Reading the Highland Villager #249

[A Villager in a Grand Avenue foyer.]

[Basically the problem is that the best source of Saint Paul streets & sidewalks news is the Highland Villager, a very fine and historical newspaper. This wouldn't be a problem, except that its not available online. You basically have to live in or frequent Saint Paul to read it. Until this newspaper goes online, sidewalk information must be set free. See also: Three Reasons Why I Re-Blog the Highland Villager.]


Headline: Agreement paves way for 3,800 homes on Ford site; $53.5M in TIF will help pay for streets and utilities, more TIF is expected for affordable housing
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The old truck factory is being redeveloped in to a mixed-use complex of buildings. The city will have to pay for part of the cost, especially for things like roads and parks, etc. They will use deferred property tax money to pay for this, which will cost quite a bit. But eventually it pays off. There was a press conference about it. Article includes a rendering.


Headline: Homeless families find a room at Interfaith inn; Interfaith Action's Project Home is now serving 24/7
Author: Leslie Walters

Short short version: Homeless families can spend the night in church basements. [I volunteered for this a few times, doing overnights. It's sad but a good thing. Only for families though.]


Headline: Parks & Rec lays out preferred plan for repurposing Highland 9
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: An underused golf course across the street from another larger golf course might become athletic fields and a parking lot instead. There's no money to make the change. They would keep a "reconfigured" golf course [for some unknown reason]. Losing the old golf course "roiled golfers". [Golf, by the way, is trending down, unlike soccer.]


Headline: Committee supports coffee shop drive-thru at Sibley Plaza.
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The Zoning Committee voted to support a gas station becoming a Starbucks with a drive-thru in the parking lot of a newly remodeled strip mall. [The backstory on this is that the strip mall could have been rezoned and was supposed to be redeveloped into a mixed-use project with far less auto-oriented design features. But this did not happen five years ago and instead it has been remodeled as-is.] Quote features ME: "Commissioner Bill Lindeke said the condition [to check the traffic impacts within a year] should give city staff more tools to work with the property owners. "With Snelling and Marshall, the city felt like it couldn't do much," he said.


Headline: Affordable housing complex proposed at University-Fairview
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A parking lot and some vacant historic buildings might become 279 subsidized affordable homes. It is right next to a light rail station. It will not be mixed-use, because "we've had a lot of retail sit vacant in our developments", according to the developer.  [This developer almost never builds mixed use, even in downtown Saint Paul, of all places. That seems bad.] 


Headline: Ford site TIF is expected to pay for affordable housing citywide; Additional tax revenue from Ford project could generate $1M annually for affordable housing
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The old truck factory that will become housing will also raise money to subsidize affordable housing in Saint Paul. 20% of the units at the factory site will be dedicated affordable, according to the plan.


Headline: Slim City Council majority approves $636M budget for '20
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The city budget proposed by the Mayor was passed on a 4-3 vote. Quote from CM Prince: I will vote 'no' on this budget . because it does not cover the basics and it funds extras that my ward cannot afford." She wants more cops. CMs Thao and Busuri also voted against it. [That will be the last we will hear about CM Busuri.]


Headline: Tax levy hearing dominated by calls for more city spending; Appeals for social services exceed please for tax relief
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: Some people want the government to do more things, while others do not want to pay for things the government does.


Headline: Making a B Line between Uptown Mpls. and downtown St. Paul; UPC seeks support for new bus rapid transit service on Marshall, Selby and Lake [No Oxford comma for the Villager!]
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: There was a meeting at a neighborhood group about a potential new fast bus that would go down Selby and Lake streets [like the streetcar used to do before the bus planners screwed it up!]. The bus would be fast and convenient and amazing. [And it cannot be built soon enough. I am very glad they are going with the longer route that would serve downtown Saint Paul and the Snelby corner.] Neighbors are concerned about long buses turning around corners.


Headline: District council drops proposal for off-leash dog area in Snell-Ham [Rare sighting of the awful "Snell-Ham" moniker.]
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: Some people wanted to make a dog park in a "green space" by a large bridge. Neighbors are concerned about parking, noise, A committee met and decided it was a bad idea after all. safety, and poop. A city official said it would be a "dog run" not a "dog park."


Headline: Vine Park is brewing new taproom for 2020
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A DIY-brewery-type-place is going to open a new facility with a taproom on West 7th. It's owned by Asian-Americans. [That's unusual for the beer industry!] 


