Re:[Mpls] Community Gardens at risk
In the 1970s the notion of vest-pocket parks was in vogue and there are a couple of examples that come readily to mind. One is the corner lot at the intersection of Maple Place and Nicollet Street on the north tip of Nicollet Island, established during the early days of the Nicollet Island PAC and still available for that tiny neighborhood's routine use. Another is Clifton Field in the Whittier Neighborhood, tucked away on about a third of block between Clinton and 4th Avenue S. just north of E. 25th St. I don't doubt there are more of these multi-purpose postage stamps around the city. Vest-pocket parks are more intimate than the bigger parks and more conducive to interactive participation in some ways - the city mows the grass and whatnot at Clifton Field and in my time on the Island from 1970-1981, we residents kept up the corner lot, mowing the grass, maintaining a rock garden along one edge and a flower garden in one corner of the lot, tidying up after cookouts and the like. We also had a geodesic structure for a while compliments of the School of Architecture. Just last year, Charles Horn Terrace Peace Park was honored with a CUE award as also the Korean Gardens on the West Bank - two additional contemporary examples of the viability of this concept. My own experience over the past decade or so has led me to the belief that there ought to be room in the city's life for both vigorous espousal of affordable housing and also a touch here and there of the notion of vest pocket parks. These ought not be mutually exclusive agendas but rather sensible components of good urban design at the neighborhood level. Details will surely vary, but not every square foot of vacant ground need be either a house or a community garden or an official city park. MCDA should have some flexibility in the disposition of its inventory and community gardeners and neighborhood organizations could be a little less linear in their thinking too. These modest gestures might also be a little more achievable than moving in on the sacred turf of the city's regular parks. Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten, in the Lyndale Neighborhood --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.491 / Virus Database: 290 - Release Date: 6/18/2003 TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) 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
RE: [Mpls] Community Gardens
Currently, if someone hurts themselves while walking, running, biking, skate boarding, etc., or playing ball or soccer, hockey, etc. on MPRB lands, what is the liability issue and insurance ramifications? Don't kids/parents have to sign liability waivers (for whatever they are worth- or not)? How would community gardens differ? Michael Hohmann Linden Hills -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Annie Young Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 2:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Mpls] Community Gardens I also support new actions for the Park Board to help with Community Gardens. I have served On CUE (Committee on Urban Environment) and on the NRP-ETC Committee of Phillips which has spent years on the community gardens topics. The issue that raises it's ugly head no matter who you talk to is LIABILITY. If people can figure that issue out we might be able to resolve this dilemma... snip Annie Young citywide Park Commissioner snip ___ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
Re: [Mpls] Community Gardens/Grave Monuments
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] people owned this property and were forced off the land, along with many others who may have rented from them[...]We should always remember the proper names that go with the improper deeds. We bought the lesson; what shall we learn from the lesson? Keith Reitman NearNorth Many community gardens serve as monuments to the crime-plagued structures that once stood on their lots. You can find example after example of groups of neighbors that changed abandoned vacant lots once home to drug trafficking and prostitution into centers for community activity. I don't believe many were aware of the positive impacts community gardening would have in these communities plagued with vacant property. Now community gardens are being removed from the lots with the same slash-and burn mentality that destroyed so many residential properties in the 1980s and 1990s. Leases are being revoked, gardens are being mowed down, and lots are being sold to housing developers without anyone informing community gardeners (people who are properly, legally leasing the sites) that their gardens are at risk. (By the way, Mr. Mayor, community garden activists now call this a Giuliani-Style community garden policy). We lost too much housing to demolition. Now we have lost too many gardens in the same manner. Soon we will begin to lose the connections between people that were grown in the gardens. ___ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
Re: [Mpls] Community Gardens at Charles Horn Terrace/Tower
