Basim Sabri bought up and developed properties at a rapid clip. He has, in the process, provided opportunities for small immigrant owned businesses. He has learned the Minneapolis development game well and is definitely one of the top players in the game.
WM: Totally disagree. He isn't even in a class with Ryan or Boursin or Sherman and some others. He's at least two levels below that class. He's still raw, but I'd be willing to wager that he does nothing different from them with the exception that Sabri is about as subtle as a brick.
... there remain questions about his [Sabri's] tactics.
Actually, we should be asking questions about any developer's tactics. For example, the developer who did Block E insisted that a theater be torn down or moved because he couldn't do what he wanted with it there. I've always been mystified by that attitude since the city is paying the developer to do what IT wants.
Which brings me to Peter McLaughlin, who is rumored to be thinking about a mayoral run.
WM: A rumor and a buck eighty-three will get you coffee is some beaneries.
We are very confused these days about what is in the public interest and what is private investment. This confusion comes with a very high price tag.
WM: Is this the royal we? I'm not confused about the public and private interests in the situation above. I'm clear on it. What I see is that rare event when public and private interests actually mesh. This little section of South Minneapolis of which you speak is one of the three areas in the city with the highest employee forces. It is in the interest of the state, city, and neighborhoods to make that more doable with access for residents, particularly, and for mass transit, job creation and all that economic jazz that will mean, ten years or so in the future, that I may no longer have to witness shootings, murders, fire bombings, arson, beatings, and other abuses which I now witness. I am so looking forward to that day and I do not intend to leave my home to find that peace. I would miss my friends and neighbors.
However, I am tired of the conspiracy theorists, yourself included, who feel the need to imply skullduggery on any number of people's parts and throw around accusations like you're slapping stucco on a building.
Despite all the harping, MN is a very lucky state. For all the headlines and fol-de-rol, neither Herron nor Biernat made very big mistakes. To illustrate--Illinois where they make "mistakes" on a scale you have never seen here. During the late sixties/early seventies, when IL residents sent our car license fee to the state annually, we were instructed to make the check out to a specific person working for the state in an elected position. This man (It was 30 years ago, and no I can't remember his name, Jay Clark, member of this list, probably can) to whom you addressed the check was pocketing the checks. This politician died in the late sixties and shoe boxes full of checks for car licenses were found in his home when the executor of his will went through his closets to do what was required of an executor. They also found a great deal of money in the politician's bank account that could not be accounted for. It took the state of IL a long time to figure out how much money was carted off.
How about being a poll judge on election day. Piece of cake? Now try it in E. St. Louis when a man with a shotgun comes into the polling place and brings a whole string of people to vote, giving each of them $5.00. Shotgun man made it pretty clear to judges what the cost of objecting would be. He came back later that day and ran the same bunch through again and they voted under the names of people who "resided" in different local cemeteries. They got another fiver for their pains. While none of these run throughs was much above total burnout, they looked pretty lively for dead guys.
Did Peter McLaughlin work with us? Of course he did. What do you think we elected him to do? To be the leader of the laundromat at the county for us. One reason we did that was because we had noticed that most of us only got an appointment with Allina when we went in for medical tests, but McLaughlin could dial up the CEO and do lunch. This is not the royal we, but the collective of all those of us who worked on nudging the powers-that-be into fixing 35W, making a greenway out of the 29th St. Depression, leaving space for a choochoo in the greenway, redoing Lake St. for Pete's sake. Why? Economic interests. Us chickens in So. Mpls. are tired of being containment, dumping, and non-profit land. We want the liveliness of commerce and industry--especially our industry, each one of us laboring away in our little vineyard. These are working class, blue collar neighborhoods in the inner city who will be positively affected by these changes. That, sir, is the real conspiracy and each of us is complicit in our attempts to improve our lives, so when you cast aspersions on McLaughlin, you are simultaneously casting aspersions on thousands of your neighbors. Well, thanks a toad ton.
WizardMarks, Central
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