Headline: Committee supports 7-story building on West 7th-Leech
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: The Zoning Committee voted to approve a building that would be seven stories tall and have homes and a shop on a site where an auto repair garage was.


Headline: Council settles suit regarding inaccessible parking meters
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: Someone sued the city because some parking meters are too tall. it will be expensive to fix it. The person who is suing is a convicted murder, and has sued thirty businesses in the city. [He has sued lots of my favorite places in the city, including Mama's Pizza, Keenan's Bar, Mancini's, and many others. You can't make this up.] 


Headline: It'll cost more to get vehicles out of St. Paul's impound lot
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: If you get your car towed, it will cost more to get it back that it did before. The pricing used to be super complicated, but now it's a flat rate. [PROTIP: Move your car and it won't get towed.]


Headline: Mendota Heights establishes Historic Pilot Knob task force
Author: Jane McClure

Short short version: A suburb is going to try to spend money and time making a sacred Dakota site more accessible and culturally meaningful. [This is a very cool site and important project. I highly recommend riding your bike there.] 

Plugging Closing Time on Fox 9 with Andy Sturdevant

I schlepped myself out to the Fox 9 studios in Eden Prairie to appear alongside my friend and co-author Andy Sturdevant on the "Morning Buzz." We plugged our book, Closing Time, to the Semisonic tune and spent a few minutes talking about writing about bars

Of course you can get the book on my page (signed by me), on the MNHS website, or in bookstores all throughout the Twin Cities.

Order yours today!

Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy.

My Public Comment on the Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan

[Russ Stark presenting the plan to the City Council.]

[Yesterday, the Saint Paul City Council held a public hearing and then adopted the Climate Action and Resilience Plan. You can see the plan here,  listen to a podcast on the topic, or read my column on it. Many people gave testimony before the Council. These were my comments.]

I’m grateful that Saint Paul leaders have crafted this ambitious slate of goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions within the city. I strongly encourage the Council to pass this plan, and to follow up by meeting these goals with concrete action.

Sitting here today in 2019, the list of things we have to do might seem daunting. When you look at these goals from our perspective, they seem ambitious. To take just one example, the transit and vehicle miles targets included here represent huge strides, compared to what we have been doing in Saint Paul.

But unfortunately for all of us, when you look at climate change action from a different perspective -- from that of coming generations, your children or grandchildren -- things change dramatically. It sorrows me when I hear politicians, like the recent comments by leaders of Minnesota Republican Party, scoff at warming the earth by 2º Celsius, which, by the way, is a hopelessly optimistic outcome.

This existential, global problem is is no laughing matter. Warming the earth’s climate by two or more degrees Celsius will be catastrophic for Minnesota and for Saint Paul. We will experience severe flooding, droughts, death from heat exposure, massive storms, collapsing infrastructure, the extinction of countless species and irreparable transformation of the world. There is no end in sight.

This is why these steps are so critical. Again, unfortunately for all of us, I am confident that, when future generations look back at the 2019 Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan, they will see not a huge radical change, but the very first steps that we made as a city and as a society. The goals laid out in this plan will look like common sense, only the most basic of adjustments. Even if we meet these targets, people will be saying to their elders: Why didn’t you do more?

Here in Saint Paul, it might feel like we are doing something today. But it will be critically important to act on these goals, and not simply put them on the shelf next to the long library of our city’s ambitious but unmet aspirations.

The most disturbing fact I’ve heard in a while is this: “More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels have been emitted in just the past three decades.” This means that climate change was not inherited, but was caused in my lifetime, and by our actions. This is our problem.

When you vote for this plan, and more importantly, when you act on these goals, it will seem like a big change. But this is just a critical beginning. This plan charts out the first steps toward addressing the biggest political challenge of our lives. I urge you here today to support the Saint Paul Climate Action and Resilience Plan, for our children and their children, in Saint Paul and all over the world.

Signs of the Times #160

 TRASH ONLY,

NO POOP

PLEASE

:)

[Trash can. Frogtown, Saint Paul.]

 CONCRETE

IDEA

[Location forgotten.]

 BEWARE OF

ATTACK HAMSTER

[Fence. Frogtown, Saint Paul.]

 NOTICE

CIGS, CHEW, CANDY

LIQ, BEER. MISC...

NOW AT THE 

BAR

SORRY FOR ANY

INCONVENIENCE!

[Door. Martell, WI.]

 IDOLATRY

[Statue. Capitol, Saint Paul. (Taken from Twitter.)]

 S.O.S

HELP WANTED

INQUIRIES INSIDE

[Sandwich shop door. West Bank, Minneapolis.]

