Southwest Journal Jan. 24-Feb. 5

Bye bye Blackbird Cafe PAGE A3 • Uptown Pizza returns PAGE A3 • Pedestrian killed in Whittier PAGE A7 • Organics recycling on the rise PAGE A10

January 23– February 5, 2020 Vol. 31, No. 2 southwestjournal.com

Budget balancing act

y l i m a apfaper

Hard trade-offs on the horizon, council members say

By Michelle Bruch

In passing the 2020 budget, council members voted to scrutinize Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) staffing and the 911 priority call system.

“I think we are investing too much money in incarceration-based policing and not enough money in community-based safety,” said Council President Lisa Bender (Ward 10).

“I think the police department needs a complete overhaul of its budget.”

Analysis underway involves sweeping questions about policing: Should squad cars hold one or two officers? Should a civilian, rather than a sworn officer, take down reports of theft? Should MPD roles fold into the larger city enterprise in areas like communications, IT, human resources and records? Should emergency medical technicians respond to overdose calls instead of police?

The city’s $1.5 billion budget (excluding independent boards) is 1.9% smaller than the budget adopted in 2019, but growing operating expenses are driving a 7% increase in the property tax levy, according to city staff. The levy equates to an additional $109 for an average home with a median value of $264,500. Utility rates at a typical home will increase by $51 per year. Apartment property taxes will increase 13.5% (assuming market value increases by 12.8%).

Among the major budget changes:

After 30 years, Southwest Journal’s publishers still believe journalism’s future is local

Southwest Journal publishers Terry Gahan and Janis Hall and their daughter and general manager, Zoe Gahan, are celebrating the paper's 30th anniversary this year. Photo courtesy of Tracy Walsh Photography

By Nate Gotlieb

In 1989, Janis Hall, Terry Gahan and a team of writers and photographers brainstormed stories for the first edition of their community newspaper, the Southwest Journal.

They had “no money,” Gahan said, and no product to show potential advertisers. To sell them the concept, Gahan pasted the nameplate of their new paper onto another community paper, the Whittier Globe.

After getting 30 days credit from their printer, Gahan and Hall published a 12-page newspaper with nine bylined articles and advertisements from local businesses like Broders’ Cucina Italiana and Sebastian Joe’s.

• The 2020 budget includes $31 million for affordable housing, following last year’s $40 million investment. The city approved over three times more affordable housing than normal last year, Council Member Steve Fletcher (Ward 3) said.

SEE BUDGET / PAGE A14

SEE SOUTHWEST JOURNAL / PAGE A8

Neighborhood funding preserved racial disparities Southwest groups prepare for future Board elections for the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association at the organization’s 2019 annual meeting. The Wedge is one of several neighborhoods looking to diversify its funding sources as the city eyes new formulas to finance neighborhood organizations.

File photo

By Andrew Hazzard

Minneapolis has funded its neighborhood organizations in ways that propped up racial inequities in the city for the past 30 years, according to a new University of Minnesota analysis.

The city is approaching the finish line for Neighborhoods 2020, a multiyear plan to change the goals and funding formula for Minneapolis’ 70 neighborhood organizations, with a desire to make the program more equitable. With the City Council poised to approve a new system this spring, many neighborhood groups in Southwest are anxiously awaiting the results.

“We’re setting the stage for what the

program should look like moving forward using a racial equity lens,” said David Rubedor, director of the city’s Neighborhood and Community Relations (NCR) Department.

“It’s going to look different than it did before.”

Preserving inequity

The City Council approved a Neighborhoods 2020 framework in May 2019 that directed staff to hire a consultant to review how the program’s history looked in terms of racial equity and to recommend changes to improve equity and accountability in the future.

SEE NEIGHBORHOODS 2020 / PAGE A15

Taking Borges to Minnehaha Park

Linden Hills’ famed guide dog

The Southwest Journal’s early issues

Sit next to a wax James Garfield

PAGE B1

PAGE B7

PAGE B10

PAGE B12

A2 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1990–2020

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1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A3

By Andrew Hazzard / ahazzard@swjournal.com

KINGFIELD

Blackbird Cafe’s 13-year run in Southwest ends Longtime Southwest Minneapolis favorite Blackbird Cafe has closed.

The Kingfield restaurant announced it was closing in a Facebook post Jan. 8, with owner Todd Zallaps saying he couldn’t continue running the cafe any longer.

“It has been an uphill battle since I took over approximately a year and a half ago, and I can no longer justify trying to hang on,” he wrote.

“We fought through the road closures, burglary, a dwindling talented workforce and everincreasing costs to try and provide a neighborhood establishment that was welcoming to all.

Unfortunately, no matter how much we tried, it just wasn’t enough to keep this place relevant.”

Zallaps bought Blackbird in 2018, taking over from longtime operators Gail Mollner and Chris Stevens.

After launching at 50th & Bryant in 2007, Blackbird Cafe suffered a tragic fire that destroyed its original location in 2010. Nine months later, the restaurant reopened at 38th & Nicollet.

It was a daytime destination that focused on a large brunch during the week and offered dinner service on the weekends. Blackbird was a regular winner of the Southwest Journal’s “Best of Southwest” awards for best American fare.

Calls seeking comment on the closure were not returned.

Blackbird Cafe Where: 3800 Nicollet Ave.

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Blackbird Cafe announced its closure on Jan. 8. The cafe began at 50th & Bryant before moving to 38th & Nicollet after a fire.

The restaurant was bought by a new owner in 2018. Photo by Andrew Hazzard

Go Green.

We honor pre-plans and memberships from societies. For more info or to plan ahead, call 612-724-3621.

LYNLAKE

Uptown Pizza returns After lying dormant since mid-November, the ovens are back on at Uptown Pizza.

The pizzeria on the corner of Lake & Grand had operated since 1980 before abruptly announcing it had closed on its Facebook page Nov. 16. But reports of its demise were exaggerated. The store reopened the week of Jan. 7 under new management.

The closure stemmed from a disagreement between the previous manager and the store’s owner, new manager Said Ali said.

One day, the former manager decided to close down shop.

But Uptown Pizza wasn’t ready to be done and the owner sought out a new crew of workers. Ali, who knew the owner through his family, had worked in Middle Eastern restaurants before but had never made pizza.

READY FOR A WINTER GETAWAY?

He and his crew spent a few weeks training up and learning the menu before opening.

A few older staff members have helped them learn recipes and techniques, Ali said.

“Basically we’ve been doing everything the same, just new management,” he said.

As soon as the restaurant posted it was back on Facebook, the customers returned. Many have even said the pizza is a little better than before, according to Ali. “So far we’ve been getting positive feedback,” he said.

Getting Uptown Pizza back to its neighborhood-favorite status is the ultimate goal, Ali said.

Uptown Pizza Where: 323 W. Lake St. Info: uptownpizzampls.net

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Uptown Pizza has reopened at Lake & Grand. The 40-yearold shop closed in midNovember, but a new crew, led by manager Said Ali, is working to restore the pizzeria to glory.

Photo by Andrew Hazzard

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ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

A4 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

1990–2020

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Artist Will Kamas works on a client at his new studio, Wanderlust Tattoo, at 38th & Grand.

Photo by Andrew Hazzard

Will Kamas loves to travel and explore, but he recently set down some roots in Kingfield.

Wanderlust Tattoo, his new studio, opened at 38th & Grand in December. The studio is intimate, with a single workstation and walls lined with Kamas’ drawings. He’s been in the tattoo industry for 15 years. At Wanderlust, he sees clients by appointment only, usually doing a couple of tattoos a day. He also sticks to the styles he is most enamored and comfortable with.

“My main goal now is to tattoo what I like to do,” Kamas said.

Right now, that means working with black and gray ink, which he believes gives the artist more freedom than color ink. He specializes in images inspired by nature, like trees, flowers, mountains and owls. Kamas said he loves the way flowers and trees flow with bodies.

Lighthouses are a common theme in his work, as are some grimmer images.

“I love the darkness and detail of a skull,” he said.

He gets most of his customers via word-ofmouth or Instagram. People share the work he’s done, and their friends or followers often message to book an appointment.

“All my clients are pretty awesome,” he said.

As the name of the studio suggests, Kamas loves to travel and often gets away for camping trips on his Harley Davidson motorcycle.

The St. Paul native had been working most recently at a studio in Hudson, Wisconsin, and wasn’t enjoying the environment. He found the location at 38th & Grand when the landlord reached out to him via social media and asked if he wanted to see the space.

The location is ideal for Kamas, in an accessible neighborhood outside the commotion of Downtown. Since he’s started in the neighborhood, other shopkeepers in the node have introduced themselves and made him feel welcome.

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Wedge boutique Cliché closes After nearly 16 years, Minneapolis women’s clothing boutique Cliché has closed.

Cliché opened in 2004 at the corner of 24th & Lyndale. The founders are moving on due to personal reasons, according to owner Joshua Sundberg.

When the store opened, there weren’t many boutiques in the city, he said.

“We were trying to bring a fresh perspective to Minneapolis,” Sundberg said.

Many Americans, and Minnesotans in particular, are used to shopping for clothes at department stores or big chains and are not accustomed to shopping small.

But Cliché found success by breaking into an untapped market and developed many loyal customers over the years. The store sourced clothing from local and international designers.

“We knew our customers and knew what they wanted,” Sundberg said.

When the store announced it would close in early January, Sundberg thought it would take most of the month to sell out its remaining inventory, but customers stripped the shelves bare in three days.

Over the years, the neighborhood around the boutique changed.

“It seems like Uptown is always going through transitions,” he said.

Cliché boutique has closed after nearly 16 years at 24th & Lyndale. Photo by Andrew Hazzard

Sundberg is planning to stay in the Minneapolis fashion industry, he said, and is working on a store concept that could be coming to Southwest this spring.

Cliché Where: 2403 Lyndale Ave. S. Info: clichempls.com

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A5

The Calhoun Beach Club is planning to renovate its historic tower on Dean Parkway in 2021 to update the athletic club and add more commercial space. Submitted rendering

Calhoun Beach Club plans renovation

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com

Calhoun Beach Club, the 332-unit mixed-use apartment building and fitness club on the north shore of Bde Maka Ska, will be renovated in 2021.

Preliminary plans, presented in January to the Cedar-Isles-Dean Neighborhood Association (CIDNA), include renovating the fitness club, adding first-floor retail space along Lake Street and constructing a glass structure on the building’s second-floor deck.

Denver-based Aimco, which owns the property, plans to start construction in January 2021, regional vice president Brett Leonhardt told the neighborhood association.

Calhoun Beach Club was designed in the 1920s as a private club and apartment building with hotel-like features.

Construction began in 1928, and exterior work was substantially completed in 1929. The Great Depression and World War II delayed completion of the building until 1946.

Once opened, it served as a private club and apartment building. In 1953, it was sold and converted into an apartment without membership requirements.

A 12-story apartment tower was added on the property to the east in the 1990s, and Aimco purchased the site in 1998. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Currently, the property includes the fitness club, a first-floor restaurant space occupied

by Urban Eatery, ballrooms, commercial space and rooftop tennis courts and a pool.

