On 8/22/03 8:57 PM, "Michael Atherton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Sean Ryan wrote: > >> Both historic designation and LRT could be beneficial to >> the University/Prospect Park communities. I find it >> unfortunate that people (fraternities) have lost respect >> for the places that there 'brother's' worked hard to build >> decades ago. Deferred maintenance and lack of basic values >> has plagued many of these once symbolic homes surrounding the >> U of M. Simple things like painting every 7-10 years and >> keeping that ratty old velour cough off of the lawn would be >> a start. Many 'Frats' were built to last a century and many >> have but sadly basic measures were not taken to sustain the >> structures. Now the HPC must get involved before these pieces >> of the neighborhood history rot into the ground. Certainly a >> clause could be worked in to allow for future LRT service >> (a tremendously good idea) to link our sister cities. >> >> Perhaps this could be related to a change in our value system >> from the turn of century to now. Party now, consequences later. > > My post said nothing about the value of the proposal to > make fraternity row a historic district. I was offended by > the attitude of someone in a position of power within a > neighborhood association who seems to think that they > have as much right of ownership as a person who holds > the title of a property. [snip] > I don't believe that Historic designation requires > maintenance, it just limits the types of changes that can > be made. If these properties are substandard, there's > always the Housing Dept to issue violations; which was the > subject of the thread to being with. The designation does > require that a major project, such as LRT, do additional > studies and make additional expenditures. Although Michael was not arguing against the proposal to turn Fraternity Row (and parts of Dinkytown where other fraternities and sororities are located) into a historic district, I will. First off, I agree with his comment that the Florence Littman quote in the Strib goes way overboard. If she thinks she can claim ownership of the fraternity and sorority houses, I hope she won't mind when some of them come visit for her contribution to their second half property taxes in a couple months. Greek houses are zoned commercial as lodging houses, so they pay a little more than their homesteaded neighbors like Florence. What a lot of people don't realize about the Greek system is that while U of MN students live in the houses, most, if not all, are actually owned by alumni housing corporations (alumni boards) and these folks are pretty much all volunteers. I'm vice president for mine. I agree that some of the chapters at the U have not done the best job at maintaining their properties, but I don't think historic designation is the way to remedy that problem. As Michael points out, historic designation does not require maintenance. What it does do is create more hoops to jump through to do maintenance work. There are already quite enough of those with the code of ordinances and an understaffed Inspections department that barely can keep up with violations, let alone provide guidance, thank you. Greek alumni boards already have enough to do with routine maintenance for old structures (most were built in the late 1800's to early 1900's) that are subjected to about as much traffic and abuse as a small apartment building would be. My board of five members has probably volunteered a collective 200-250 hours this past month on some major renovations at one of the houses we own. This is nearly all done on evenings and weekends after we put in 40 or more hours at our regular jobs. While some chapters hire out maintenance to contractors and others defer, there are a few of us who do a lot of the upkeep ourselves because it's so expensive and we want to keep rents as affordable as possible for our undergraduate members. Tuition increases are hard enough on them as it is without us raising the rent, too. I hadn't heard anything about the historic designation being a way to prevent LRT from coming to University Ave, but if Michael is correct about that, it just makes the idea even worse. University Ave. is a perfect route for connecting Minneapolis to St. Paul and would only strengthen the plans that are being made for a high technology corridor between the U of MN Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses and the other colleges and universities in St. Paul, as well as the State Capitol. And anyone who's traveled along University Ave. recently knows there are plenty of downtrodden areas that would benefit from the new investment that LRT would attract. Mark Snyder Windom Park TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. 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