Let's do the right thing on Jackson, Sibley, and ECBD

I have written before about the unbuilt East Central Business District Bypass [ECBD]. Sibley and Jackson Streets are serving in that role because we have never gotten around to building the ECBD.

In the meantime we find ourselves frequently closing off or blocking off Jackson and/or Sibley for numerous civic events such as parades, basketball tournaments, and now bicycle races.

Trucks that we don’t want on I-35E [but only on the other side of town since nobody thinks it improper to have them bothering East Side and North End people] have to use this ersatz bypass. And if we have something going on down in Lowertown that gets in their way, well, I guess that is just their tough luck.

I heartily suggest that until we are willing to finish our part of the deal and build the ECBD bypass that we place a moratorium on anything which closes off Jackson or Sibley.

It seems just fair.

We’ve been dribbling on this too much already.

Earlier post: ECBD? What's that? [7-14-08]

Hooking up Pierce Butler

I never thought I would live long enough to see the completion of Phalen Boulevard, but somehow I did.

And at the dedication ceremony for the boulevard’s completion, Mayor Kelly stated that the job was not really done, that the connection west of 35E for Pierce Butler really needed to be made to allow for the whole strip through the city to be made accessible for development.

That is what I had always thought and it encouraged me to hear a sitting Mayor say so. Of course, three months later Randy Kelly was no longer mayor.

Maybe it was partly because of that and almost certainly partly because of the staggering economy the connection to Pierce Butler has not seemed to progress much.

But the lead story in this week’s East Side Review seems to indicate that it may well be finished during the lifetimes of many who are alive today.

Well, you know what they say about hope.

for some historical perspective, see ECBD? what's that? [7/14/08]

Like a bridge over troubled ... -[or is it a troubled bridge over ...]

I found myself crossing the Kellogg Bridge eastbound a couple of weeks ago and had to wait for the semaphore at Mounds Boulevard about three cars back from the light. I found myself wondering how solid the bridge below me was and think I actually sighed when the light turned green.

We all cross so many bridges so many times that we seldom think about it. Some bridges come so close to street level and are so short that we often don’t even notice that we are on one. [For two geographically diverse examples, think Minnehaha over the Phalen Creek bed by where Hamm’s used to make malt beverages or Edgcumbe just east of Hamline.]

So when something like last year’s Mpls. bridge collapse happens we get generally horrified and feel thankful that we weren't there. And Saturday’s loss of a piece of concrete from Maryland Avenue over I-35E did not reassure us.

One of our big problems in public works is that government does not budget like companies do and there is no accounting for depreciation in the balance sheet. Another is that since we tie most roadwork to gasoline tax receipts rather than whether there is a public purpose associated with their construction and maintenance we often build things we don’t need and maintain some things without ever actually asking whether we still need them and don’t adequately maintain things which really need to be maintained.

We should be grateful that nobody was killed and that we were able to put both the bridge and the freeway beneath it back into use so quickly. And we should be grateful that maybe, just maybe, somebody who can do something to prevent this kind of thing from happening again might actually do something.

We know that there will be political types who will run with this, but somehow I doubt that any of them will actually examine the weaknesses in our financing and planning schemes for our public infrastructures.

Ohio is looking at us and Ohio need glasses

I have recently had a Cleveland Plain Dealer article called to my attention. It compares the potential of Cleveland’s Opportunity Corridor with the development of our Phalen Corridor and Phalen Boulevard.

I do not know Cleveland. I suspect that it has the problems of many older, northern cities, maybe worse than ours because it is an older city.

The article speaks well of Phalen Corridor and Dan Bostrom. That should not be too surprising since both have plenty of good things to be said about them.

It is in error, however, when it asserts that Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council had opposed the Boulevard’s construction. I surmise that the writer reached that conclusion from an incident in which the District Council opposed an off-road proposal, the one to remove all the housing between the Boulevard and Case, 35E and Edgerton to develop something more upscale.

I should know. I was chairing the Council’s Community Planning and Economic Development Committee at the time.

But I do find it refreshing that people from other cities are looking at our story and its successes and I do wish the people in Ohio well.

And the whole thing reminds us that obtaining and maintaining livable communities is an ongoing thing, like medicine, education, or barber work.

ECBD? What's that?

Does anybody remember something called the East Central Business District [ECBD] bypass?

No, you cannot remember the bypass itself. It never happened. But maybe somebody remembers people talking about constructing it.

