Dinkytown showdown: Pro- and anti-rezoning advocates brace for Minneapolis City Council vote on August 2

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Save Dinkytown leaders will continue lobbying Minneapolis City Council members to block a proposed six-story mixed-use apartment and business development when the council takes up the plan on Friday, August 2.The council’s zoning and planning committee on July 25 rejected the rezoning from C1 commercial to C3A mixed-use that would have allowed Opus Development to replace three buildings and a surface parking lot with the new 140-unit apartment building on Fifth Street between 13th and 14th avenues southeast.The surprise 3-2 vote, which went against both the planning department and planning commission’s recommendations, gave Save Dinkytown a victory that organizers are not taking for granted until final City Council action on August 2.“We still have to fight the battle at the city council,” said Gordon Kepner, long-time resident who lives near Dinkytown. “Opus is now on full alert and they’re going to pressure in the many ways they can.”Opus developer Matt Rauenhorst, however, said on July 26 that he will continue to push for the development, but he said he was uncertain whether he would seek time to speak before the council.“We will ask the full city council for the rezone,” he said.“We’ve been though a really lengthy process for this project,” he said, listing meetings with the Marcy-Holmes land-use committee and addressing the conditions the neighborhood put on its support.Matt Hawbaker, a manager of the Book House and organizer of Save Dinkytown, said he plans to continue trying to reach more people to contact their council members to oppose the rezoning.“It’s a big step, definitely,” he said about the zoning and planning committee vote, “but a lot can happen in a week. We’re going to continue to ask people to tell their representatives how they feel. We will try to reach them through the media and online.”Although she is not on the committee, Third Ward Council Member Diane Hofstede, who represents Dinkytown, urged the committee to reject the rezoning proposal until the Dinkytown stakeholders complete a small-area plan for the four-block district.Nonetheless, Hofstede would not predict the council’s vote. “Nobody can say what will happen when you take something to the City Council,” she said.Council President Barbara Johnson can choose to open the agenda for discussion, just as chairman Gary Schiff did with the zoning and planning committee, even though the item was originally listed on the consent agenda, which wouldn’t have allowed discussion. Continue Reading

Minneapolis committee decision may halt Opus development in Dinkytown; House of Hanson in limbo

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A Minneapolis City Council committee on Thursday, July 25, rejected a plan to rezone a portion of Dinkytown for a six-story mixed-use development to replace the House of Hanson and other businesses.After the meeting, the owner of the House of Hanson said she may not close on July 31 as she had announced earlier in the week.The zoning and planning committee voted 3-2 against the rezoning from C1 commercial to C3A that allows mixed-use developments like the Opus six-story proposal. The City Council may make the final decision on Friday, August 2.“I don’t know what’s next,” said Laurel Hanson Bauer, owner of the 80-year-old corner grocery store founded by her grandfather in 1932. “I have to figure out a way to stay in business until I know. If I’m in business, I make money. If my business is closed, I make nothing.”Before announcing her plans to close, she said, council members had indicated to her they supported the rezoning that would permit the Opus project that would displace her business.“Now they’re saying no. Continue Reading

Dinkytown’s House of Hanson to close on July 31

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The House of Hanson, which has been a corner grocery store in Dinkytown for 80 years, will close on July 31, 2013, owner Laurel Hanson Bauer announced on July 22.“I was not ready to reveal my end date, mostly for emotional reasons,” she said in an e-mail. “But I am ready to pull the plug and am closing the doors for grocery sales on July 31st—yep 9 days!!!!”Earlier this year, Bauer signed a purchase agreement with Opus Development, which plans to build a six-story mixed-use business and apartment complex on the site.Since then, residents and businesses have lined up to support or oppose the development—both sides claiming they will do the most to “save” Dinkytown.The development requires approval of a number of variances and rezoning from commercial (C1) to mixed use (C3A) by the City Council, whose zoning and planning committee will hear the development proposal at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 25, in City Hall. Committee actions could go the next full City Council meeting on Friday, August 2.The proposal called “5th Street SE Mixed Use; 1300-1322 5th Street SE and 425 14th Avenue SE” is listed on the zoning and planning committee’s consent agenda and three staff reports have been posted. The city’s planning commission approved the development on June 24. Kristen Eide-Tollefson, whose Book House store was evicted from Bauer’s building, helped create the Save Dinkytown organization to stop the Opus development.“Save Dinkytown will present a 3,000-signature petition opposing rezoning—1,000 handwritten and 2,100 online signatures—with hundreds of comments to City Council Member Diane Hofstede on Tuesday, [July 23]” and to the zoning and planning committee, Eide-Tollefson said.Eide-Tollefson said they will seek a public hearing at the zoning and planning committee. The city DFL convention this summer supported their position against the Opus project.Eide-Tollefson said the council could vote for the rezoning without commenting on the Opus project. Continue Reading