About 3,000 people belong to the fitness club, which is independently managed.

Leonhardt said that the goal of the project is to make the building into “what it was originally intended to be — a gathering place for the neighborhood.”

“It has been a beacon of social and athletic life around the lake, and we’d like it to be

that again,” he said at the neighborhood association meeting.

Aimco’s preliminary plans call for four or five first-floor retail spaces, including a restaurant space that would be located roughly where the restaurant space is today.

They also include widening the sidewalk and boulevard and potentially adding a cafe or coffee shop.

Other proposals include renovating the lobby and ballrooms in the vintage tower and converting some of the newer tower’s commercial space into coworking space for club members.

Aimco plans to convert apartments on the fourth and fifth floors of the vintage tower into short-term rental units that could potentially be used by businesses or wedding parties, among other clients.

Leonhardt said another goal of the project is to link together the property’s various architectural styles, which span multiple decades.

He said the company does not plan on asking for any parking variances and that he foresees the project decreasing parking demand.

At the neighborhood association meeting, board members said they’d like a better connection between the property and the adjacent Midtown Greenway trail.

A fence currently lines most of the border between the property and the trail.

CIDNA land-use committee chairman Evan Carlson, who is a member of the club, said it would be nice to have a social gathering place in the neighborhood, noting that other neighborhoods have schools or churches.

Aimco hopes to gather additional feedback at CIDNA’s February board meeting.

It wants to workshop its plans at a February meeting of the City Planning Commission Committee of the Whole.

The Calhoun Beach Club, construction of which started in 1928, has 332 apartments in two towers, a fitness club, ballrooms and commercial space. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Photo

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1990–2020

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Minneapolis has issued requests for proposal (RFP) to redevelop two city-owned LynLake surface parking lots into mixed-use residential and commercial spaces with public parking.

Development objectives for the project that the city will evaluate when selecting a proposal include affordable housing, public greenspace, public parking and design quality. Those objectives are used to nudge developers toward including desirable features, though the city is seeking a fair-market value for the sites.

“It’s a balancing act between leaving it open enough to get proposals and including development objectives to meet city goals,” said Rebecca Parrell, senior project coordinator with Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED) department.

The sites, a large surface parking lot on Garfield Avenue near the corner of Lake & Lyndale and a single-lot property across the street at 2920 Lyndale Ave S., can be bid on individually or together, according to the RFP issued by CPED.

Garfield lot

The city is seeking proposals for a four- to sixstory mixed-use building including commercial and residential space for the Garfield lot. Any housing would be required to follow the city’s new inclusionary zoning policy, making at least 20% of units affordable to households earning up to 60% of the area median income (AMI) for rentals or making 10% of units affordable to households earning up to 80% of AMI for owned units. Buildings taller than six stories will be considered if the project includes more affordable housing or meets other city goals.

The development will be required to include at least 75 public parking spaces, with a preference for underground parking. City Council President Lisa Bender (Ward 10) said the requirements for public parking in the project made it difficult for the city to request more than 20% affordable units.

Development objectives include a midblock pedestrian walkway with public greenspace connecting Lyndale Avenue to Garfield Avenue in the alley where drivers access the surface parking lot today — a design element the LynLake Business Association had desired.

Design guidelines request architects match the development to the older brick and stone buildings at Lake & Lyndale. CPED would like the project to include improved pedestrian spaces and multiple access points along Garfield Avenue and to restrict vehicle access from Lake Street. The city is open to proposals that would convert Garfield Avenue to a two-way street.

The city will give special priority to developers who go beyond the minimum affordable housing requirements, Parrell said.

“Beyond that it’s really about, ‘How many development objectives are you meeting?’” she said.

The Garfield lot was developed in 1998, when the city and the LynLake Business Association came together to acquire parcels to support parking for local businesses.

Businesses in the area helped pay for the lot through 20 years of special assessments.

Public feedback helped shape the development objectives, Parrell said.

Danny Schwartzman, the owner of Common Roots Cafe, has been closely following the process. He said that while he was impressed by the work CPED staff did on the project, he’s slightly disappointed with the resulting RFP. He thinks the city could have taken its time with the RFP and made a bigger effort to reach diverse communities surrounding the lots.

The city hosted two public engagement meetings to get input on development objectives and held meetings with surrounding neighborhood organizations, the Lake Street Council and the LynLake Business Association.

“We tried to do a good balance between the various feedback we received from community groups and balancing city goals,” Parrell said.

Ultimately, he feels the city is limited by its desires to sell the land at fair-market value.

“You’re not setting the groundwork to have a creative proposal,” Schwartzman said.

Lyndale site

The 2920 Lyndale Ave. S. site, between the Herkimer Pub & Brewery and the Uptown VFW, was appraised at a fair reuse value of $340,000. The city believes a mixed-use apartment building is ideal for the 5,269-squarefoot site, but it will consider commercial-only proposals. CPED’s development objectives call for a two- to six-story design for the building. If residential, inclusionary zoning for affordable units will apply.

The city will also consider proposals for the 2920 Lyndale property that do not include a new building if a developer has a larger plan that includes the adjacent properties.

Proposals are due to the city by April 9.

CPED will host an informational meeting for interested developers on Feb. 11 at 105 5th Ave. S. Once proposals are received, CPED staff will review plans and make a recommendation to the City Council.

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Washburn teen tapped for School Board

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A7

Congratulations to the Publishers and the

Writers, Reporters and Editors of the

Southwest Journal It’s hard to be good at something for 30 years.

It’s hard to just survive that long.

Nathaniel Genene, 16, is sixth student selected for nonvoting position on the board

You’ve done both. Congratulations.

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com

The new student representative on the Minneapolis School Board is a Washburn High School junior who wants to advocate for more music programs and see more resources go toward preventing middle school students from vaping.

Nathaniel Genene, 16, officially started his term at the Jan. 14 board meeting.

As a student representative, he can sit at the dais during meetings, ask questions and contribute to discussion as if he were one of the nine elected members. He cannot vote on district business.

Genene, who is from South Minneapolis, attended Hale Elementary School and Field Community School east of Interstate 35W before Washburn. He said his grades have improved since he joined the Minds Matter Twin Cities mentorship program last school year. The weekly program at the University of St. Thomas includes ACT prep and meetings with mentors.

Genene said the program has made him “more eager for what’s after high school.”

He said advocating for more music programs and resources to stop vaping are among his priorities. He noted the positive experience he’s had in school guitar classes since sixth grade and that he’s known students who have vaped in class or have gone to the bathroom to vape because they are addicted.

Efforts to prevent vaping should be targeted at kids before high school, he said, as many have already started by then.

Genene is a member of Washburn’s National Honor Society, has participated in debate and is a leader of a mentorship program in which students of colors mentor their peers who are in advanced classes.

He said he interned this past summer at the education nonprofit Thrive Ed and has continued working for the organization’s development team this year.

He said the problems the district’s strategic plan — called the Comprehensive District Design (CDD) — are trying to solve are universal.

“We can all agree on the systemic issues at hand, but there will always be disagreements on how we go about fixing them,” he wrote in an email. “In the end we cannot make up [for] years of disenfranchisement with middle-ground solutions. It’s going to take some pretty bold actions to make necessary change. And I do appreciate that the CDD

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NEED PRIVACY? New student School Board representative Nathaniel Genene of Washburn High School said he wants to make sure all students are heard. Photo by Nate Gotlieb

is bold and that we are at least having the conversation on how we go about change.”

Genene was selected for the student representative position out of seven applicants from five Minneapolis high schools.

He was recommended for the position by the high school student board.

“Nathaniel stood out to his peers because of his previous experience advocating for education and his genuine, calm demeanor,” School Board administrator Ryan Strack wrote in an email.

In a statement, Washburn principal Emily Palmer said: “We are thrilled to have Nathaniel serving on the school board this year. He is a thoughtful leader and will be a great addition to the board. I know he will represent Washburn well!”

The 2019 student representative, Janaan Ahmed, was from Patrick Henry High School. The board has had a student representative each year since 2015.

The position comes with a $5,000 stipend upon completion of the term.

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Pedestrian killed by driver in Whittier A 54-year-old woman has died after being struck by a driver while walking in Whittier.

Maria Alvarado was hit around 9:17 a.m. on Jan. 10 near the corner of Lake & Pleasant by a man driving an SUV, according to the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).

Responding officers found her with serious injuries and she was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center.

Alvarado died from her injuries on Jan. 13.

The crash is being investigated by MPD. The department is still gathering statements from witnesses and is not yet saying exactly where the woman was crossing the road, according to spokesperson John Elder. The man driving the vehicle has been cooperating with police. Intoxication is not believed to be a factor in the crash, police said.

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A8 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

PUBLISHER Janis Hall jhall@swjournal.com CO-PUBLISHER & SALES MANAGER Terry Gahan

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1990–2020

Pucks on Parade Hockey Day Minnesota comes to Lowry Hill

tgahan@swjournal.com GENERAL MANAGER Zoe Gahan zgahan@swjournal.com EDITOR Zac Farber 612-436-4391 zfarber@swjournal.com STAFF WRITERS Nate Gotlieb ngotlieb@swjournal.com Andrew Hazzard ahazzard@swjournal.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Mary Balfour Michelle Bruch Ed Dykhuizen Kyrshanbor Hynniewta Adam Jonas Sheila Regan CREATIVE DIRECTOR Valerie Moe vmoe@swjournal.com OFFICE MANAGER AND AD COORDINATOR Amy Rash 612-436-5081 arash@swjournal.com

By Andrew Hazzard ahazzard@swjournal.com

A snowstorm and bitter cold couldn’t cool the excitement of hockey fans descending on Parade Stadium Jan. 16-18.

Hockey Day Minnesota transformed Lowry Hill’s Parade Park into a hockey haven, with hordes of fans huddled around fire pits, packed into the stands and playing pick-up games on ice sheets in front of the Sculpture Garden.

Minneapolis boys’ head coach Joe Dziedzic said parents and boosters from the city’s high school and youth hockey programs worked hard to put on a fun event. For the past 10 years, the Minneapolis boys’ and girls’ programs have been unified, drawing from all seven high schools.

“It’s keeping hockey alive,” Dziedzic said.

Playing in the cold the night of Jan. 16, the Minneapolis unified girls’ team defeated Holy Angels Academy 3-2 with an overtime game winner from freshman Celia Midtbo. Local schools were undefeated that night, with the Blake girls’ team dismantling Grand Rapids/Greenway 8-0.

The Minneapolis boys fell 5-1 to perennial powerhouse Warroad. Senior captain Alex Murray scored the lone goal for Minneapolis.

Playing in front of their high school, the Blake Bears defeated Blaine 3-2.

The University of Minnesota women’s team defeated Ohio State 2-1 on Jan. 18.

Dziedzic, an Edison High graduate who played for the University of Minnesota and in the NHL, also took to the ice for the NHL Alumni Game on Jan. 17.

He said it was an honor to host the event and showcase the sport in Minneapolis.

“We’ve got some good players here and we still play good hockey in the city,” Dziedzic said.