Four bypasses around the city’s Central Business District were planned. These were never planned to be free-way type streets, but wider streets which would remove the need to actually drive through downtown for people whose destinations were on the other side. Three of the four have been [more or less] completed.

The North CBD bypass includes Pennsylvania Avenue. The West CBD bypass is Marion/Kellogg/Chestnut. I believe that this one did not develop the way originally planned, but it is close. The South CBD bypass is Shepard/Warner Roads.

The missing link is the bypass on the east. The East CBD bypass [which was later shortened even more to ECBD bypass] was to run from Warner Road from almost underneath the Lafayette Bridge to connect with I-35E at Pennsylvania.

Its forthcoming completion was supposed to be one of the reasons that the state accepted a truck ban for the Practice Freeway segment of I-35E. Trucks could use Shepard/Warner Road and the ECBD bypass as a routing instead. As it is now, they have to cross through downtown on Jackson/Sibley.

It has been over twenty years since I served on a city-established task force to advise on the preparation of the draft Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] for the realignment of Shepard east of Randolph, Warner Road west of Childs, and the ECBD bypass. I was serving as the representative of Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council and my purpose was primarily to make sure that whatever alignment for the ECBD bypass connection with I-35E did not make the connection for the road we now call Phalen Boulevard more difficult to obtain. Most of the people participating [besides the engineers and public works people and planners] were high-ranking shirts representing businesses [such as West Publishing and Anchor Hocking -- remember them?] with Shepard Road concerns. I did feel a bit out of place among such exalted company, but stuck to why I was there and nobody else seemed to oppose me in what I was there for.

Well, the draft EIS was done and it showed no reason to not build the bypass. But it never got done. Somehow it has never been funded.

Even though I never thought I would live long enough to see it, Phalen Boulevard is done, so we don’t have to wonder whether that connection can be established. Ironically, when I was serving on a task force considering Phalen Boulevard road design, including the bypass became a concern for building it.

And there is still no bypass. I am a bit ambivalent now about the whole matter now. I have no direct interest in how many trucks drive on Jackson or Sibley. But if I had an interest in Lowertown property or development I think I would like to know what’s up.

And I wonder if my posting this may double the number of the people [to ten] who even are aware of this thing.

Poor planning strikes agian, this time on Cedar Street

I commented recently on the long-term planning effects of various things involved in planning. Over the years, some of our mistakes have become pretty obvious. Platting 60-foot right-of-ways on section line streets is one I had not mentioned, but Maryland Avenue is an example of that decision’s shortsightedness. Even if nobody had ever pictured the invention of the internal combustion motor vehicle, this street’s inevitable ability to draw traffic should have been more visible.

Now we have another example. Central Presbyterian and St. Louis Catholic churches are being threatened by the proposed Central Corridor light rail boondoggle. [So is Minnesota Public [sic] Radio which recently was helped to move closer to the site with government assistance.]

So who ever allowed the churches to locate there in the first place? What colossal blunderers they must seem now!

It is hard to weep for the MPR folks, especially since their people seem to be folks more sympathetic to rail transit than the general public and their decision on location is so recent. [And I suspect that somehow Bill Kling will find a way to get more money from taxpayers for the suffering he has partly brought upon himself.]

And it is hard to find very many tears for Commissioner Ortega who apparently just found out that his mother attends mass at St. Louis. He has been one of the boondoggle’s biggest advocates.

I do find myself feeling a bit sorry for the communicants/parishioners of the two churches, but I know that I need to fight that feeling.

After all, what made them decide to build there in the first place? Didn’t they have any idea that 21^st century pols would want to run their choo-choo past them?

Streets and Skyways

Maybe it is because I have spent a lot more time navigating through downtown at street level, but I have always found the skyway system confusing. I get up there and have to think twice about where I am.

I have also wondered if taking so much retail from sidewalk to skyway has made out streets both less safe and less inviting.

And I have always been amazed at how smoothly the complicated public-private relationships that are necessary to make the system possible seem to work.

So I am not confused that Thune is sponsoring an ordinance on skyway hours. I have to agree that some better consistency seems desirable. I am not worried that the Republicans will get confused. There convention is set for weekdays and most of them won’t be staying locally, anyway, but maybe their impending arrival is as good a reason as any to look at the issue of hours and dates of openness.

But let us avoid some of Thune’s phony Pollyanna claim [reported in today’s DPP] that, as he is quoted as saying,

"We wouldn't let a road just end in the middle of downtown on certain hours. We want people to always depend on the fact that you can get from one side of town to the next. It's become a major transportation system for the city.”