Dinkytown update: Businesses move, residents debate as Opus development moves forward

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Two Dinkytown businesses displaced by the proposed Opus mixed-use apartment and commercial building have reopened in new locations, while the Minneapolis planning commission has forwarded the Opus proposal to a city council committee.The Podium, a guitar store that dates back to Bob Dylan’s Dinkytown days in the 1960s, will open under new ownership at 4151 Minnehaha Avenue in South Minneapolis.Jeff Molde, who had owned the Podium for 14 years, announced that he would retire from the business when he was displaced by the sale of his building that also housed the Book House and the House of Hanson grocery. Molde said he tried unsuccessfully to find other viable locations to relocate.Since then, however, he sold the Podium name to a former employee who merged it with Guitar Rodeo on Minnehaha, said David Roos, who worked for the Podium for 28 years and has just started with the new business.The new owner, Jim Tordoff, worked at the Podium for more than eight years in the 1970s, Roos said. In an interview with Fox 9 News, Tordoff said he worked in Dinkytown during the Dylan era.The new store, Roos said, will have guitars, parts, strings and repairs like the Podium, but unlike the Podium, it will not offer sheet music or lessons.“It’s not Dinkytown,” Roos said about the new location, “but the parking is a whole lot easier.”He admitted that the inventory was currently much lower than it was in Dinkytown, but, he added, “That’s going to change real quick. We’ll double or triple what’s here.”Most guitars sold at the Podium ranged in price from $2,500 to $3,500 and Roos said he does not expect that to change. Guitars on the wall at the store on July 10 ranged from $700 to more than $12,000.On July 10, the Book House opened in its new location on the second floor of Dinkydale, 1316 Fourth Street Southeast, around the corner from its old site.Although the current site is smaller than the old store, customers can still browse “the best of the Book House” inventory in the main store and a rare book room across the hall. Continue Reading

Save Dinkytown effort escalates in Minneapolis as the Book House and the Podium get ready to say goodbye

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Saving Dinkytown has become complex—for both supporters and opponents of a proposed six-story, mixed-use apartment building in the four-block business district adjacent to the University of Minnesota.Both sides say they represent the best interests of the quaint, historic business district and neighborhood, even as the Podium closes and the Book House moves.“Everybody is talking about the character of Dinkytown, but nobody has defined the character of Dinkytown,” said Jo Radzwill, co-chair of the land-use committee of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association. (The Marcy-Holmes neighborhood includes Dinkytown.)“It’s a feeling we have from when we went to school there. It’s different for everyone and it depends on the era,” she said in an interview. “How do you preserve the character of Dinkytown when you don’t even know what it is?”Defining that character is a goal of Kristen Eide-Tollefson, owner of the Book House and organizer of Save Dinkytown—a movement founded to stop the proposed Opus development.Eide-Tollefson said the project should be delayed until the city completes a small area plan to guide Dinkytown development.“We are trying to make a conservation district to define and protect the character of Dinkytown,” Eide-Tollefson said. “A conservation district designation for Dinkytown will help identify what we want to conserve about the area.”“Otherwise, we will end up like Stadium Village with the loss of local businesses and layers and layers of living memory,” she said.Minneapolis city planner Haila Maze explained that a conservation district allows for preservation with fewer restrictions than a historic designation.“A conservation district is new,” Maze said. Continue Reading

COMMUNITY VOICES | Dinkytown should be a protected historic district

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Thirty years ago, in the fall of 1983, I left Richmond, Virginia where I had lived all my life, to attend U of MN-Minneapolis. I wanted to know my grandparents better and felt moving to Minnesota would enable me to see them more often before they died. They were from Alexandria, MN. I lived on campus in Comstock Dorm when it was still an all female dorm, and the school and Dinkytown were intertwined, they still are. Dinkytown and the uniqueness of it, have continued on to this day. They are intertwined with the fabric of that part of MInneapolis and that edge of U of MN. Continue Reading

NEIGHBORHOOD NOTES | Diane Hofstede to hear community views on development in Dinkytown

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Voice your opinion about proposed development in Dinkytown at a public forum from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20, at the Varsity Theater, 1308 Fourth Street S.E. in Minneapolis.The public forum, sponsored by the Dinkytown Business Association and Third Ward Council Member Diane Hofstede, will include exhibits on Dinkytown history, music development groups, and a “Save Dinkytown” student group.The event is a reaction to the proposed six-story Opus apartment building along Fifth Street between 13th and 14th avenues.The DBA may propose a local area study to reconsider the city and neighborhood’s long-range plan before the development can proceed.Read Bill Huntzicker’s complete series on development in Dinkytown.Coverage of issues and events affecting Central Corridor communities is funded in part by a grant from the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative. Continue Reading