Photos by Andrew Hazzard

DISTRIBUTION Marlo Johnson 612-436-4388

FROM SOUTHWEST JOURNAL / PAGE A1

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NEXT ISSUE DATE: February 6 News and ad deadline: January 29 32,000 copies of the Southwest Journal are distributed free of charge to homes and businesses in Southwest Minneapolis.

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PRINTED WITH SOY INK ON RECYCLED PAPER

Thirty years and hundreds of issues later, Hall, 60, and Gahan, 64, are still publishing the paper.

The business has become a family affair, with their daughter, Zoe Gahan, 28, serving as general manager since late 2017.

While revenue has declined since the mid-2000s and they have been forced to scale back their Minneapolis coverage, Gahan and Hall said they still believe in the value of the Southwest Journal, which is delivered free to over 28,000 Southwest Minneapolis households every two weeks. Another 4,000 copies are distributed through 135 news racks.

“The future of journalism looks like this,” Terry Gahan said. “It’s not Afghanistan and Iran stories, but it’s Mrs. Smith’s 100-year-old oak tree getting cut down. … [While] it’d be hard to start [a community newspaper] right now, this is what the model looks like.”

Ups and downs

Gahan and Hall, both from California, said they never meant to get into the newspaper business.

In the early 1980s, they moved to Minneapolis, where Hall studied technical writing at the University of Minnesota and Gahan was a musician. They also operated a typesetting business. “That’s where we really became aware of the community press,” Hall said.

Sometime after the move, Gahan and Hall began working at the nonprofit Whittier Globe, a monthly paper. Hall wrote a column, among other roles. Gahan delivered the paper and sold ads.

They also sat on the paper’s board.

Hall said she became increasingly fascinated by the inner workings of the newspaper business. Then in 1989, she and Gahan prepared to purchase a house in Linden Hills. The neighborhood had a monthly publication that printed coupons and ran a regular historical feature, but

Gahan said he saw a potential market for a dedicated local news source.

Gahan and Hall recruited Whittier Globe editor Mark Anderson and his wife, photographer Paula Keller, to help them put out the new paper, which debuted in January 1990.

After the 12-page first issue, the second issue, published in March 1990, had about twice as much ad space and ran 20 pages. The third issue, in April 1990, was 24 pages.

By the time Gahan and Hall published their 10th issue, in November 1990, they were printing 40 pages. Their coverage area had expanded past its original borders of 36th Street, Minnehaha Parkway and France and Nicollet avenues and into the Armatage, Kenny and Windom neighborhoods.

“We were surprised at how successful it became pretty quickly,” Hall said.

SEE SOUTHWEST JOURNAL / PAGE A12

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A9

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ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

A10 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

1990–2020

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com

Organics recycling increases among Southwest businesses New county requirements expected to boost participation At France 44 in Linden Hills, employee Melissa Waskeiewicz collects packing peanuts and excess crinkle-cut paper in an organics bin as she packs gift baskets.

Down the hall, workers preparing food toss vegetable peels and other food scraps into an organics bin. Customers in the store’s cafe throw food scraps into an organics bin next to the busing station.

Across Southwest Minneapolis, more businesses, building owners and nonprofits have begun recycling their organic waste in recent years, a trend that mirrors increased participation among area homeowners and renters.

This year, even more businesses and institutions will start doing so, thanks to a revised Hennepin County recycling ordinance that took effect Jan. 1. The ordinance requires businesses and institutions that generate more than eight cubic yards of waste or one ton of waste per week, from grocery stores and restaurants to nursing homes and shopping centers, to recycle their organic waste.

It impacts about 3,000 to 3,500 businesses and organizations, though many neighborhood restaurants do not generate enough waste to be covered, county wastereduction and recycling specialist Mallory Anderson said.

She estimated that about half of those businesses are restaurants and that a “good third” of them are in Minneapolis.

There are two ways businesses and orga-

1934 H E N N E PI N AVE . S M P L S, M N 55 4 0 3

nizations can meet the requirements: by contracting with an organics hauler or by participating in a food-to-animals program.

They can also donate their unused food in combination with another method.

A handful of restaurants said they’ve already implemented organics recycling or don’t generate enough waste to fall under the county requirement.

Those that already recycle organics said it takes some education but generally isn’t too difficult.

Kim Bartmann, who owns nine restaurants, including Barbette, Bread & Pickle, Pat’s Tap and Book Club, was part of a organics pilot study with the city and Hennepin County in 2008. All of her restaurants have been composting since the pilot study.

Bartmann said there was no increased cost to implement organics, since it was cheaper at the time to haul compost versus garbage. She said staff training is important to implementing organics recycling.

Danny Schwartzman’s Common Roots Cafe at 26th & Lyndale was also part of the pilot.

Common Roots has continued collecting organics since and has diverted over 45,000 pounds of waste since opening, he said.

Schwartzman said it’s easier nowadays to find compostable materials, though he said compostable trash liners remain expensive.

He said his restaurant composts waste from the events it caters.

At France 44, organics recycling was

SAN DW ICH ES

implemented in 2019 and was one of a series of environmentally conscious upgrades the store made, Waskeiewicz said. She said the higher cost of compostable trash liners is a downside but that her store’s owners have supported the move.

City Church in the Kenny neighborhood started recycling organics in 2016, with help from a Hennepin County business recycling grant.

In a 2017 report to the county, the church reported a dramatic reduction in waste heading to the landfill after implementing the program.

Kara Coffler, pastor of community outreach and operations, said the church renegotiated its contract with its trash hauler so it didn’t have to pay more. She added that it has been fun to see the church youth take the lead.

“The kids and the teens really get why it’s important and how to do it,” she said.

Preventing methane release

Composting has become much more popular in the U.S. since the 1990s, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In Minneapolis, residents of one-, two-, three- and four-family homes are eligible to participate in the city’s curbside organicscollection program for no cost. Over 46% of eligible households had signed up for the program as of December 2018.

There is no organized citywide collection of organics for buildings with more than four units. A 2011 city ordinance requires busi-

nesses to provide recycling containers, but there is no such requirement for organics.

Anderson said the main goal of the county’s new requirement is to ensure that waste is being “repurposed into something useful.” She noted the metrowide goal of recycling 75% of waste by 2030.

“This is just that first step in really making [organics recycling] a more easy and common practice,” she said, adding that it will help organics haulers develop pickup routes.

Unlike trash, there are no county and state taxes on organics hauling, though businesses and institutions are responsible for any additional cost of hauling organics. The county offers grants to help businesses with recycling programs.

Hennepin County Board Chair Marion Greene, who represents Southwest Minneapolis, said organic waste in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas that traps more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

She said the county is working with residents to figure out ways to make organics recycling “the easy choice.”

Food waste represents close to 40% of all trash generated, said Julie Ketchum, who works in public affairs for Waste Management.

“We view this as a great opportunity to recycle more,” she said.

More information about the revised ordinance and county grants available to businesses can be found at hennepin.us/businessorganics.

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1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A11

By Andrew Hazzard / ahazzard@swjournal.com

More snow, trails at Theodore Wirth Let it snow, even if it’s not in the forecast.

That’s the mantra for the Loppet Foundation as it prepares to host its annual City of Lakes Winter Festival Jan. 31-Feb. 2 and the 2020 Cross Country Ski World Cup in March. This month the nonprofit unveiled new equipment that vastly improves its snowmaking capacity along with 2.5 kilometers of new ski trails at Theodore Wirth Park.

“It’s really essential to offering the wonderful programs we have here at The Trailhead,” Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board Superintendent Al Bangoura said at a Jan. 15 event.

The improvements include seven new hydrants for snowmaking paired with seven new electrical pedestals and thousands of feet of underground water lines that allow for trail maintenance crews to keep the trails at Wirth Park skiable all winter long.

In addition to the snowmaking improve-

ments, the foundation has opened new ski trails more geared toward casual users than World Cup competitors.

“These trails are much more gentle,” Loppet Foundation executive director John Munger said.

The upgrades were funded by the MPRB, state bonding money and a Hennepin County Youth Sports grant.

“It will improve not only the events but the lives of our residents who come here,” Bangoura said.

Isaac Kasper, trails director for the Loppet Foundation, used to lead efforts hauling truckloads of snow to trails and spreading it with wheelbarrows and shovels to maintain quality ski trails. With the infrastructure and snowmaking improvements, he and his crew can keep a consistent two-foot-deep base of snow for world-class ski trail conditions throughout the winter.

Cross country skiers hit the trails near The Trailhead in Theodore Wirth Park as snowmaking machines pump out fresh powder. The Loppet Foundation has seven new hydrants and electric pedestals for snowmaking. Photo by Andrew Hazzard

“We can make snow quicker and more efficiently,” Kasper said.

That should come in handy this season. In addition to its signature City of Lakes Loppet Winter Festival, the foundation and the MPRB are playing host to the 2020 Coop FIS Cross Country Ski World Cup March 14-17.

In a typical year, the Loppet Foundation would already be done with its snowmaking for the season, but with the World Cup coming to the United States for the first time since

2001, the organization isn’t taking any chances.

“We’re making quite a bit more snow than we normally would on the cup course,” Munger said.

With the major events around the corner, Munger said the foundation expects the Feb.1 Luminary Loppet will sell out of tickets shortly. (For an extended look at this year’s winter festival, see the Southwest Journal Get Out Guide on page B17). Tickets for the World Cup go on sale Jan. 27.

Minnehaha master plan backs off parkway changes After months of loud resistance, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has proposed new design concepts that maintain continuous vehicle access on Minnehaha Parkway.

The Minnehaha Parkway Regional Trail Master Plan, a 20-year plan to shape the parkland around the creek, has faced delays in its Community Action Committee (CAC) process due to opposition to proposals to limit through-traffic along Minnehaha Parkway in Southwest and to remove a

one-way stretch of parkway that runs under the Nicollet Avenue bridge.

The CAC took a hiatus while a traffic study was conducted to examine the impact of those proposed changes, and while planners said they were confident the plans would not significantly alter traffic flow in Southwest, the new design concepts eliminate proposed barriers to divert vehicles at Humboldt and Portland avenues and maintain the parkway road under the Nicollet Avenue bridge.

In December, MPRB commissioners rejected a measure that would have prevented the CAC from altering vehicle traffic.

The revised concepts call for a two-way parkway near Lynnhurst Park south of 50th Street, with a realigned three-way stop intersection intended to promote safer crossings for pedestrians and cyclists.

The bridge over that two-way stretch between 50th and 51st streets would be raised above the creek and floodplain in the

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ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

A12 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

1990–2020

FROM SOUTHWEST JOURNAL / PAGE A8

Throughout the 1990s, the paper grew in terms of staff size, coverage area and circulation. In 1993, it moved out of Hall and Gahan’s home and into the first of three offices. In 1995, it began publishing every two weeks. In 1997, it won the first of four Frank Premack Awards for public affairs reporting.

Anderson, who was editor through 1999, said the paper filled a perceived gap in coverage of news in the area.

“At that time, there was kind of a feeling that the two [daily newspapers] were following their readers to the suburbs and weren’t really focused on news in the cities,” he said.

