Van White Memorial Bridge

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
mulad
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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby mulad » August 28th, 2013, 8:15 am

Isn't Harrison almost exclusively north of the tracks though? This is what I'm saying -- invest in the actual neighborhood.

MNdible
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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby MNdible » August 28th, 2013, 8:38 am

This may be suburban style, but it will be super dense. It's not going to replace or ever become a quaint little neighborhood node -- this site could never support that. It's not going to replace a downtown office building, because these users aren't willing to pay for a downtown location. It's going to replace somebody's suburban corporate campus. Workers are going to be able to get there directly and easily from the freeway and from SW LRT, or from the housing immediately next door. Y'all kvetch about the UHG campus because it doesn't integrate well with transit. This does.

There aren't a lot of other places in Minneapolis proper that would support this kind of development. I think it makes sense because it's a good use for a difficult site that will take tax base and jobs that would otherwise be out in Plymouth and puts them in a more centralized location.

We should probably move this all to a BCV thread.

And residents could easily take the SW LRT to Calhoun Village for their grocery needs.

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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby twincitizen » August 28th, 2013, 8:46 am

I dunno... Better ask the residents of Harrison what they think about Whole Foods.

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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby alleycat » August 28th, 2013, 12:08 pm

I dunno... Better ask the residents of Harrison what they think about Whole Foods.
They've had a co-op in the planning stages for a few years.

http://wirthcoop.com/
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woofner
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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby woofner » August 28th, 2013, 12:28 pm

Harrison is located in an area labeled "Negro Slums" on planning maps since at least 1935. There has been deliberate segregation, disinvestment and concentration of poverty in the area. These neighborhoods deserve a real investment, not more siting of polluting industrial uses.
This is a myth. I know the neighborhood activist who misinterpreted the work of a social scientist and goes around claiming that the City planned for Harrison to be a Negro Slum. She's referring to the work of Calvin Schmid, who was a sociologist at the U of M, where he wrote a book called A Social Saga of Two Cities that relied on a series of hand-drawn demographic maps. While it's obviously a product of its time and uses terms that would be offensive to us now, it's also an essential document for anyone who wants to understand the morphology of Minneapolis and St Paul today (and many of the suburbs, really, which tended to extend demographic patterns). I linked above to the WorldCat entry for it so you can go and read it and actually learn something instead of just slinging BS on the internet. You'll find that it's intended to merely describe existing conditions, not designate future use.

The Harrison clearance and renewal project came about at least 15 years after Schmid moved away from MN, and while today we recognize the many drawbacks of renewal, at the time it was the technique that seemed most appropriate and most importantly was the only politically feasible way to deal with the very real and pervasive decrepit housing conditions in the area. This neighborhood was first settled by Eastern European and Finnish immigrants who almost all built their houses themselves, and by the 40s some of the most run-down housing in the city was there. It's not like they tore down another Bryant Ave in the Wedge, this was more like those pockets of East Phillips where tiny, uneven, clapboard houses huddle together. I'm not saying they couldn't have been saved with a lot more money, but the other thing you mischaracterized was what was done after the clearance. Sure, industrial uses seem to us today to be just a bunch of smelly, suburban buildings, but at the time they really did offer high-paying jobs and probably a lot more per acre than today. Aren't you the one who in a different thread is advocating building a tunnel through a park so Harrison residents can get to jobs in the SW suburbs? Aren't you the one who in a different thread is claiming that professionals are free of personal bias and beyond reproach? Why are engineers pure and holy but planners are a bunch of evil racists?

Anyway, now that I've spent a hundred words berating you, can I ask what happened to the idea of development on top of the rail yard? Have those pure and holy engineers definitively declared it to be unaffordable?
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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby Cyclotron » August 28th, 2013, 1:03 pm

As far as screeds go, this is almost "Listen Little Man!" quality. I doff my cap to you, sir.
The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke. - Octave Mirbeau

orangevening
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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby orangevening » August 28th, 2013, 2:32 pm

^^*grabs bag of popcorn and sits down to enjoy the show*

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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby David Greene » August 28th, 2013, 3:07 pm

Harrison is located in an area labeled "Negro Slums" on planning maps since at least 1935. There has been deliberate segregation, disinvestment and concentration of poverty in the area. These neighborhoods deserve a real investment, not more siting of polluting industrial uses.
This is a myth. I know the neighborhood activist who misinterpreted the work of a social scientist and goes around claiming that the City planned for Harrison to be a Negro Slum.
So ignoring the disrespectful snark...

Yes, it was describing existing conditions. Stop and think for a moment about *why* those existing conditions existed and continue to exist. I haven't heard anyone at Harrison claiming that map shows a master plan of where the city wanted to go. They understand it's showing existing conditions and point out that "Negro Slum" and "Gold Coast" separated by Basset Creek Valley is a huge problem that still exists today.

As for development about the layover, it's still on the table. But no one is going to want to live above a layover facility and I wonder how many companies would want to locate there. Plus you can't build as much housing or office as you could without the layover facility, at least that's what Ryan has presented.

Let's say this layover facility was proposed in or near your neighborhood. Would you want it?

And finally, please don't put words in my mouth. I'm advocating for a shallow tunnel through Kenilworth (not a park) because that is what will get the line built. I don't particularly care if everything was at grade with the bike trail rerouted. But other people care a lot and those in power listen to them.

As for the ethics of engineers and planners, of course neither group intentionally cooks the books. But remember that 80 years ago things were very different and what was socially acceptable then is not acceptable now. Just because something is socially acceptable doesn't mean it's right. There was and is a tremendous wrong done to the Northside and we must compensate for it.
Last edited by David Greene on August 28th, 2013, 3:17 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby David Greene » August 28th, 2013, 3:09 pm

Isn't Harrison almost exclusively north of the tracks though? This is what I'm saying -- invest in the actual neighborhood.
Harrison is north of the tracks and this is technically in Bryn Mawr but both neighborhoods have been active in the planning. This is a shared vision and investment. While the views of details don't always line up, the neighborhoods are in sync on the big issues.

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Re: Van White Memorial Bridge

Postby mulad » August 28th, 2013, 5:51 pm

It's great if the Bryn Mawr and Harrison neighborhoods are getting along, but I will point out that the Bryn Mawr neighborhood is 89.4% white as of the 2010 census vs. 60.3% for Minneapolis as a whole and 28.9% for Harrison.


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