Impound Lot

Northeast, Near North, Camden, Old St. Anthony, University and surrounding neighborhoods
David Greene
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Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 19th, 2014, 1:47 pm

Saw this on mpls-issues e-democracy so assuming it's legit to post here. There's a meeting tonight to talk about the impound lot. The feeling from Harrison leaders is that the city is reneging on its promise to move or eliminate the impound lot. If the lot stays it will havew a profound negative impact on the ability for the neighborhood to revitalize the Bassett Creek valley and Glenwood Ave.

I will be there tonight. It will be a great chance to meet some of the great people leading Harrison and a way to stand up for urbanism and investment on the Northside.

From: "Kennedy Willis" <[email protected]>
Subject: [Mpls] Impound Lot Reducation & Enhancement Public Hearing, 6pm on
May 19th
To: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 17 May 2014 06:27:22 +1200 (NZST) (3 days, 1 hour ago)
X-Boundary: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

― Attachment links are at the end of this email ―

Hi Everyone-

Beth Grosen, Senior Project Coordinator at CPED, will convene an event for the public to learn about study progress on the effort to reduce and enhance the city impound facilities. Council members Blong Yang and Lisa Goodman are expected to be in attendance. Options for the revised impound footprint will be shown and feedback is requested. The meeting will be held

Monday, May 19 2014 at 6pm
Multipurpose Room
Harrison Community Center
503 Irving Avenue
Minneapolis MN 55405

This is a great opportunity to further explore why there aren’t plans to relocate the lot while also reviewing what options there are for shrinking the lot.

Many Harrison residents will be highly concerned because for over a decade the Basset Creek Valley Master Plan has called for a removal of the impound lot, not a reduction. Residents and City Council have called for the relocation of the impound lot since 2001, and Ryan Companies was granted five years' exclusive development rights in 2008. The planned $1 million dollar investment in simply reducing the lot raises concerns that reduction is a longer-term plan than the Basset Creek Valley Master Plan allowed for by the “phase out” language, which is language that was only intended to provide the city and county time to establish the resources and new location for complete relocation of the lot.

The costs that Beth Grosen and others have lamented for completely relocating the impound lot to another part of the city should be critically weighed. For example, those costs seem well worth the environmental and racial justice that would be achieved with its removal. Furthermore, the development (into housing, business, and safe open spaces) and subsequent tax revenues of the area have been estimated to more than offset relocation costs. When weighing the costs for relocation, we have to be asking ourselves what all we are buying for the money- and it’s not just a simple relocation that we could be purchasing. We are also purchasing steps toward making the area a productive source of wealth for the surrounding communities and the city itself as well as resolving the historical environmental and racial injustice that Harrison has endured because of its designation as a dumping ground for industrial development. By relocating the impound lot, the city would also be honoring their commitment to the Basset Creek Valley Master Plan and facilitating the development that Ryan Companies has been granted exclusive rights to do in the area.

The time to equitably share both the benefits and the burdens of industrial development and city planning is long over due for Harrison residents and proponents for Basset Creek Valley development, who not only have an impound lot to contend with, but also school bus and semi-truck storage yards, a city concrete recycling and crushing yard, abandoned private-industry lots that have caused the soil and groundwater to be polluted, and now a proposed rail storage facility to be placed in the already industrially overburdened Basset Creek Valley. Reducing and “enhancing” the impound lot while proposing to place yet another burden and obstruction to housing and business development (i.e., the rail storage facility) does not spell out relief for Harrison. It reinforces Harrison as an industrial dumping ground with jobs, housing, and productive amenities lost in translation.

The May 19th Impound Lot Reduction & Enhancement meeting will be held in the Harrison Community Center’s multi-purpose room at 503 Irving Avenue North.

We are encouraging folks from around the Twin Cities to attend and hope that you can share an invite to appropriate listservs and email groups.

I hope that you can attend. Harrison residents should attend in order to be well heard, and support from the wider community is sought and welcomed!