By 2000, the Southwest Journal had four staff writers and covered all of Southwest Minneapolis, plus Bryn Mawr and a portion of Downtown. About 50,000 copies were distributed every two weeks.

In 2001, Gahan and Hall took over operation of the Skyway News, a community paper covering Downtown. Two years later, they purchased and moved their company into a 14,000-square-foot office building on the western edge of Downtown. They bought Minnesota Good Age and Minnesota Parent in 2004, Gahan said, and in 2005 changed the name of the Skyway News to the Downtown Journal (the name changed again in 2010, to The Journal, when it expanded its coverage to Northeast Minneapolis).

At its peak, Hall said, Minnesota Premier Publications (MPP) had 30 employees and annual revenue approaching $5 million. But like many publishing companies challenged by decreasing ad revenue and the Great Recession, it has seen revenue decline in recent years and has made staffing cuts.

Nowadays, Hall said, MPP has a staff of 13 and annual revenue around $2.2 million. For the Southwest Journal, a full-time editor and two full-time reporters (including the author of this story) are based in the company’s Downtown office and write about schools, parks, business, politics, development and the arts. More than a dozen columnists and freelancers cover everything from architecture and restaurants to pets and farmers markets.

A proofreader, an in-house designer, ad salespeople and client services staff work behind the scenes.

Hall said the company had a “really good 2018” but that 2019 “was not so great.” “We had to scramble a little bit to get expenses to meet revenue,” she said.

Zoe Gahan said it can be a challenge to get advertisers to see the value of print, especially when they need to spread their dollars over digital platforms. “You’re fighting perception a lot,” she said.

In this photo taken in 2010, around the time of the Southwest Journal's 20th anniversary, publishers Janis Hall and Terry Gahan walk their dogs Emmet Ray and Django Reinhardt.

Matt Perry, longtime president of the Southwest Business Association, said placing an ad in the paper is “making a statement that you are part of the community.”

Terry Gahan seemed to agree.

“People in the community recognize advertisers who support the community,” he said. “They want to show their patronage to community advertisers.”

‘Fighting tooth and nail’

The Southwest Journal is in select company among Twin Cities community papers by simply surviving into the 2020s, according to St. Paul-based journalist Jane McClure, who has written for community papers for almost 50 years and edits Access Press, a statewide paper for people with disabilities.

At one point, McClure said, there were probably 40 community papers in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper. Nowadays, there are maybe a dozen. The local Neighborhood and Community Press Association hasn’t existed for years.

There’s always been this strong commitment to quality community journalism and to covering the stories that other people don’t cover.

— Jane McClure

McClure said many of the community papers started in the 1970s in the era of urban renewal.

Most of the papers were nonprofits, she said, and a lot were run by volunteers.

McClure called the Southwest Journal “one of the great neighborhood papers” and said it has done a good job localizing stories out of Minneapolis City Hall over the years.

“There’s always been this strong commitment to quality community journalism and to covering the stories that other people don’t cover,” she said.

She also said the paper has benefited from stable businesses and a readership that seems to do a good job of supporting them.

Anderson, the inaugural editor, said Gahan and Hall were willing to invest in improving the paper and in paying reporters higherthan-usual salaries for a community paper.

Hall said they’ve been “fighting tooth and nail” to keep their existing reporting staff levels.

She said the paper includes more freelance work than ever but that she and Gahan recognize the importance of a paid newsroom staff.

“We owe everything to the newsroom,” she said. “Without the editors we’ve had [and] the reporters we’ve had, we would not be here.”

‘Why we’re still here’

Despite the challenges, the Hall/Gahan family appears optimistic about their company’s future. Hall said she’s happy her daughter, Zoe, has taken on the general manager role, after years of working on and off at the company.

“I just had complete confidence in her,” Hall said. “I knew she was going to do well.”

Zoe Gahan said the job has been “the

biggest learning experience of my life so far.”

She said she and her parents are “very different people” and that “the three of us work well together” when they get along, which is “most of the time.”

“We each bring a really solid anchor to this three-sided component,” she said.

One of the first big decisions she helped make was to close The Journal, which had been published since 1970. Fifteen months later, she and Hall said it was the right call.

“The writing had been on the wall for a long time,” Gahan said. “We were producing a paper that I don’t think the community as a whole wanted. … There wasn’t enough of a groundswell from the community members and advertisers to make it work.”

Gahan said she’d like to see the paper continue its current local focus on the schools, parks, people, neighborhoods and issues of Southwest Minneapolis. She and Hall said they’re pleased with the how the paper has looked under new editor Zac Farber, who started in 2019.

Hall and Terry Gahan said they plan to retire someday but don’t have a timeline for it. They plan to sell the building, which has annual property taxes approaching $72,000, though they don’t have a timeline. “We’re knocking on wood as we speak,” Hall said.

They said they’re proud of the publication they’ve created and that community journalism has been a rewarding way to earn a living.

“We’ve created something that has value to our community, that is responsible and done with a lot of integrity,” Terry Gahan said. “I think that’s why it’s still here.”

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Dateline Minneapolis

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A13

By Steve Brandt

Theodore Wirth House rent should rise with market

Y

ou may not be aware, but as a Minneapolis resident you’re a landlord.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board owns a large house that it rents to its park superintendents.

Eight of the 14 supers over the years have opted to live in the Dutch Colonial house built in 1910 for Theodore Wirth in Lyndale Farmstead Park. Others already owned a private home locally when they were hired.

Now it’s Al Bangoura’s turn. The superintendent hired in late 2018 originally opted for a short-term lease on the house when he moved back to Minneapolis for the top job. He seems genuinely pleased to be living in the mansion associated with Wirth, who lived and worked there for decades and shaped Minneapolis parks more than any other person.

Our ownership of the mansion makes the Park Board our leasing agent. It sets the rent and terms for the Wirth house and the superintendents who occupy it. As I’ve written previously, the Park Board set the rent for previous superintendent Jayne Miller at $1,154 in 2011 and didn’t increase it for the remaining six years of her tenure. I suspect that many renters in Minneapolis would welcome a six-year rent freeze.

When I asked the Park Board’s then-president Anita Tabb about this lax approach to rent in 2016, she said she’d review the situation once the board finished adopting the next year’s budget. She didn’t. Asked about the situation after he became president in 2018, Brad Bourn said he didn’t expect future superintendents would opt to live in the Wirth house.

But Bangoura did. When he was hired 13 months ago, the board finally addressed the rent issue.

Bangoura has been paying $171 more per month than Miller did. Both rented the second and third floors and the main-floor kitchen. Park staff calculated those same spaces at different square footages in 2011 and 2018, so Bangoura is paying more rent but less per square foot than Miller based on those differing calculations.

Additionally, his lease gives him use of the rest of the main floor of the house — effectively adding more than a thousand square feet to his lease without charging him for it. The Park Board rationale was that public tours of the house use the main floor. But that’s allowed for a maximum of 10 hours monthly, giving Bangoura uninterrupted access the rest of the time.

A superintendent shouldn’t be faulted for getting a good deal on rent. Rather it’s an issue that falls squarely at the board’s feet.

Low rent has implications that go beyond the Park Board’s budget. Charging any superintendent a rate that’s below the market could be construed as extra compensation.

In Miller’s case, that would have pushed her over the state compensation cap on local officials in 2016 because she was already at the maximum pay allowed.

There are also tax implications. The IRS regards as taxable compensation any difference between the fair market rent for a residence and what the employee is actually paying.

Not keeping the rent up to date could mean a back tax bill for a superintendent. Bourn said he doesn’t think that the rental situation was reported to the IRS. One Park Board rationale for Bangoura’s rent is that he shouldn’t be charged for the first

Park Board superintendent Al Bangoura has been paying $1,325 per month to rent the Theodore Wirth House in Lyndale Farmstead Park. File photo

floor because it’s in public use some times.

Another is that having park users sledding down the hill behind the house and playing soccer on an adjacent field give the superintendent less privacy. The third floor tends not to be prime space for occupancy. There are lath boards visible inside some closets. It can be sweltering and require continuous operation of a window air conditioner during some months and be chilly in others.

But offsetting that, views from the house are lovely, including Wirth’s gravesite at nearby Lakewood Cemetery, and the Park Board (and public) pay the utility costs.

The $1,325 monthly rent for the sixbedroom house was guided by the recommendation of a real estate rental consultant. But it seems suspect. Two blocks away, for example, a three-bedroom rental is asking $1,950.

Bourn acknowledged that he has paid more for a basement apartment than the superintendent pays for the Wirth house. Moreover, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that Twin Cities area rents between 2013 and 2018 rose by more than 20% — more than the increase between Miller’s 2011 rent and Bangoura’s 2018 rent.

Bangoura’s initial lease was for only 13 months. That was designed was to give him the flexibility to decide whether to keep renting the Wirth house or find other quarters once his family moved here from North Carolina after the end of the last school year. He said in a recent interview that he’d prefer to stay.

“It’s an amazing house,” Bangoura said. “I’m in awe of living there.”

The lease expires on Feb. 17. Joan Berthiaume, who runs the Wirth home tours, met with Park Board staff in November. She said she was told that Bangoura now wants a lease that encompasses the whole house. She said she couldn’t get a straight answer on whether that meant that the Minneapolis Park Legacy Society tours of the building would end.

Bourn said that his understanding is also that Bangoura wants exclusive use of the entire house. In that case, Bourn said, the rent should better reflect market conditions. But his successor as board president, Jono Cowgill, will be negotiating that with Bangoura.

The board should take the opportunity offered by a new lease to set a more realistic rent for a house that’s on the National Register of Historic Places and sits in a beautiful patch of greensward. That extra rent could be used to make the third floor more comfortable.

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A14 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com FROM BUDGET / PAGE A1

• The city will launch “cultural districts” on corridors like Franklin Avenue and 38th Street, modeled after districts like Chinatown in New York and Hyde Park in Chicago. The concept includes funds for lighting, upkeep and safety ($1.35 million), a fund to support businesses by people of color ($2 million) and money for arts and events ($100,000), among other measures.

• During the seven days before the 2020 presidential election, the city will spend $4 million to staff three new early voting centers.

• A program that tackles gang or “group” violence will expand from North Minneapolis to South Minneapolis. Since the pilot launched in May 2017, the city reports that Northside nonfatal shootings among “group” members dropped in the warmer months of 2017 and 2018.

• Highlighting the “chronically oversubscribed” Green Cost Share program, which offers matching funds for solar and other green projects, the council added $350,000 to sustainability work. Council Member Jeremy Schroeder (Ward 11) said they ran out of money for Green Cost Share in February last year and already have 100-plus applications in 2020. Past projects include LED lighting for Fig + Farro and the Uptown YWCA, eco-friendly paint drying equipment at Dunwoody Automotive and Oscar Auto Body, a solar array at Industrial Steel Fabricators in Windom, and low-flow faucet aerators and shower heads at Minneapolis College of Art and Design student housing.

