There are people living in the project area- take a drive up 2nd Street North or Washington Avenue. What I'm mostly worried about is what happens when the project grows beyond it's original boundaries and starts taking lot of homes west of the freeway. Something similar is now happening with the Holman "redevelopment" which just expanded and took several homes outside the project's original boundaries.I'm providing another link to the Upper River Master Plan summary that may be more helpful to people - the link is long, so you should probably copy and paste it into your web browser.http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/planning/planpubs/above-falls/index .html#TOC Hopefully, seeing the summary and illustrations will help people better see the area in question and where Scott Vreeland's comments are coming from. It should also show that Dyna Sluyter's concerns are rather baseless, especially the concern about housing demolition. How would you have to demolish homes in an area where there are few (if any) to begin with?
Houses are selling slower now as crime increases on the Northside, so dumping a couple thousand very pricy units on the market here would be a disaster. As far as jobs, come up here and see all the "for rent" signs appearing. Does the city really want to subsidize adding millions more square feet of vacant commercial space?The increased tax revenue Dyna questions would come from the construction of the 2,500 new housing units envisioned. The jobs Dyna scoffs at would come from the mixed-use developments planned at Lowry Ave (Lowry Plaza) on the west side and at the Grain Belt site, the latter of which is already underway. The plan envisions a shift away from heavy bulk-material-handling industries to light manufacturing, back office, research facilities, riverfront hospitality and entertainment venues.
Resorting to personal attacks reveals the desperation of your argument. Attending the meetings would have required quitting my job- I was working at the times the committee met. It's no accident that many of the committee members got to attend the meeting on "company time". Unfortunately the average citizen doesn't get paid to attend "citizens" committee meetings like this and they tend to get stacked with paid representatives of business, institutions, government, etc.. You ignore the fact that the plan was in fact created by a consultant, not the committee- as such my attendance would have been wasted.As to Dyna's concern about having little input on the plan, that would probably require pulling oneself away from the police scanner long enough to actually go out and participate in a meeting.
In conclusion, this project is DOA. The city has no money to build it, and private developers know better than to gamble their money on the Northside. Wonder why? Take a look at the BMW 7 series with a window busted out and the steering column peeled that thieves dumped next to my house. MPD checked it a day ago, anyone want to start a pool on how long it sits here?
Who would want to live or work here if they could afford to elsewhere?
Shopping for RVs in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
Mark Snyder Windom Park (59A) _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
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