In solidarity,

Kennedy Willis

Community Organizer
Harrison Neighborhood Association
503 Irving Avenue North Ste 100
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 374-4849
[email protected]

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Impound Lot

Postby FISHMANPET » May 19th, 2014, 1:55 pm

Are there any ideas for alternate impound lot locations?

mattaudio
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Re: Impound Lot

Postby mattaudio » May 19th, 2014, 1:59 pm

How about the giant parking lot east of the MOA? Excellent transit connectivity, can't build much there due to height restrictions for Rwy 17/35, and cars and Bloomington are a match made in heaven.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby MNdible » May 19th, 2014, 2:09 pm

One thing to remember here is that there's a reason that this land ended up being the impound lot (aside from the social justice issues already raised): it's really terrible land, basically a giant floodplain/swamp, and whatever gets built here will need to be able to carry the costs to do massive soils corrections and/or pilings.

I know the Ryan plan was aware of this, but just something to keep in mind when we're looking at options for this area.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby mattaudio » May 19th, 2014, 2:28 pm

Excellent conditions for some TOD, in other words.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby Anondson » May 19th, 2014, 2:50 pm

Free up the impound lot land for development by capping 94 by N. Lyndale and 7th and putting it there. Development rights on the old lot could partly fund the capping based on the cost of capping 35W.

Keeps it in the city and makes it easier to get to by bus.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby mattaudio » May 19th, 2014, 2:52 pm

I heard an idea regarding snow emergencies... why not just tow the car to the other side of the street and bill the owner for it?

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 19th, 2014, 2:57 pm

Are there any ideas for alternate impound lot locations?
The airport has been mentioned because it's accessible by transit, which the current location most certainly is not.

One of the Harrison residents wants to get rid of the impound lot entirely. Apparently several cities have gone to a model where they tow cars to other street locations and then send the address of the new parking spot to the owner. The car is ticketed and the price of the tow is included in the fine. This sounds like an interesting model to me.
Last edited by David Greene on May 19th, 2014, 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mamundsen
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Re: Impound Lot

Postby mamundsen » May 19th, 2014, 2:59 pm

A problem I see with towing to the other side of the street or another location... sometimes there is no space! I know more than a few friends who have gambled with snow emergency start times because there is no where else reasonable to go. This is especially true in uptown and downtown.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Impound Lot

Postby FISHMANPET » May 19th, 2014, 3:07 pm

And if we get rid of our impound lot how will be in the running for the next season of Parking Wars on A&E?

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby twincitizen » May 19th, 2014, 3:15 pm

St. Paul has two impound lots, with the enforcement areas bisected by I-94. Both lots are in heavily industrial areas, far from downtown and places of investment.

I like the airport lot idea for Minneapolis for sure. Barring that, I'm sure we can find two smaller lots on the outskirts for this purpose. Of course, the neighborhoods where the impound lots would be relocated would scream bloody murder, and social justice, etc. all the same.

For the south sector, something on airport property is probably the only possibility. Why not finally tear out these two runway-adjacent blocks and put it there? (Also, why are people living here in the first place?)

For the north/northeast sector, I'd imagine the possibilities could include an industrial site along I-94 in Camden and part of Shoreham Yards in NE.

On top of spreading it to two sites, we could also implement alternative enforcement techniques and improve communication/awareness so fewer cars are towed. Use of things like Facebook, Twitter, and text message alerts have got to be improving things, no?

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby MNdible » May 19th, 2014, 3:49 pm

Excellent conditions for some TOD, in other words.
No indication as to whether or not I should take this at face value, so...