Finding funding

The extra sustainability funding came from an unspent $350,000 in the first-year rollout of the “Stable Homes, Stable Schools” initiative, which houses youth and their families facing homelessness. City officials voted to replenish that funding in the 2021 budget, and said the program’s $3 million budget for 2020 would be sufficient.

“If I didn’t think that climate change and our response wasn’t critically important, I wouldn’t have gone to this funding source,” said Council Member Cam Gordon (Ward 2), adding that he’s also deeply committed to the Stable Homes program. “I know it’s going to be tough making budget decisions moving forward, but … those are two things I’m not unclear on at all, that I’ll be fighting for in future budgets.”

“This decision is tough right now, let alone next year,” Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins (Ward 8) said.

Mayor Jacob Frey said the Stable Homes program is surpassing expectations. Since the

school year started in September, Frey said, the program is ending or preventing homelessness for 415 children in 137 families, with more families in the pipeline.

Throughout the budget drafting process, a few themes emerged in emails and testimony from constituents. Many asked for a transgender equity staff person ($90,000 was added), many asked for support services for the elderly ($60,000 was added) and many asked that a utility company fee fully fund climate work ($350,000 was added).

Many others weighed in on policing, with varied opinions.

Jake Reber wrote that residents “desperately need additional police” in the Diamond Lake neighborhood, and the 911 response is too long.

Chelsea Deklotz said she interacts with the homeless during her commute to work in Uptown.

“Officers are not trained to handle mental health crises and cannot be expected to add this full-time job to their already full-time job. Police officers are not social workers,” Deklotz wrote.

Some carried signs into the council chambers stating: “Fund our communities, not cops.”

Policing priorities

The council passed a budget increase of $8.3 million for police, with some MPD funds redirected to violence prevention work. The council unanimously voted to pay for a larger police recruitment class rather than hire 14 new investigators, beat officers and traffic cops. (The chief can still direct recruits to those areas.)

“This is a pretty big compromise, and compromise, as I see it, is the only way to go,” said Council Member Linea Palmisano (Ward 13). “Training is the root of everything we do with public safety, and it is an extremely appropriate place to always invest.”

After a year of conversation, Fletcher said it’s noteworthy that elected officials are now unanimous in supporting the new Office of Violence Prevention to invest beyond policing.

“This is very clearly, 14-0, the mayor and the council moving together; this is where we are going,” Fletcher said.

Late in the budget process, council members Jeremiah Ellison (Ward 5), Gordon and Bender proposed diverting more MPD money to violence prevention. But the council voted 10-3 to keep a large recruitment class.

“This is a tough vote,” Jenkins said. “I have been in conversation with the chief, and while this may be one of our largest recruit classes, it’s also one of our most diverse recruit classes ever.”

The number of active officers is often well below the authorized 888, according to city staff, and the time it takes to hire and train new police causes big swings in staffing when officers leave or retire.

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE “When I first started on the City Council in 1998, there were about 50,000 less people in the city and more officers. That’s something to think about,” Council Member Lisa Goodman (Ward 7) said in a budget discussion last fall.

Bender said the police department’s $180 million budget has grown by $35 million since she took office in 2013, adding pension funds and body cameras. She said the public safety budget is squeezing the money available for other priorities like climate change, labor standards and the opioid crisis. With that level of funding, she said, it’s appropriate to give policing a close look, similar to asking Public Works to change the way it builds streets in line with city values.

A 911/MPD work group recently suggested reconfiguring the priority call system, closely tracking mental health calls to find alternative responses. Among the top MPD 911 calls are welfare checks and emotionally disturbed persons, and the group said it might be possible to send more mental health professionals on low-risk calls. The group also recommended sending theft reports to 311, or sending parking complaints to traffic control.

The council authorized $200,000 to further study 911 and police staffing.

The council rejected a budget proposal to hire new officers to resurrect a traffic unit that dissolved in 2013. The Northside sees a disproportionate number of fatal crashes,

ADDITIONAL CHANGES • Investment in opioid crisis response, including safe disposal of syringes and a new hospital bedside intervention for overdose survivors ($500,000) • Raises for council office staff ($250,000) • Study of rent control or “rent stabilization” ($125,000) • Resources to help people refinance payday loans at zero interest ($75,000) • An additional labor standards investigator to enforce the city’s wage theft ordinance ($69,000) • Funding for a new public market called Africa Village in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, which Warsame seeks as a co-op alternative to Karmel Mall ($50,000) • New children’s savings account program ($50,000) • All city contributions to public housing high rises will now require installation of fire sprinklers. Warsame pushed for the change, saying that seniors and people with disabilities could not escape the recent high-rise fire in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood.

1990–2020 Council Member Phillipe Cunningham (Ward 4) said, but he worried that traffic enforcement focused on the Northside could exacerbate racial disparities.

“We know from the experience in our city [and] across the country, it’s very difficult to police your way out of traffic safety problems when your roads are designed for speeding,” Bender said in a budget discussion last fall.

Instead, the council approved detailed directions to convene a work group that tracks crash data and recommends how to balance race equity with enforcement aimed at ending traffic deaths.

Police said the domestic assault unit sees the largest volume of incoming cases, and the council turned down a request to hire two new domestic violence investigators. The council redirected another $50,000 that would have purchased an MPD vehicle to fund an Intimate Partner Violence Intervention initiative. New funding will also go to the city attorney’s office to give families with low-level conflicts an alternative contact aside from 911.

“Domestic violence is an intergenerational issue. We know that it’s the No. 1 reason for 911 calls, which means that we have a lot of kids around our entire city who are being exposed to violence in the home, and that trauma impacts them for the rest of their lives,” Cunningham said.

The budget also dedicates funding for crime-reducing strategies in Ventura Village and Phillips West, with $20,000 going to Stevens Square. Council Member Abdi Warsame (Ward 6) said the money gives back to neighborhoods in his ward, which hosted the homeless encampment last year.

The council approved another new pilot with funding to be determined that takes inspiration from Seattle’s approach to the war on drugs, which views arrest as a last resort.

Called “LEAD” in Seattle, people can opt for long-term case management instead of an arrest. Council Member Alondra Cano (Ward 9) said the approach could also apply to prostitution, an issue where Minneapolis has tried many different tactics with limited success: undercover stings that relied on officers to pose as sex workers, street outreach workers handing out toothbrushes and condoms and a pre-charge diversion program that found little interest among people facing arrest.

Bender said she’s concerned the council is setting itself up for difficulty in next year’s budget. Even renters, who don’t directly see property tax statements, are talking about tax increases, she said.

“As we promise funding for so many different things in the future … at some point we’re going to need to make those difficult decisions between trade-offs,” Bender said.

1990–2020 FROM NEIGHBORHOODS 2020 / PAGE A1

That consultant, the U of M’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), began a racial equity analysis of the Neighborhoods 2020 program in November.

C Terrence Anderson of CURA said one bias that was clear was favoritism toward homeowners. Between 1990 and 2019, about half of the money allocated to neighborhood organizations was directed into small grants for homeowners. Because the homeowners in Minneapolis are overwhelmingly white, white people received a disproportionate share of the benefits.

“I struggle to find another term than ‘institutional racism,’” Anderson said.

Racial equity was not the goal of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) when it began in 1990, or when it converted to the Community Participation Program (CPP) funding model in 2010. Many have been upset by these findings, Anderson said, but he noted the intent isn’t to discredit any of the good work neighborhood organizations have done but to recognize that the outcomes disproportionately benefited white households.

For example, white households made up 67% of applicants for housing benefits through neighborhood groups from 2013 to 2019 but received 77% of the funding from those programs. For other groups, the percentage of recipients was lower than applicants.

“If we’re looking at this from a 2020 perspective, I would say the NRP has a contribution toward the racially inequitable outcomes for housing in the city of Minneapolis,” Anderson said.

When the program launched in the early ’90s, the city was facing disinvestment and population was dropping, Rubedor said. The goal of the NRP was to stem the bleeding.

“In many ways the program was highly successful in that, but it didn’t have a racial equity overlay,” Rubedor said.

Minority residents and renters are also underrepresented on neighborhood boards.

Initial plans for Neighborhoods 2020 called for requiring boards to match the demographics of their neighborhoods, but those proposals have been dropped. The NCR department believes a funding formula structured around racial equity will draw in a more diverse group of participants.

Chris DesRoches, president of the Kingfield Neighborhood Association, said the group recently rewrote its equity and inclusiveness statement and that he believes many neighborhood organizations are thinking about how to reach more residents from diverse backgrounds.

“It’s a tough conversation to have and I credit CURA for getting to the meat of all this,” DesRoches said.

Kaley Brown, executive director of the Whittier Alliance, has attended all three CURA sessions on Neighborhoods 2020.

Knowing what we know today about racial disparities in Minneapolis, a new funding formula is needed, Brown said.

“It would behoove us to move toward a model that is the most equitable it can be at this time,” Brown said.

A new proposal

Traditionally, neighborhood organizations have been funded via a tax-increment finance district downtown. That funding source, which allocates $4.1 million annually to the 70 groups, expires at the end of 2020. The City Council has approved funding at current levels for the next five years via the general fund, but the dollars have not been officially allocated.

The goal is to have the new rules set this spring, Rubedor said. The NCR department intends to present its draft recommendations to the City Council on Feb. 1. The formal guidelines will be made in mid-February, followed by a 45-day public comment period before a vote in early May. The program has had three funding formulas in its lifetime. The CPP model that began in 2010 put more emphasis on engagement and improved on past NRP

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE programs in terms of equity, CURA believes.

But CPP largely preserved where money went under NRP, Anderson said. Under CPP the existence of a minimum funding base made it so low-density neighborhoods like Kenwood received a disproportionate amount of money per capita.

“From an equity standpoint we know this needs to look different going forward,” Rubedor said.

The new proposed CURA formula focuses on three groups: Nonwhite residents, households that are cost burdened (spending more than 30% of income on rent or mortgages based on census data) and neighborhoods experiencing gentrification.

The framework approved by the City Council in May would give each neighborhood organization a base of $25,000 annually, with additional funding allocated using an equity formula. CURA’s proposed formula takes into account population, diversity, rental rate, crime rate, foreclosure rate and average incomes. But the $25,000 in base funding required in the framework weakens the equity intentions, Anderson said. In CURA’s analysis, the lower the minimum each organization receives, the more equitable the program will be.

Preparing for a new funding future The uncertainty of what future funding will be has some neighborhood organizations thinking about how to remain viable in the future.

Neighborhood organizations in Southwest vary in size and scope. The Whittier Alliance has three full-time staff members running multiple programs. Many smaller groups, like Armatage Neighborhood Association, have just one part-time staff member.

For more robust groups like the Whittier Alliance and the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association (LHENA), the focus is on identifying multiple funding sources so they don’t have to rely on the city alone.

The Whittier Alliance is currently looking to hire a grant writer, Brown said.

“Regardless of the funding we receive from the city, it is incumbent on us to diversify our funding streams,” LHENA executive director Paul Shanafelt said.

Joel Federer, president of the Armatage Neighborhood Association, said the neighborhood is trying to prepare for potential funding outcomes.

