Or, take that same drive in your mind heading north from Summit Avenue with tree lined streets and large Victorian Homes and then you run into an Aldi Discount Foods. Doesn't fit at all does it?"
I understand Chuck's and everyone's concern and point of view, but I think most people are obsessing with an intersection that has historically, always been evolving (or devolving) depending upon the tastes and desires of the generation in power even as the rest of Lexington parkway's remained relatively constant.
My father's generation took the streetcar to St. Paul Saints games at Lexington ballpark at that intersection. As a kid in the late fifties and early sixties, I'd walk over there on Sunday afternoons to go rollerskating at the Lexington avenue roller rink. My teen-age siblings spent Friday nights at the bowling alley across the street.
My point is, years ago that intersection was a place for family fun and recreation. When those places closed and were replaced with the kinds of bland, generic businesses that are there now, people like myself (demographics like mine), no longer saw it as a destination. It became just another intersection in St. Paul like the hundreds of others I drive through without a second thought. So, light rail or no light rail, if the development that eventually takes place there is not planned to be a "destination" (and just having the train go by doesn't count anymore than the streetcars were an "attraction"), then it may be new and shiny, but to most people it'll still be just another intersection, albeit, planned by "experts."
Dennis Tester Mac-Groveland
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