If something is to be built here, it will need to be big enough to distribute the costs associated with the pilings across more developed square footage, while building parking will be more expensive than normal. So, yes, I'd say it's a pretty good location for TOD.
Why not just tow the car to the other side of the street and bill the owner for it?
I'll let you attempt to parallel park a tow truck with another car behind it on a narrow, congested, snow-clogged street and report back on why we may or may not want to do this.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 19th, 2014, 4:35 pm

I'll let you attempt to parallel park a tow truck with another car behind it on a narrow, congested, snow-clogged street and report back on why we may or may not want to do this.
I'll need to research this because the claim is that other cities have done it. I don't know if those places deal with snow, though.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby FISHMANPET » May 19th, 2014, 4:52 pm

Also moving to the other side of the street wouldn't work on a snow emergency route, because the other side needs to be clear as well. I can see it working really well in a more suburban context that has alternate side parking rules, but at first glance I can't see it working for a Minneapolis snow emergency.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 19th, 2014, 7:41 pm

Also moving to the other side of the street wouldn't work on a snow emergency route, because the other side needs to be clear as well. I can see it working really well in a more suburban context that has alternate side parking rules, but at first glance I can't see it working for a Minneapolis snow emergency.
There was a former Rochester police officer at the meeting who said that Rochester doesn't have an impound lot. They do the "tow around the corner" scheme. I don't know what Rochester's parking rules are but it apparently works in that snowbound city.

The impound lot people said they studied it a few years ago and it's technically feasible. As always, the issue is money. Which is a really poor excuse when you have the opportunity to open 20 acres of land near downtown to parks and development.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby HiawathaGuy » May 20th, 2014, 9:47 am

I like the airport lot idea for Minneapolis for sure. Barring that, I'm sure we can find two smaller lots on the outskirts for this purpose. Of course, the neighborhoods where the impound lots would be relocated would scream bloody murder, and social justice, etc. all the same.
Actually there are some places along Hiawatha that could serve this purpose quite well.
For the south sector, something on airport property is probably the only possibility. Why not finally tear out these two runway-adjacent blocks and put it there? (Also, why are people living here in the first place?)
Are you serious about the "why are people living here in the first place?"... these homes were there before the airport. I just counted, there are 107 homes located on the south side of Hwy 62 between 42nd Ave S & 46th Ave S that abut the northern edge of the airport. I can't imagine the City ever removing these homes (like MAC did in Richfield, to build the new N/S runway in the 90s), as that's quite a lot of people to displace for an impound lot. But moreover, it's further removed from transit than the current impound lot!

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 20th, 2014, 9:51 am

For the south sector, something on airport property is probably the only possibility. Why not finally tear out these two runway-adjacent blocks and put it there? (Also, why are people living here in the first place?)
Are you serious about the "why are people living here in the first place?"... these homes were there before the airport.
Nope. The airport has been there since at least 1921 and was a racetrack before that. Not many houses out that way at the time.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby HiawathaGuy » May 20th, 2014, 10:03 am

Nope. The airport has been there since at least 1921 and was a racetrack before that. Not many houses out that way at the time.
Sorry, to clairfy, the airport was a very small airport when most of those homes were built.

In fact, the airport didn't see its first major expansion until the 1960s...
From http://www.mspairport.com/about-msp/history.aspx: "In 1958, ground breaking ceremonies were held for the Lindbergh Terminal, which opened to the public in 1962. It was designed to serve four million passengers a year by 1975. Passenger growth far exceeded projections, however, with more than 4.1 million people using the airport by 1967."

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby mattaudio » May 20th, 2014, 10:38 am

Also neighborhoods were ripped apart by the construction of Hwy 62... they severed neighborhoods from the "mainland" of Minneapolis. Then they were squeezed on the other side by airport expansion. The airport was once a much smaller footprint than it is today, even until about a decade ago.

Please check out historicaerials and note how these neighborhoods got squeezed out by 62, 77, and airport expansion. There used to be a full neighborhood east of Cedar, a golf course, and an elementary school.

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Re: Impound Lot

Postby David Greene » May 20th, 2014, 12:16 pm

I wasn't saying people haven't been pushed out. I remember the huge fight in the '80's over whether to expand MSP or move it somewhere else. But it's incorrect to say people bought houses there without knowing about the airport.

I wonder how many people have been living there since 1958. Not many, I'd wager.


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