Why should skyways be better than streets?

We close downtown streets frequently without giving a rap for moving traffic. Remember the last ice castle? Or the cavalier treatment that Market Street receives when they want an ice rink? Or closing off most of Lowertown for basketball, even though Sibley/Jackson is [pending the completion of the East Central Business District (ECBD) bypass. I remember sitting on the committee doing the preparation for that Environmental Impact Study two decades ago.] the official truck route the city accepted as part of keeping the trucks off the Practice Freeway.

I wish the Council and the building owners well in working something out. But maybe we should reexamine the double standard we seem to have for street and skyway.

Three ongoing peeves and a Monday morning to gripe about them.

Peeve One. Does anybody know what “Twin Cities” means? You won’t learn from listening to any radio station, watching any television service, or reading any major area newspaper.

Let’s look at the words a bit.

“Twin” means two. It can mean the other one of two, but every definition you look up stems from the number two.

Suburbs and cities are different things, even though Minnesota law was changed three decades ago to allow suburbs to dishonestly call themselves “cities.”

Minneapolis is a city. Saint Paul is a city. Falcon Heights is not a city; it is a suburb. Likewise North Oaks, Bloomington, Maplewood, New Hope, and a few hundred others. Even if they were cities, they are not two in number.

Historically the Twin Cities have been Saint Paul and Minneapolis. To add any of the two hundred or so other jurisdictions located within a local phone call’s distance is doubly incorrect, since it adds something that is not a city and changes the sum from two to another number.

I am getting very tired of media labeling somebody from St. Louis Park or Mendota Heights as being a Twin Cities driver or banker or janitor or whatever. It is wrong and it is misleading and it makes one wonder how accurate much the other stuff that source is reporting is.

Similarly, referring to Roseville, Falcon Height, Maplewood, Vadnais Heights, or other such place as a “Saint Paul suburb” demeans our city and defeats the purpose of the parasites who live there. They live there because they don’t want to be part of us. Of course they don’t mind sticking their noses into our business, but that is what parasites do. The tapeworm never intends to become a steer. It just wants to use the steer for its own subsistence.

Peeve Two. The second peeve is the recurring “x-hundred block” of whatever street for addresses in our city. Many cities are set up with numbering for which that phrase would be appropriate. Ours is not.

Where is the 1100 block of Payne Avenue? 1100 is a church between Magnolia and Jessamine. 1199 is a saloon at Payne. Jessamine, Geranium, and Rose all come in between. The 300 block of North Snelling? There is a whole freeway in the middle.

Let’s find better ways of getting the message out. If we need to say Payne between Rose and Maryland, let’s say so. If we need to write that something happened at 16xx Highland Parkway, let’s write it that way.

However, if you tell me the 600 block of Fountain Place, I’ll understand.

Peeve Three. The third peeve is referring to Minneapolis as being “across the river. [or to us as being “across the river” from them]. “Upstream” and “downstream” would be more accurate terms. By looking at the fire hydrants in front of KSTP one can easily tell that there are two cities next to each other and there surely is no river there.

Randolph and Lexington OR Where can a Starving Yuppie Find Nutrition

Today the Planning Commission is scheduled to approve a rezoning request to permit a retail development on the southwest corner of Randolph and Lexington to allow what a large retail development, the primary tenant of which has been described as an upscale grocery store called Trader Joe’s.

I don’t really know much about the store. I know that they recently opened a Trader Joe’s store in Woodbury which was accompanied by gratuitous [free?] news storied in the DPP.

I suppose the location would be fine for this kind of store. After Summit Hill, Mac-Groveland, and Highland Park can all come there easily, along with whatever sufferers of affluence live in West Seventh. It’s not even a bad shot for Merriam Park and the yuppie part of Summit-University.

But it looks like they will be putting an awful lot on a small place.

And when you have Kowalski’s, Whole Foods, and Lund’s, how much more can the market bear?

Is it impossible that you won’t soon have a big commercial site begging for a new user, possibly even seeking public assistance to make the conversion?

Self-absorption over piety?

This is just a warning for people who traverse our city on Sundays. We’ve got another TC marathon coming up on Sunday. The only way to get from one side of Summit Avenue to the other will be the Short Line. It will be World Communion Sunday, but if your church is on Summit Avenue, good luck.

Just wondering. Does this show that self-absorption triumphs over piety?