Transportation, ‘revitalization’ and safety on the table at ‘Bringing Broadway Back’ forum

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Which comes first, reduction of negative factors, or positive development? That chicken-egg question was the heart of the matter when about 45 community leaders, developers, residents, business owners and city planners gathered at the YMCA on West Broadway April 17 in the morning, to discuss plans to improve the area, addressing a campaign pledge of City Council Member Blong Yang to hold a “summit” on the issue. The objective was to develop “solutions, visions and improvements to revitalize West Broadway.”

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Eastside Food Co-op plans to buy Love Lines spot for expansion

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If you could provide more customer parking and keep delivery trucks off the streets, wouldn’t it be worth a few hundred thousand more dollars (of a $2 million increase) in funding an expansion? With plans to buy the former Love Lines site to the south of its store, that’s what the Eastside Food Cooperative (EFC) plans to ask members at a meeting April 17.

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Will luxury work on West Broadway? Developer Tim Baylor thinks so

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It impressed even the people who opposed tearing down the last remaining concentrated blocks of old buildings on West Broadway to make it happen—though they said, “pick different blocks.” Tim Baylor’s proposed “Satori” project would bring 234 luxury apartments, office space, and retail that would serve the new residents and the community, to the 800, 900, and 1000 blocks of West Broadway’s south side. That’s from Cub, to Emerson Avenue.

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Minnesota’s disasters linked to climate change in “Sip of Science” series

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“Why is climate change still a political and economic controversy” when it is no longer a scientific controversy? Patrick Hamilton of the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) answered that it’s still subject to the “disinformation campaign by those interested in maintaining the systems that we have.”He’s the director of the SMM’s Global Change Initiative, and he spoke to a full house at the Aster Café for the March 12 “Sip of Science” series that’s sponsored by the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics at the St. Anthony Falls (hydrology) Laboratory. Beyond the statistics, however alarming they might be, his message was to encourage people to make “adaptations” and demand “mitigations,” to decrease production of heat-trapping gases. Hamilton said if cities prepare to recover faster from climate disasters, they will be more competitive in the new world realities.Minnesotans’ insurance rates have been climbing since 2008; the state is now number three in the U.S. for losses from extreme weather. Continue Reading

Minneapolis: Hollywood Theater deal inches closer

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“What we’re doing now has to happen no matter who is in there,” said developer Andrew Volna. He’s referring to a list of things to stabilize the Hollywood Theater at 28th Avenue and Johnson Street NE. “It will not even be useful, but pretty.” It would be a huge leap for a tenant to imagine themselves in the space, Volna said, and the changes would help a tenant better envision their use.

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