Greg Congratulations. We (Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society) have an event on Sat. June 22nd Noon to 3:00 at 3954 Bryant Ave S. Former residence for Park Superintendent's. Dedication for the National Historic Register of the Theodore Wirth Home and Admin Bldg. We are hosting this event in collaboration with the East Harriet Farmstead Neighborhood Council HOUSE TOURS START AT NOON - Picnic in the Park 1:00 is the DEDICATION Rybak, Niziolek, and Benson with Vivian Mason will be presiding. Please Pass the word on to your neighborhood. FREE COOKIES, LEMONADE AND MUSIC - A COUPLE OF OLD FASHIONED CARS ETC. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT MARY BELFRY - TANGLETOWN --- Gregory Luce [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey, this is terrific and congrats to those involved. One note, which I find exceptional, is the appearance that Lyndale Neighborhood Association may be holding its annual meeting at Horn Towers, the MPHA high-rise. If true, that's a terrific example of how to bring the neighborhood group to people rather than people having the onus of going to the neighborhood group, particularly when it comes to low-income tenants. I'm putting this thing on my calendar. Gregory Luce Project 504/Minneapolis (North Phillips) Fredric Markus wrote: CM Dan Niziolek will be cutting a dedicatory ribbon next Monday, June 22 (reception at 6:00, scissors at 6:30, LNA annual meeting at 7) and we'll have the place shined up for public viewing. This is a remarkable collaborative effort among public housing residents, their public agency landlord, the adjoining neighborhood and a signal number of non-profits who labor in sustainable community-building fields. ___ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls = Mary Belfry (612) 822-6028 __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com ___ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
Re: [Mpls] Community Gardens/Grave Monuments
In a message dated 6/21/02 11:05:40 AM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Over the past 5 years, Minneapolis has experienced a dramatic loss of community gardens. Community gardening is an important tool for neighborhood stability and community interaction. Losing gardens means losing public green space, neighbor to neighbor connections, neighborhood empowerment, direct access to nutritious food, and much more. Community gardening movements in the United States are often a reaction to social crises, and so it would make sense that community gardening would decline during the period of increasing economic stability of the late 1990s. Witness the dramatic reduction of the number of vacant residential lots in the city that occurred in response to the affordable housing crunch. Keith says; I tip my hat to the positive aspects of community gardens. I shudder whenever I revisit how the exponential rise in, ...the number of vacant residential lots in the city...occurred...!! Now the number of vacant lots, and also community gardens, is decreasing. If anyone wishes to consider community gardens as much more then a temporary place-keeper, like a bookmark, that is fine with me. I watched, pained, for twenty years as the number of vacant lots increased. DFL City Leaders, one after another after the next, and with increasing ferocity, so people as placekeepers and the equivalent of bookmarks as they wantonly tore down this city's infrastructure of affordable housing to create those lots. And sent broken families to the shelters, to pile-on their relatives and friends, or under the bridge. Sharon Sayles Belton, Jackie Cherryhomes, Joe Biernat, Jim Niland, and so many others made manifest, through their focused demolition actions, what must have been their stealth policy goal: Economic and Racial Cleansing. I do not wish to use inflammatory language: I do wish all will calmly look at the actions and the outcomes. And then ask, ' Who did this, and why?' As I drove around the Northside today, along the different streets in our alphabet, I was astounded at the huge number of new housing starts. I was incredulous. It was as if there were two or three new foundations or framing on every block around A, B, C, D, E, F, and G between Lowry And West Broadway. And many more between Highway 55 and West Broadway. So that is the outcome of the demolition policy of the DFL City Leaders. Most all of us survivors, you and I, are going to benefit from our New Neighborhoods. How long will reasonable, thoughtful people consider and remember that under most all of these new structures there is a story. And for how long will they care, and gain insight from the fact that most all of these lots held older houses, duplexes and apartments. That people owned this property and were forced off the land, along with many others who may have rented from them. These new homes may now be holy sites because of the havoc rendered upon the people who once dwelt there. They are certainly grave reminders and monuments. We should always remember the proper names that go with the improper deeds. We bought the lesson; what shall we learn from the lesson? Keith Reitman NearNorth ___ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
