City officials push to make green a primary color

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(April 1, 2008) As part of the city of Minneapolis’ ever-growing commitment to sustainability and the environment, Mayor R.T. Rybak and the City Council began an earnest campaign on April 1 to add the color green to the list of primary colors, which currently includes only the colors red, yellow and blue. “With the coming of spring, and the rapidly deteriorating state of our global ecosystem, the time has come to give green its due,” announced Rybak outside City Hall on April 1, wearing a forest-green suit, mint-green shirt and socks of mismatched verdant hues to mark the occasion. “Green is the most prevalent color in the natural world,” stated Ward 2 Council Member Cam Gordon at the ceremonial event. “Consider all the trees and plant life that are so key to our planet’s survival,” he said, adding that the ocean isn’t really blue, if you think about it. Ward 3 Council Member Diane Hofstede echoed Gordon’s sentiments about the color’s prevalence and importance. Continue Reading

Not just any Wednesday

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On March 19 — five years to the day of the invasion of Iraq — a weekly anti-war rally drew more than the usual crowd to the Lake Street/Marshall Avenue bridge over the Mississippi River, where protest Continue Reading

City, Seward looking for neighborhood history

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Seward Neighborhood Group (SNG) is asking residents and others to help it dig up some neighborhood history. SNG’s newly formed History Committee will meet on Wednesday, March 12, at 10:30 a.m. at the SNG office, 2323 E. Franklin Avenue. SNG has accumulated already a small collection of Seward-specific photographs, articles and memorabilia, for which the committee hopes to find a safe storage place that researchers and interested residents can access easily. They’re looking to build on that, as well, with donations of historical items ; if you have something to add to the collection, call Dick Westby at 722-2853 or email Bernie Waibel at bernie@sng.org. Items can also be photographed and then returend to the owner. Continue Reading

Central Corridor lays track toward federal funding

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The Central Corridor light-rail transit (LRT) project took what Metropolitan Council Chair Peter Bell called “a quantum leap forward” February 27, when the Met Council voted nearly unanimously to approve a $909 million scope for the project — half of which must be paid for by a full-funding grant through the Federal Transportation Administration’s (FTA) “New Start” program. The decision sets design and cost parameters around which Central Corridor planners can finalize their preliminary engineering as they prepare to apply in September for federal permission to enter into final design, and eventually, for the FTA grant. Central Corridor planners and the Met Council believe the scenario fits the FTA’s notoriously strict criteria for cost-effectiveness and constitutes a well-defined project that the feds will deem worthy of matching funds. Robert McFarlin, representing the Minnesota Department of Transportation on a Central Corridor advisory committee, put this point clearly before the February 27 vote: “If [the FTA thinks] we’re not ready, and we’re still thinking about it, they can [say], ‘You’re not ready to apply… and we will not accept the application.’”
The decision is a major step in moving the project forward, and it leaves aspects of the project to be fine-tuned before the final design stage. That said, the approved scenario does set some aspects more firmly — if not in stone — and it includes compromises, and some disappointment for some constituents. Continue Reading

“We lost everything”

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Downtown East resident Tom Labanowski called his upstairs neighbor Roberta “Bobbi” Wicka a hero just hours after their building was gutted by a mid-morning fire on Wednesday, Feb. 20.Sometime between 10 and 10:30 a.m., Wicka woke Labanowski from a sound sleep, he said, as a fire took hold in the upper floors of 1201 Washington Ave. S., home to Maxwell’s bar and restaurant and three upstairs tenants. No one was injured, but the fire appears to have destroyed the inside of the 113-year-old building, which also houses Scandia Furniture, next door at 1203 Washington Ave. S.“Bobbi saved our lives,” Labanowski said, smoking a cigarette to calm his nerves at Bullwinkle’s Saloon, 1429 Washington Ave. Continue Reading

Seward plays winter wonderland for national ad

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Things were just a little out of the ordinary near 38th Avenue South and Seabury Avenue on Wednesday, Jan. 23. A car blocked access to the street, where a line of onlookers watched from the sidewalk as an SUV turned the corner past a tree, its lower branches covered in ice. The scene was so interesting that, even in the zero-degree weather, the sidewalk gawkers watched it happen again and again and again. A block further south, a man in a camouflage parka stood guard. Continue Reading

Meetings on the future of NRP begin Jan. 22

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‘Framework for the Future’ proposes continued funding and support for neighborhoods
The City of Minneapolis is hosting a series of five information sessions on the future of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) beginning Tuesday, Jan. 22. The two-phase, 20-year program has directed nearly $300 million, in tax-increment financing from development projects, to Minneapolis neighborhoods for improvements in housing, parks and other infrastructure, as well as neighborhood programs, administrative staffing and other key services, based on neighborhood priorities. Funding has dwindled, however, as most neighborhoods enter the second phase, and the future of NRP has been uncertain. The City Council voted in October of last year to guarantee 70 percent of phase two funding, and, more recently, a work group comprised of city and NRP officials has proposed a “Framework for the Future” for the program. Continue Reading

No ‘magic key’ yet for Grand Rounds Missing Link route

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As preliminary planning continues to complete the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway through Southeast Minneapolis, residents and other area stakeholders continue to adamantly oppose any route that would necessitate the removal of homes in the Como neighborhood. Open houses on the proposed route alternatives take place this month — Jan. 16 & 17In recent months, Como residents convinced Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) planners to eliminate a route along 18th Avenue Southeast, but another route that would mean the removal of homes, called G-5, remains a possibility. Residents who oppose the loss of homes have been joined by the Southeast Como Improvement Association (SECIA), the University of Minnesota and Ward 2 Council Member Cam Gordon. Lila Smith, a Southeast Como resident who has spearheaded the opposition, collected 165 signatures on a petition against removing homes and/or student housing. Continue Reading