Armatage is among neighborhood organizations that have remaining NRP dollars— there are about $25 million in unused NRP funds citywide, according to Rubedor — and could survive for the next couple years off that money.

But when the $200,000 in leftover funds run out, the future is less clear. He said the Armatage board has been supportive of the equity goals.

“It is also our hope that smaller neighborhoods like Armatage can continue to serve our communities,” Federer said.

The Kingfield Neighborhood Association has been thinking about funding, too.

In the past year, the organization moved in with neighbors from the Lyndale Neighborhood Association at 35th & Nicollet to cut costs. The board has been trying to take stock of its annual events and deciding which ones to dedicate staff time and funding toward and which might be able to survive with just volunteers.

Kingfield has run an analysis and believes it would need at least $15,000-$20,000 to fund the organization each year. The question is where the money will come from.

For some neighborhoods in Southwest, the answer may be in simply asking residents to contribute to events they’d like to see continue, DesRoches said. Still, he added, “it would be great to have a consistent amount of money from the city.”

Fundraising can be easier said than done, Federer said, and while generosity from neighbors is nice, it can’t be counted on as a consistent source.

“We’re kind of eager and anxious to see what the plan looks like when it’s released,” Federer said.

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 A15

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YEARS

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Southwest Journal January 23–February 5, 2020

Stuart Klipper’s home is filled with photographs, sculptures, weavings and other treasures.

Photo by Chris Juhn

e h t o t t i s i v A Klippersonian Inside a globetrotting r’s photographe Fulton home

By Sheila Reg

an

T

he amber-colored Fulton home of internationally recognized photographer Stuart Klipper is packed with sculptures, ceramics, plants, posters, instruments, books, weavings and other treasures.

Visitors to the little house on Xerxes Avenue find the residence has earned its immodest nickname, the Klippersonian — a name bestowed by Klipper’s “DC” (Darling Companion), Kathleen Richert.

Indeed there is a museum quality to the abode, bursting with objects that each have a place, a person and a story attached to them. The assorted oddities and curiosities housed inside the Klippersonian serve as signposts for those looking to understand the curious nature of their garrulous, globetrotting owner. You sense yourself becoming part of the story, as Klipper’s generous nature quickly draws you into a sprawling, larger-than-life narrative. As an artist, and as a person, he is a seeker, always ready to share his collected knowledge and digressive history while collecting new gems along the way.

SEE KLIPPER / PAGE B3

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B3

Klipper took this photograph of Jorge Luis Borges at Minnehaha Falls during the famed Argentinian writer’s visit to the Twin Cities in 1982. “I want to have my ear cast in gold because he sung a tango in my ear,” Klipper says.

In the entrance to the Klippersonian, a collection of World War I propaganda posters is displayed beside photographs Klipper took of World War I cemeteries in 1984. Photo by Sheila Regan

FROM KLIPPER / PAGE B1

Klipper’s wanderlust has taken him to every corner of the earth, including both the North and South poles; he jokes that he’s “bipolar” and has journeyed to the South Pole a half dozen times. His arctic panoramas of Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Alaska have documented the planet’s changing climate. After

the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, he photographed the Sápmi region of Scandinavia, where radioactive fallout contaminated the pastureland and Klipper had to use radiation distribution maps to navigate. Klipper has also used his wide-scope photographic technique to capture Central and South America, Australia, South Asia and all 50 states.

In the entrance to the Klippersonian,

gluten-free options

a collection of World War I propaganda posters is displayed beside photographs Klipper took of World War I cemeteries in 1984, during a trip he took along the Western Front in France and Belgium. “It was this historical event that determined the era of time I would live my life out, and so I went there,” he said. “It’s something that haunts me still.”

His interest in war history started as a kid growing up in the Bronx during the 1940s and ’50s, surrounded by World War II military surplus. Later, he’d become fascinated with the Great War, and he has shelves of literature and history about the period. “It really changed the world for me looking at the aftermath of that war,” he said.

Yet, Klipper’s interest in military history has nothing to do with glory or patriotism, but rather with the devastating impact of war. He himself avoided serving in Vietnam, obtaining a 4-F from a sympathetic psychologist, who wrote a letter saying the young artist, covered in clay from the pottery studio, was physically and mentally unfit for duty.

Stepping into the Klippersonian living room, a striking abstract painting by wellknown opera and theater designer Bob Israel hangs on the far wall. Southwestern art and textiles cover tables and walls throughout the first floor, and the Klippersonian is home, Klipper said, to the world’s largest collection of works by Mari Newman, a Minneapolis-based outsider artist known for her eccentric “House at the End of the Rainbow” abode at 51st & Penn.

The walls of the Klippersonian are blanketed with photographs by Edward S. Curtis, Ansel Adams, Jack Delano and his friend Lee Friedlander. A backroom of the home is filled with Sami apparel, a dulcimer Klipper built himself, one large ostrich egg and Inuit craft pieces from Greenland.

One of the most remarkable finds in the Klippersonian is hung high in the hallway, just below the ceiling: Klipper’s portrait of the Argentinian essayist and short-story master Jorge Luis Borges at Minnehaha Falls.

SEE KLIPPER / PAGE B4

damicoandsons.com

B4 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1990–2020 FROM KLIPPER / PAGE B3

During a trip to Buenos Aires in the early 1980s, Klipper visited a local woman whose aunt he had met a few months earlier at an art gallery party near Loring Park. While talking to the woman’s fiance, Klipper offhandedly mentioned how much he revered Borges, and the man responded that Borges happened to be his father’s best friend.

“Word got to me that [Borges] loved coming to places, and he’d never been [to Minnesota],” Klipper said. “So he needed a local contact.”

In 1982, Klipper booked Borges at the Walker Art Center, and served as his guide to the Twin Cities.

“He was a real devotee of Longfellow, so he had to go to Minnehaha Falls to see the statue,” Klipper said.

Borges was in his 80s at the time of the visit and almost totally blind. The day they visited the falls, Klipper remembers picking up the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, in which Gore Vidal quipped: “Like so many blind people, my grandfather was a passionate sightseer.”

While walking around the falls, Borges explained to Klipper the differences between tango and milonga music.

“I want to have my ear cast in gold because he sung a tango in my ear,” Klipper said.

Life in Minneapolis

Sipping tea in his dining room, where the table’s centerpiece is a sculpture made of beer cans, Klipper noted that if he were drinking something stronger, his Bronx accent would probably be more pronounced.

Unlike many from the East Coast, he has always had romantic notions of the Midwest. In 1970, fresh from a breakup with a Swedish woman with whom he’d lived in Stockholm, intrigued by all things Vikingrelated and bearing a job offer from MCAD, Klipper made his move to Minneapolis.

Klipper sits outside his home on Xerxes Avenue. Photo by Ola Billmont

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

SEE KLIPPER’S WORK Klipper’s photography will be featured in Gallery 360’s 20-year anniversary show this summer.

When: Opening reception, 7-10 p.m.

Saturday June 6 Where: Gallery 360, 3011 W. 50th St. Info: gallery360mpls.com, 612-925-2400

Walker’s bookshop about a portly penguin whose hat gets stolen by an odiferous seagull named Stuart. “I needed a nickname, so it became Uncle Stinky,” Klipper said.

Local recreation A Bronx native, Klipper moved to Minneapolis in 1970 after getting a job offer from MCAD. Photo by Michael Simon

The job didn’t last, but Klipper stayed.

Over the years, he picked up jobs here and there and got lucky with grants, receiving two Guggenheim fellowships and grants from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation and the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. He was also awarded prestigious commissions and exhibited his work both internationally and at the Walker, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But at Armatage Montessori School, where he’s volunteered for 14 years, he’s known simply as Uncle Stinky.

Klipper started out as a reading partner, which later morphed into more classroom work. The Minneapolis school district has praised Klipper as being an “extraordinary volunteer” who “shares his insights and skills by tying in his experiences with the genres the students are reading about in class.”

Klipper said he enjoys acquainting his students with the Klippersonian’s collections.

“The house is just filled with stuff I [can] bring in and talk about,” he said. “When I was in public school, I could kick every other kid’s butt on show and tell — and I still can.”

The Uncle Stinky moniker came from a children’s book Klipper picked up at the

The house is just filled with stuff I [can] bring in and talk about. When I was in public school, I could kick every other kid’s butt on show and tell — and I still can.

— Stuart Klipper

While Klipper, 78, is known for photographing global landscapes, he also shoots photos locally.

He enjoys walking along Minnehaha Creek, pointing his camera up- and downstream. And he likes to shoot the nearby intersection of 50th & Xerxes, capturing newly exposed trolley tracks and freshly forged potholes. Last year, he discovered a long brick wall in Fulton. “[The bricks] bore decades worth of scratched-in graffiti inscriptions,” he said. “I thoroughly documented them as a telltale of lives lived around where I live.”

When not taking photographs, globetrotting or regaling young people with tales from his travels, Klipper loves to dance with his DC, Kathleen. “I caught the bug in the ’80s,” he said.

He’s versed in swing and tango and, if someone starts playing salsa music, he said he can rise to the occasion. Formerly a regular at Lee’s Liquor Lounge, Klipper now frequents the Fraternal Order of the Eagles club in Seward. He also gets to New Orleans at least once per year to practice Cajun zydeco dancing (though Minneapolis has its own scene). “We have more Cajun zydeco going on up here than any place outside of Louisiana,” Klipper said.

Dancing came late in life, but he’s always been a music fan, from his days growing up in the Bronx to his years as a college student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is where he saw Bob Dylan play one of his first concerts after leaving Minnesota.

“He was some kid with a guitar like the rest of us,” Klipper said. “Whatever the internecine understandings of what our definitions of folk music were, he didn’t fit.”

He remembers thinking: “He’s not doing what anyone else is doing.”

Klipper ran into Dylan two years later in Greenwich Village, and he claims Dylan recognized him as “Stuart Klipper from Ann Arbor.” “That wouldn’t happen again,” Klipper said.

Not long after the Greenwich Village run-in, Klipper took over a woman’s apartment in Ann Arbor where Dylan had recently stayed. There he found a harmonica that he is sure must have belonged to Dylan.

“If I only can get a cheek swab from him, I’m sure that something can be scraped out of the harmonica, and I can sell it for a few hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “It’s my relic of the true cross. I choose to believe.”

Klipper shows off shirts custom made by his “DC” (Darling Companion), Kathleen Richert. Richert has made him two shirts a year for the past decade and will be teaching a class on “The Boyfriend Shirt” this March at the Textile Center.

Photo by Chris Juhn

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B5

B6 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

Unsung Architecture

1990–2020

By Kyrshanbor Hynniewta and Adam Jonas

Former Kingfield residents go off-grid

“I

t’s a waffle day!” exclaimed Mike Larsen to his wife, Linda Nelson, as he awoke to the sun rising over

the prairie.

While most of us wouldn’t think twice about plugging in an appliance — especially on a casual weekend — making waffles means something more to the couple than a scrumptious breakfast.

The former Minneapolis residents moved from their Kingfield home in 2011 and now live outside of Winona in a home that is completely off the grid.

