Re: [Mpls] 28th Street Exit Ramp Issues

[UncleHugo]

WizardMarks wrote:
> Let me propose a positive speculation: The businesses, with few
> exceptions, want the project.

Chris Johnson responded:
>All business owners on Lake street with whom I've had contact were
>uniformly opposed to the project, and all of them felt co-opted by the
>Phillips Partnership.

Don Blyly responds:
I've only been active in the Chicago-Lake Business Association since 1984, but for the entire time that I've been attending meetings there has been overwhelming support for full access to 35-W at Lake St., combined for most of that time period with frustration with MN-DOT for their hostility to the idea.  MN-DOT was committed to the idea that the freeway system was for the purpose of moving suburbanites between the suburbs and downtown, and providing access to Lake St. area businesses and residents was irrelevant to their mission of getting suburbanites into and out of downtown.  MN-DOT also tried for years to block the demands for full access at Lake St. with the claim that too many people would find it too useful, causing problems in the Lowry tunnel.  I've only heard favorable comments about full access to 35-W at Lake St. for the past 19 years at the Chicago Lake meetings.  Ted Muller of Lake St. Council frequently attends business association meetings at the various nodes along the entire length of Lake St., and he reports overwhelming support at all the nodes for full access at Lake St.

Chris Johnson asks (refering to Wells Fargo and Allina):
>Would this project even exist if not for their lobbying?

Don responds:
This is a good question.  The business people along Lake St. had been trying to get full access to 35-W for quite some time before I joined the Chicago-Lake Business Association in 1984, and they never stop agitating for it.  And they got nowhere with the state.  It was only after Ray Harris became the developer for the Sears site and began working with Abbot Northwestern Hospital, Children's Hospital, Honeywell, Peter McLaughlin, and Marty Sabo that MN-DOT started to pay attention.  After ignoring the wishes of the small business people for decades, MN-DOT found a bunch of heavy-hitters demanding the same thing the little guys had been asking for, and it wasn't as easy to ignore the heavy hitters.  So, I suspect the answer to your question is--no, this project probably would not exist without the efforts of the big guys.  But this indicates to me a problem with the way MN-DOT functions.  It certainly does not mean that small business people have suddenly decided that full access at Lake St. is a bad idea, after having worked for decades to get full access.

Of course, Ray Harris is now gone, with his plans for 5000 employees in the old Sears site.  So far, I've only seen one of the four new proposals for re-using the Sears site in detail, but the proposal I've seen would provide a lot few jobs than Ray planned for.  Honeywell is long gone, but Wells Fargo has taken over the Honeywell site and brought in 4300 jobs (replacing I think about 2000 jobs when Honeywell was there).  When the Abbott Northwestern Hospital expansion in finished in another year or so, they expect to add about 2000 more employees to the 5200 employees they have now (plus having many more patients and families of patients coming to the hospital).  So, a lot of the faces have changed over the last few years, but the number of people needing to get into the area is still about the same.

Chris Johnson says:
>Rightly or wrongly, Wells Fargo and Allina believe that having a freeway
>ramp to their doors will improve their bottom lines -- their profits.
>Ultimately, that is the only thing with which they are truly concerned.

Don responds:
I don't have much contact with Wells Fargo, but they are a for-profit corporation, so it would seem reasonable for them to be concerned about their profits.  If they've found some way to make a profit from having the flyway bring employees to 28th St. instead of making the employees drive through the neighborhood streets, I'd be interested in hearing about it.  I can't figure out how they are going to make a profit from it.

I do spend a lot of time at meetings where there is also a representative of Abbott Northwestern Hospital/Allina, which is a non-profit.  I can tell you that they have had a program for years to help employees buy homes in the area.  They helped set up an educational program (along with Children's Hospital and Hennepin County Medical Center) to train people who already live in the area to gain the skills necessary to get a hospital job, and they've hired hundreds of neighborhood people who have been through the program.  They also sell bus passes to employees at half the price anybody else would pay, to encourage as many employees as possible to bus to work. They frequently provide free space for assorted community meetings, and often also provide free pizza to try to get more people to attend the meetings. Your assertion that profits is the only thing they are concerned about is definitely way off base with regard to Allina.

Don Blyly
Central
Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore/Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore
Phillips