NEIGHBORHOOD NOTES | Put your rack where your mouth is: Dinkytown Scrabble tournament features cash prizes

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Are you a spelling whiz? Try your hand at competitive Scrabble with some people who take the game seriously—or at least competitively.The tournament, called Doobie’s Rubies and Newbies for Polished Gems and Diamonds in the Rough, will begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday, March 23, in the gathering space at St. Lawrence Church, 1203 Fifth St. S.E. in Minneapolis.New competitors and curious onlookers can attend for free but about 40 serious competitors have already paid the $25 entry fee for serious players, said Doobie Kurus, the event organizer.They play the game the old-fashioned way, without computers or any technological help. Judges will be the only computer users because they will have to verify whether some entries are legitimate words.Competitive Scrabble players, like serious chess players, use a timer to keep their games moving, Kurus said.When he was a University of Minnesota student, Kurus said he watched Scrabble players meet weekly at the Station 19 restaurant where he worked. Continue Reading

A “high-rise Animal House”? Opus faces neighbors’ questions about its planned Dinkytown development

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The proposed Opus mixed-use building in Dinkytown would become a “high-rise ‘Animal House’” that “is equivalent to an on-campus dormitory in the middle of a business district,” says Jason McLean, owner and general manager of the Loring Pasta Bar and Varsity Theater.McLean—whose views, in the form of a written statement, were presented by his executive assistant Lynn Nyman—and another prominent Dinkytown business owner told the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association land-use committee on March 12 that the proposed Opus mixed-use development endangers their future as well as that of the entire business district adjacent to the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus.The “massive loss of parking” both over the long term and during construction will jeopardize the future of Kafé 421 adjacent to the new building and the Loring Café and Varsity Theater in the next block, they said.The comments came as architect David L. Graham, a principal with ESG Architects, reviewed the latest design for the Opus Group’s proposed new mid-rise, mixed-use development that would fill nearly half a block of the four-block Dinkytown business district.The six-story Opus building includes 9,600 square feet of commercial space and 140 rental dwelling units; about 32 percent would have one bedroom, and 60 percent would have two bedrooms.  Zoning would have to be changed to C3A for mixed use with variances for increased height, setbacks, and parking.Jim Sander, whose wife, Georgia, has owned Kafé 421 for 10 years, said the adjacent development would crowd out his customers.“I’m not going to sit by and silently let you do that,” Sander said. “I’m not arguing about David’s architecture. I’m not arguing about history. I’m just trying to preserve what’s here now.”Nyman, McLean’s executive assistant, said her company has already exhausted all the possible parking spaces, even with valet parking in nearby church parking lots.“We don’t have the 150 to 200 spaces of UTEC,” she said, referring to an apartment complex planned for the site of the University Technology Enterprise Center. “You can’t tell people where to park when we have a sold-out show on Friday.”McLean’s statement added, “This loss [of parking] will seriously jeopardize the future of the businesses that have made Dinkytown the thriving destination district it has become in the last 10 years.”In his presentation with illustrations, Graham said he has adjusted the building’s design to allow for more public parking and more street-level parking.“In response,” his report said, “the development has added additional street-level parking, going from 34 stalls to 42 stalls. Continue Reading

Development in Dinkytown, part 10: “If they lay one finger on Al’s Breakfast, I’ll be at the barricades”

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Tenth in a ten-part series. Previously, part 9: Seeds of renewal.Al’s Breakfast, the narrow 14-stool, award-winning diner, makes everyone’s list of Dinkytown treasures. Al’s was founded on May 25, 1950, when Al Bergstrom purchased the small diner created by converting a storage shed between two buildings in the 1940s. A few years earlier, the space had been an alley. Al’s is part of the Schaak Electronics/Simms Hardware building that houses the Espresso Royale Caffe next door, which caters to a diverse clientele.Dan Zielske, part owner of the coffee shop, said he may be looking for new digs in Dinkytown in 2014.“I’m not necessarily one of those Dinkytowners that harken back to the days of Bob Dylan and wax ridiculously that Dinkytown won’t come back again,” Zielske said, but he admitted missing the record stores and office supply stores that have gone. “The Book House is the last remaining book shop.” And he said he laments of the loss of so many coffee shops.“I went to high school in Roseville and we’d ride our bikes here. Continue Reading