Disconnecting from infrastructure that most of us take for granted has given them a keen sense of the natural cycles that occur around them. When there’s a lot of rain, their 5,000-gallon storage tank overflows and they indulge in a big bath or wash less frequently laundered blankets and coats.

When the sun shines for several days, their solar batteries reach maximum capacity, enabling them to utilize the “free” energy on more energy-intensive appliances — a waffle iron is one of their favorites.

“I’m blessed to engage in the abundance and scarcity of the land — the heightened awareness of the great connection,” Larsen says as he reflects on the home they’ve dubbed “The House the Land Built.”

Going completely off-grid isn’t for everyone.

We have not yet mentioned their composting toilet, which in all fairness is not as gross as you might expect.

In the city there is of course already an infrastructure for our homes and businesses to readily tie into. However, as we look toward the years ahead, it can be helpful to bring a little off-grid ethos to our lives and, with it, a bit more connection to the natural world.

Doing so is imperative as buildings consume approximately 40% of the energy in the U.S. and consequently have a large impact on climate change.

To combat this, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has initiated the 2030 Commitment — a program that publicly tracks the profession’s dedication and progress toward achieving carbon-neutral construction within the next 10 years.

Mike Larsen and Linda Nelson’s home outside of Winona.

Photo

by Paul Neseth

It’s quite a lofty resolution for the new decade.

Architects are taking this seriously. In 2018, over 250 firms reported data to the 2030 Commitment’s Design Data Exchange. These projects accounted for energy savings of more than $3.3 billion and an annual overall savings of 17.7 million megatons of carbon dioxide emissions (equivalent to about 21 million acres of forest carbon sequestration), according to the 2018 summary of the AIA 2030 Commitment.

Striving for net-zero is a daunting task — where might a resident in Southwest start?

To evaluate your current energy use and get recommendations for how to save more, have the Xcel Energy Squad pay your home a visit. Their team will conduct a Home Energy Audit that includes a blower door test, which puts a large fan in an exterior door to measure how “leaky” a home might be. (Visit tinyurl.com/xcel-home-nrg to learn more.)

Going beyond energy savings to energy production, a glance at the Minneapolis Solar Suitability website (tinyurl.com/mpls-solar) can offer you an initial impression of your solar energy potential and the feasibility of putting photovoltaics on your roof. From there, local photovoltaic installers can help establish more site-specific solutions.

As one considers adding onto or renovating a building, meeting with a design professional versed in the complexities of space planning, construction and energy use can be an effective way to digest those (and many more) variables. By listening to clients’ needs and being mindful of resources, architectural solutions can do more with less — oftentimes rethinking how existing spaces are used.

For example, religious buildings can offer their space to other groups throughout the week. Linda Nelson reduces her carbon

footprint by renting space at Judson Church in Kingfield to operate an outpatient mental health clinic, Grove Psychotherapy. Finding abundance in existing infrastructure yields a way to get more out of the resources a building already has with the added bonus of serving a larger community.

Reducing energy use doesn’t necessarily mean giving things up. Rather, it means reframing our perspective to see the abundance around us. Here’s to more waffle days in 2020!

Kyrshanbor Hynniewta is a designer at Locus Architecture. His recently completed thesis at the University of Minnesota and studies the value an architect can bring to single-family home construction.

Adam Jonas is an architect at Locus Architecture at 45th & Nicollet in Kingfield.

Visit locusarchitecture.com to learn more.

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1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B7

Moments in Minneapolis

By Karen Cooper

Nation’s first guide dog lived in Linden Hills

T

o prepare for the Southwest Journal’s 30th anniversary, the staff has been reading through the paper’s back issues.

Local history stories have always been a part of the Southwest Journal. In the paper’s third issue, published in April 1990, Mary Balfour wrote about “The Ladies of Linden Hills Boulevard,” sisters Ruth and Sally Crandall, who had moved into their house in 1906. (See page B9.) They knew lots of neighborhood stories of quieter times and recalled their dancing lessons above the Linden Hills Masonic lodge and the fun they had in the winter of 1914-15, flying down the Park Board’s big toboggan slide and sliding far out onto the frozen lake.

At one point in Balfour’s story, Sally Crandall remembers a “big estate that had four lots, two on Queen Avenue and two on Linden Hills Boulevard.” By those breadcrumbs, I came across the story of how blind Americans achieved the right to bring their service dogs with them in public places.

That “big estate” referred to the large brick and half-timbered house at 4236 Queen Ave. S. Built in 1897, it sits on a double lot, and its former estate grounds (the two lots behind, facing Linden Hills Boulevard) were sold and built on decades ago. In 1934, after the original owner died, this exceptional, impressive house was bought by U.S. Sen. Thomas D. Schall.

Schall’s origin story is iconic and inspiring. He was born in Michigan in 1877 in a shack so meager that only a blanket nailed to the doorway kept the winter winds out. His father died or disappeared while Thomas was young, and he and his mother came to Minnesota, where she cooked for the railroad workers and tried to get by.

He grew up doing the jobs a boy could do to help out and got some schooling in Ortonville. There, he discovered his flair for public speaking and won a contest in oratory. This led to a scholarship at Hamline College, and Tom Schall was set upon his path to become a lawyer.

He received his law degree from William Mitchell School of Law in 1904.

A few years later, he was blinded. He was trying to light a cigar with an electric lighter.

It was plugged into the wrong circuit and exploded. That cost him his sight. Fighting through this adversity, his law practice began to focus on personal injury cases.

His wife, Margaret, became his reader and most useful assistant. His law practice was successful in no small part because juries loved his orations.

Schall ran for Congress in 1914 on the Progressive ticket, winning a three-way race. He represented Minnesota’s nowdefunct 10th Congressional District, which included part or all of Hennepin, Anoka, Wright, Kanabec and Pine counties. He

Thomas D. Schall and his wife, Margaret, pose with the senator’s dog, Lux, the first authorized guide dog in American history.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

was the first blind man seated in the House of Representatives. To accommodate his blindness, the House allowed a page to accompany him at all times.

Tom Schall’s political life was intense and combative, but after 10 years in the House, he was elected to the Senate in 1925. Schall had worked on legislation to help the blinded veterans of World War I and had become acquainted with a St. Paul

businessman who had seen firsthand what was being done in Germany to help blind veterans. Jack Sinykin, who founded the world-renowned LaSalle Kennels in 1926, imported to America a “German police dog” and trained him to work as a guide dog. Ultimately, he trained more than 3,000 guide dogs. The first was Lux of LaSalle.

Lux was given to Sen. Schall, making him SEE MOMENTS IN MPLS / PAGE B8

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Alcohol not included and does not include gratuity.

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Prime Deli & Restaurant | 4224 Minnetonka Blvd, Minneapolis 952-303-5813 | primedelimn.com | @primeDeliMN Sun–Thur 11am–9pm | Fri 11am–2pm | Closed on Saturdays | Hours Change Seasonally Prime Deli SWJ 012320 4.indd 1

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B8 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1990–2020

FROM MOMENTS IN MPLS / PAGE B7

the first person in America to use a guide dog. The pair became famous, with Lux guiding Schall through Washington’s busy streets. Lux knew where to find Schall’s office, the Senate chamber and even the Capitol’s basement barbershop. With just a word, Lux could bring Schall anywhere he needed to go. He would growl at traffic until the cars stopped and he could guide Schall safely across a street. Of course there were fewer cars back then. Schall and Lux were irreplaceable partners.

When the railroads refused to allow Lux to travel with Schall and insisted that the dog ride in the baggage car, Schall introduced a bill to allow the guide dogs of the blind — which were an entirely new idea — to accompany them anywhere, even restaurants. That bill was enacted in 1926 and is still the law today.

Lux died at home in Linden Hills while Schall was absent on a trip, a funeral visit to a colleague in Montana. Ironically, he hadn’t taken Lux on the trip because he thought the train ride would be too hard on the aging dog. But Lux turned away from food and died, Schall said, of a broken heart. The news was published from coast to coast.

Schall took up with another trained guide dog, but it was never that indispensible partnership he’d had with Lux. Sinykin’s kennel burned down in 1935 and his pioneering role in training guide dogs was subsequently overshadowed by others. And in an even greater irony, Schall was hit by a car and killed in 1935. The reports of his death do not say if his dog was with him.

Karen Cooper discovers the stories of Southwest houses. If your Southwest Minneapolis home appears in the Hennepin History Museum realty photo archives, you can ask her to write your house’s history.

The Schalls’ Linden Hills house at 4236 Queen Ave. S. Photo courtesy of the Hennepin History Museum

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Wells David SWJ 012320 4.indd 2

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1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B9

From the archives

The ladies of Linden Hills Boulevard Editor’s note: This article, written by Mary Balfour, was originally published in the Southwest Journal in April 1990 — inside the paper’s third ever issue. We’re reprinting it in full in honor of the Southwest Journal’s 30th anniversary. After reading this story, columnist Karen Cooper became curious about a passing reference to a large estate on Queen Avenue and discovered the story of how the nation’s first official guide dog belonged to a U.S. senator who lived in Linden Hills (see page B7).

T

he potluck dinner held a few years ago was to welcome a couple into the Linden Hills neighborhood. Everybody wore a nametag that listed their respective “move-in” dates. Sally and Ruth Crandall wrote 1906 on theirs. I made it a point to talk to them and not lose all the wonderful information they knew from being such long neighborhood residents. For the most part, the story that follows is told in their own words.

Sally and Ruth Crandall were born in North Minneapolis. In 1905 their father rented a little yellow house on Thomas Avenue west of Lake Harriet. Ruth was 1 and Sally was 3 years old.

A year later he bought a lot on the south end of Linden Hills Boulevard. The street was originally called Park Boulevard but was changed to Linden Hills Boulevard a few years later to keep it from being confused with Park Avenue.

People were building year-round homes on Linden Hills Boulevard, unlike Cottage City, in

which people built summer cabins.

Sally and Ruth said of their father, “He started building our house right away and we moved into it in 1906. There were only a couple of houses on the east side of the street and several on the west side of the street — I think it was because they had a better view of the lake. But there were several houses already built on the block north of us.

“The neighborhood really built up because of the streetcars and the lake,” they continued.

“We used the streetcars for everything — going on dates, shopping downtown, getting to the university.”

“I remember I left the house at 7:40 and could be in class in Folwell Hall at 8:30,” said Sally. “They even had routes that went way out to Deephaven and Excelsior on Lake Minnetonka. We loved riding the streetcars.

They went like lightning, especially from 36th Street and Lake Calhoun. It was surprising there weren’t more accidents — most of the time they went right on the streets with the cars. But we had the best service in the city.

“Lake Harriet was fantastic,” Sally continued. “There was a series of pavilions.

The one we remember best blew down in 1926. The band played in the roof garden and the conductor always wore formal clothes.

They had a woman soloist whom he led up the stairs. There was a restaurant on the main floor but we had too many kids to eat there.

When you looked out on the lake all you could

Sally and Ruth Crandall with their father in 1915. Archival photo

see was canoes. It looked like Venice with the women lounging on wonderful pillows.”

