, right) could would likely attract interest in the neighborhood and a redoubling of efforts by public safety units (Hennepin County AND MPD) may help assuage some of the fears of the area.WM: Interestingly enough, at the places on Lake where people walk around after dark, there is less added police protection than you might expect. Misreants are more comfortable in the dark and lonely streets. The busy people moving around curbs a lot of misbehavior. Too many eyes and ears.
I doubt that improved 'access' (read: expansion) at Lake Street would change the attitude that many people hold of the area. An attraction or public amenity might.WM: There is a misunderstanding here. Access and expansion are not the same thing. Access can be understood in a number of ways. The expansion is solely the notion of MNDoT. The neighborhoods want the freeway to stay in its trench and, if it adds lanes they should be dedicated bus lanes on the perimeters of the roadbed, not in the middle.
Aaron Isaacson, representative for the MCTO, doesn't want to put the money into that, or to making this a classy piece of engineering/advertizing for Minneapolis. Why? Because, it's fashionable to kick Minneapolis these days? Yes. But MCTO does not want to raise the money to do this project right. MNDoT wants to take over this project, add more lanes, cut all the mitigation and thumb their noses at the citizenry. MNDoT, in the person of their rep. Mike O'Keefe, sat in that committee for two years and said nothing. In 2001 they announced that they needed more lanes. They have not acted like an honest broken because the agreement between the city and the state was for an access and mitigation project, period.
However, if those who are not happy with the results-to-date continue to discredit themselves by pointing to the hospitals and Welles-Fargo as the foxes in the hen house, they help MNDoT and MCTO continue to slide. The issue is access and mitigation and modeling mass transit as the future. Monday's paper, Metro section carried the story of Bus Mass Trans, the less expensive mass transit. If we fail to get consensus on the PAC and among ourselves, the mitigation will disappear, access will be problematic, and yet more lanes are guaranteed. If we opt for no build, then we will continue to operate as the slum for Minneapolis into the near future. Pawlenty will hear the suburbs crying for more lanes and another huge swath of Minneapolis housing will go.
It's also short-sighted as all get out. If the center, Minneapolis, cannot hold (which is the result of ever-increasing freeways that gut the tax base and livability of the city), then the region falls into obscurity.
WizardMarks, Central
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