 Go ahead, Get mad

Lady! you treated me like

shit, I treated you back!!

sucks doesn't it? you

tossed me aside for

trash, I threw your shit

in the trash.

You did it

to yourself

Luv.

[Sign. University Avenue, Saint Paul.]

PLEASE

TRY NOT TO

BLOCK THE

WALKWAY!

KEEP OUR INFANTS

& ELDERS SAFE

[Tree. Frogtown, Saint Paul.]

Editorials Transformed #1

[In which an editorial is run through a GPT-2 machine-learning AI to generate new text. Lines from the actual editorial are marked in red; everything else is written by the computer program. This one is from the Highland Villager.]

Density of Ford Project demands more realistic plan for traffic

Recent comments by elected and appointed officials about how the transportation for the redeveloped Ford site encourages walking, biking and transit are informative in what they reveal: the extent to which that plan is based largely on a preferred policy outcome that is disconnected from facts and objective analysis.

The decisions here are predicated on the type of transportation designed for the renovated Ford site. As noted in the original brief, there is no usable transportation to connect transit to neighborhoods in the existing downtown and Northern Manhattan, so it is unlikely that a return to a more highly-used Ford site would promote more transit.

Moreover, some community groups have questioned Ford's role in the industrial park and urged that one of the properties be used for market rate housing. Not only does the new streetcar have to be paid for by the city, but the land must be developed under a 15-year lease. Until such time as a new streetcar line connects (and stops) to the existing trackage, the city has no recourse but to contract out its maintenance and planning for when the new streetcar line connects. 

It should be noted that this is different from contracting out the bus routes. In this case, city crews work out plans for a new line for the city with the bus agency, but if that doesn't work out, the city would have no results in front of council and some others may be responsible for ending the contract with the bus agency.

The same study also estimates that for mid-rise mutifamily housing units, there will be only one daily commuter trip for every four dwellings, a 7.2 percent reduction, compared with the downtown area. In contrast, car commuters will travel approximately 300 times a day in a downtown area, versus just 57 trips in a mid-rise.

Following my commute from the 9 to 33 bus for three hours a day, I typically use a backpack to pick up my bus fare. I'm an avid fan of using things like The Med & Commute and The Daily Pioneer to routinely and reliably track my miles. While their web site is nice, I'm more comfortable with their apps for Android and iOS. The apps are well-designed and feature a grid of live display colors. There is a variation to the apps that allows users to manage real-time updates for their trip.

Tolbert's and Gallatin's assumptions ignore the elephant in the room. We are about to break ground on an urban development project that is 10 times the scale of the surrounding neighborhood. In the past month, residents, local elected officials, and the neighborhood's other civic stakeholders have had a chance to know it firsthand.

Happily, we have gotten the first, crucial glimpse into the future of City Hall. The American Planning Association has adopted a resolution that seeks to transform the organization's approach to planning and to its mission by stressing the need to encourage innovative community involvement in planning and by encouraging the sharing of information among planning agencies, policy makers, private sector stakeholders and the public."

We can do better. The Ford site development presents a remarkable opportunity for our community. By bringing these projects forward, we can create the homes, schools and other infrastructure we so desperately need to sustain our students and communities."

The city began developing its 5.4-acre site in 2004. In September, the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce's planning committee was asked to give the public a chance to comment on the city's plans. The forum was open to the public but limited to five candidates for mayor and council, meaning the 5.4-acre site was either kept or turned into a headquarters for the campaign, along with offices for their current and former staffs. There were 37 staffers total – and outside observers who expected that a neutral mediator or adjudicator would be hired to keep the two sides apart.

One witness at the council meeting told the Star: "In a city of our size, not having a 50:50 democracy, with 70 per cent of the public being left out and people being pissed off, people were just wanting a return to the days of the 50:50. When you look at the political model here, it looks like anyone who's not with him is a threat. He's leaving the most powerful position to anybody." 

Other councillors also criticized the move. Wrote one: "This does not contribute to our city.”

It is possible to balance the city of St. Paul's environmental and housing goals with a transportation plan that prioritizes bicycles in the city. That is, the numbers can be stacked against each other, and not get so overboard in infrastructure, while adopting pedestrian-only streets and sidewalks.

In a process called design oversight, an ownership group draws up a neighborhood vision for a development project. Then, after 15 years, any changes are subject to an open housing ordinance.

Mayor Chris Coleman and Plan Commission Chairman David Mitchell have declined to offer any kind of plan.