Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/tag/green-line-central-corridor/page/11/)
The Central Corridor Light Rail project is all about infrastructure and urban renewal, but it’s also about art. Each of the 18 new stations along the 11 mile line will have an artistic desgin connected to the surrounding area. KFAI’s Allison Osberg filed this report. [Audio below] Continue Reading
Deep in the throes of construction, the Central Corridor route along University Avenue in St. Paul is a zone that many Twin Cities residents have been avoiding for the past several months. A new project funded by a national initiative aims to change that—both now and later—with the help of local artists. The project is, appropriately, called Irrigate.“The primary goal of Irrigate,” says Laura Zabel of Springboard for the Arts—one of the partnering organizations behind the initiative—“is to work during the construction period to build a parallel infrastructure of relationships among artists and communities, to mobilize artists to address the issues and opportunities there.”The project is funded by a $750,000 grant from ArtPlace, a national collaborative that’s just been created with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and several blue-chip foundations. ArtPlace president Carol Coletta credits NEA chairman Rocco Landesman and Ford Foundation president Luis Obiñas for making the initiative happen. Continue Reading
As the Central Corridor light-rail transit line construction continues, disputes continue over the Metropolitan Council’s specific hiring goals that insure women and minority representation in the workforce. While Met Council spokespersons insist that goals are being met, community leaders say that’s not the case. The Central Corridor project’s goal is to make sure 18 percent of construction work-hours go to people of color and that six percent go to women. In monthly public meetings, the main contractors — Walsh Construction, which is responsible for building the eastern seven miles of the light-rail, and Ames-McCrossan, which is responsible for the western three miles — present reports on their progress of meeting the minority hiring goals to the community and the Met Council, which oversees the project. The figures presented by the contractors vary each month — sometimes exceeding the required goal, and at other times falling below the goal. Continue Reading
Progress happens gradually. Over the course of six months since major construction of Central Corridor LRT system, it’s been hard to track gradual change day to day.
But this short video sequence looks back at drastic changes to the avenue since May 2011, showing road work, re-routing traffic, and rail lines installed late last week.
In normal times, the corner of University and Raymond is one of the main intersections in the Bugle readership area.
Like most little boys, I loved watching construction workers and all their big machinery. Let’s be honest, not much has changed in twenty years except now I have a bit more appreciation for the tremendous positive economic impact that large construction projects have on a state’s economy. Continue Reading
“Where are the Black people?” has been a constant refrain by Black folks who have observed the construction of the nearly $940 million Central Corridor Light Rail (CCLRT). A survey of the project on the Minneapolis end of the CCLRT, which expands from downtown through the University of Minnesota’s East Bank, by the Spokesman-Recorder two weeks ago observed 68 workers; two were Black, four appeared to be Native American and/or Hispanic, and four were women.A spot check by another MSR observer two weeks later counted 56 workers, two of them Black and two of them women.According to the Met Council, which is responsible for oversight of the project, nearly 1,300 jobs will be created by the project, which is about 20 percent complete. But questions have arisen about just how members of the Black community can obtain some of these jobs. The light rail is being constructed through a metro area that has some of the largest concentrations of minorities in the state of Minnesota.The CCLRT project, through the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR), has targeted goals for including minorities/people of color in the project. The project workforce is supposed to include 18 percent minority and six percent women.But at the bottom of the requirements for each major company involved in the construction is an asterisk with this message: “Actual participation may be supplemented by contractor Good Faith Efforts.”The MDHR has provided a number of ways for contractors to demonstrate “good faith” when workforce goals have not been met, including training programs and a list of nearly 1,200 minority and women workers and their skills put together by LRT Works, a project to help contractors and subcontractors locate available minority workers. Continue Reading
UPDATED 9/21/2011: The Metro Council office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action called officials, contractors and community leaders Thursday for a meeting in St. Paul that sought the inclusion of women and minority business participation on the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit project. The unemployment rate for African-Americans in the Twin Cities is three times higher compared to those of whites. [See TCDP story here.] At a time when the U.S. economic recession has hit Minneapolis minorities the hardest, the state is constructing its second light-rail, creating 3,400 jobs.But many people at the Thursday meeting expressed rage over C.S. McCrossan’s involvement with the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit construction project. C.S. McCrossan is the prime contractor on the Central Corridor light-rail.The federal government requires at least 10 percent of the construction contract dollars to go to the disadvantaged business enterprises. However, McCrossan did not comply with the requirement when building the Hiawatha Line, which opened for service in 2004, according to a Star Tribune story. “It’s not the first time McCrossan lied, they have been lying,” said Bill English, a co-chairman of the Coalition of Black Churches. Continue Reading
“The Central Corridor will kill us in the short run.
Major construction on the Central