“I thought it was the most romantic thing I had ever seen,” Ruth said.

“Everyone had canoes. There was a solid row of canoe racks along the shore from the Pavilion to 44th Street. It was a wonderful place to grow up and it seemed like the adults all had fun too,” said Sally.

“There were a couple big estates on Queen that had four lots — two on Queen and two on the boulevard — which made Linden Hills even more attractive. One had a red brick barn that burned down around Christmas in 1929.

There weren’t any horses in it by then, but several nice carriages were lost.

“There were also three tennis courts within two blocks. The Chapin House at 40th & Queen had a tennis court on Linden Hills Boulevard.

Another house a block down on Queen had a tennis court. Then there was another court on the corner where St. John’s Episcopal Church is now. It was owned by the church which was on the next lot. Dad loved to play tennis.

“In the winter of 1914-1915, a big toboggan slide was erected by the Park Board just south of the bridge at the end of Linden Hills Boulevard. It was so large it spanned West Lake Harriet Boulevard below and went onto the ice on the lake. Cars went under the slide but there was little traffic in those days. At that time, many people built toboggans in their basements and had toboggan slides of their own. I know we had one in our backyard. Of course, it wasn’t big but it was fun. The Park Board slide was only open during certain hours and an attendant let you down. They only had it a couple of years because I think it was pretty dangerous. You just flew down there. We didn’t use it much because you had to be with an adult. We also tobogganed on the 44th Street hill and turned on the road next to the lake.

“There used to be an island in the middle of the street in front of 4260 Linden Hills Blvd.

It had trees and we used to play with our dolls out there. It was like a separate, faraway place.

4260 Linden Hills Blvd. was a vacant lot that we walked over to get to the Commercial Club (2718-2720 W. 43rd St.). The library was on the first floor. The Masonic Lodge who owned the building owned the second floor. On the third floor Mrs. Noble and Miss Martin gave kids dancing classes. And that was where the famous Linden Hills Dancing Club first met. Everyone,

“When you looked out on the lake all you could see was canoes. It looked like Venice with the women lounging on wonderful pillows.”

— Sally Crandall

including our parents, was a member of that group. It is still meeting but, of course, it doesn’t meet in the same place anymore. The firehouse was built next door to protect our area. It is one of the oldest in the city.”

Ruth said she remembered large tents each summer to the south of the bridge on the boulevard. “The property was owned by a family.

There were platforms there all year round and then in the summer tents were put up.

“As kids, we thought they might be gypsies,” said Sally, “but I’m sure they weren’t.

They were people that just moved out to the lake for the summer.”

After graduating from the University of Minnesota, Ruth lived in the house she grew up in. She was an officer in the trust department at Northwestern Bank in Minneapolis. Sally was the secretary to the president of Carleton College and lived in Northfield, Minnesota, but spent much time at the old house.

After they retired they both returned home again to Linden Hills Boulevard. For years they could be seen every morning walking their little champagne-colored poodle, Cocoa, and talking to neighbors along the way. They were always interested in what the neighborhood kids were doing. (I can still see Sally and Ruth sitting on my sidewalk in assorted lawn chairs, swatting mosquitos and watching my daughter belt out “Annie.”)

They said smiling, “It wasn’t a fancy neighborhood — homey. We loved it.”

Four years ago Sally and Ruth Crandall moved to Becketwood on the Mississippi River. But some people still call Linden Hills Boulevard the Crandall Compound. Their nephew and his family live in the old house now, their brother and his wife live on the next block, and a niece and her husband live just across the street from the old house.

The sisters come back for church every Sunday morning. Sally and Ruth Crandall will always be part of the neighborhood.

41

coffeeandtealtd.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2020

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B10 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

1990–2020

From the archives

The infancy of the Southwest Journal In January 1990, a 12-page, tabloid-sized newspaper appeared in Southwest Minneapolis for the very first time — dropped on the doorsteps of Linden Hills residents and stacked in drugstore and supermarket newsstands in the neighborhoods north of Minnehaha Creek.

Printed in black and green ink, the cover of the Southwest Journal’s premiere issue featured a photo of a flock of geese feeding beside Lake Calhoun and a stylized drawing of the Como-Harriet trolley. The headline above the publisher’s introductory column declared: “Marching into the future with a new newspaper.”

Three decades later, the paper is still marching into the future and its early issues make for a fascinating time capsule.

In 1990, commercial recycling began in Uptown with a $16,000 grant from the county. Lake and Lagoon avenues were turned into one-way streets in the hope of easing traffic congestion and “discourag[ing] motorists from cutting through surrounding neighborhoods.”

Residents protested construction of the high-rise Calhoun Beach Club Apartments.

Construction began on a $3 million expansion of the Washburn Library.

Writers reported stories on airplane noise complaints, auto thefts, magnet schools and the uncertain fate of light-rail transit.

Real estate features gave tips on prepping your home for sale and making the choice between remodeling and moving. Ads from Broders’ and Sebastian Joe’s promised half-off focaccia bread and ice cream that’s “INDESCRIBABLE!! LICK! after LICK! after LICK!” Poetry editor Yvonne Hunter evoked the feeling of “Southwest in April”: “Hoppity, hippity,/ slippity, sloppity;/ some Southwest springtimes/ are not quite so hottity!”

The paper’s early issues featured plenty of sophomoric diversions.

Staff roamed the streets, snapping residents’ photos and asking them off-kilter questions: “Do you believe in angels?” “What would you do if you were the last person on Earth?” “What is the most terrifying kitchen appliance in your house?” (“My computer,” replied a man pictured without a shirt. “It’s showing me how slow my learning curve is.”)

In the opinion pages, a sardonic figure with the pseudonym “Bart Johns” held forth on “the latest craze in women’s swimwear, the G-String.” “I would imagine there is a lot of winter whiteness on many of the local behinds, and sunburn is bound to be a problem,” he wrote.

In its youth, the Southwest Journal was a chaotic, informal operation, with a small team of half a dozen or so writers gathering each month to brainstorm story ideas in the Linden Hills kitchen of co-founders Janis Hall and Terry Gahan.

The paper’s staff had a sense of fun and freedom but also of civic duty and ambition.

In her column introducing the paper to the people of Southwest Minneapolis, Hall chose to start with a quote from Will Rogers: “All I know is just what I read in the papers.”

— Zac Farber

1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B11

SAR AH HICKS & SAM BERGMAN

The Russian Century with Sam and Sarah

CONCERT AND CONVERSATION

CONCERT AND CONVERSATION

Feb 7

Mar 7

Minnesota Orchestra Sarah Hicks, conductor Sam Bergman, host and viola

Minnesota Orchestra Sarah Hicks, conductor Sam Bergman, host and viola

In this concert, we explore the cutting edge of how the rhythms and melodies we love engage our brains and prod us to seek out more. Hear excerpts from Beethoven’s Ninth and Mozart’s 39th symphonies as well as Schoenberg, Sibelius and more.

A guided tour through 120 years of Russian music and history, from Shostakovich and Stalin to Glasnost, the end of the USSR, and the composers charting Russia’s cultural path today.

Ravel Piano Concerto Feb 13–15 Minnesota Orchestra Karina Canellakis, conductor Francesco Piemontesi, piano Conductor Karina Canellakis leads the Orchestra in a performance that includes Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Ravel’s Piano Concerto.

Prokofiev and Shostakovich Mar 5–6 Minnesota Orchestra Kirill Karabits, conductor Christian Tetzlaff, violin Don’t miss this chance to experience Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and a revelatory performance of Shostakovich’s brilliant Second Concerto from acclaimed German violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

Gerstein Plays Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 Mar 13–15 Minnesota Orchestra Juanjo Mena, conductor Kirill Gerstein, piano Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein brings rigor and wit to Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto in a program that also features Shostakovich’s heroic Leningrad Symphony.

Cameron Carpenter at Northrop* Mar 27–28 Minnesota Orchestra Akiko Fujimoto, conductor Cameron Carpenter, organ Cameron Carpenter will play Jongen’s Symphonie concertante for Organ and Orchestra. Also on the program: Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite and Polina Nazaykinskaya’s Winter Bells.

612-371-5656 / minnesotaorchestra.org Orchestra Hall / #mnorch *Located at Northrop, University of Minnesota. PHOTOS Hicks & Bergman: Travis Anderson Photo; Canellakis: Mathias Bothor; Carpenter: Christine Bush. All dates, programs, artists and prices are subject to change.

CAMERON CARPENTER

K ARINA CANELL AKIS

CHRISTIAN TETZL AFF

Music and the Mind with Sam and Sarah

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

B12 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

1990–2020

From the archives

Front pages through the ages

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

1995

southwestjournal notes: here is logo in font form, but befor adjustments to ascenders and descenders.

So really a font reference

2001

Trade Gothic Bold No.2 93pt.

1 pt stroke

20

23

What a hoot

Music lovers find refuge at Java Jack’s in East Harriet

swjournal.com Vol. 18, No. 9 April 23–May 6, 2007

Get it to go

Sampling a bento box at Fuji Ya on Lake St.

SOUTHWEST MINNEAPOLIS’ COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER

A Labor of Love

BRACING FOR A

TORN UPTOWN

Linden Hills church finds creative use for 150-year-old neighborhood tree

Uptown area business owners, residents get ready for summer construction

BY JAKE WEYER

BY DAN HAUGEN

B

owling pins clunked on the far right lane inside Bryant-Lake Bowl, where Lynnhurst resident Ruthanne Qua brought her children Max, 13, and Maddie, 11, to enjoy a game on a day off from school.

Local artist Scott Seekins sat at a small circle table at the restaurant, quietly eating a plate of fries and vegetables, his curly hair draped slightly over his thick glasses. Nearby, Minneapolis Playwright Center employee and freelance writer Todd Ross typed poems on his laptop.

Server Diana Ross-Gotta scurried about the place, cleaning and taking orders from the steady Monday afternoon crowd.

LINDEN HILLS — The old oak tree had stood at the intersection of 42nd Street and Sheridan Avenue since, well, before the intersection even existed. When it was just a sapling, the nearest avenue would have been a muddy cowpath called Richfield Road. It grew into a tree as the Civil War was being fought, and provided shade years before Edison would invent the light bulb and more than a century before we’d come to grasp the concept of global warming.

And so it came as troubling news when the congregation at St. John’s Episcopal Church learned its building expansion would require taking down the tree, estimated to be about 150 years old.

see UPTOWN page 31

‘‘

We, as a community, struggled for all sorts of reasons with the expansion… The tree sort of symbolized that: what would be lost for the sake of our future?

’’

St. John’s Mariann Edgar Budde

PHOTOS BY ROBB LONG

14

16

25

Southwest residents support faithbased nonprofit with coffee sales

Two Southwest seniors win college scholarships for artwork

New photos and paintings by the artist on display at Flanders

One cup at a time

2003

Seeking solutions

F O C U S

Status » not quo

Walleye winner

Sneaker freak Sly Peoples’ boutique brings a unique flavor

» Whole fish is star of the menu at Rainbow B11

southwestjournal.com Vol. 19, No. 9 May 5-18, 2008

✓

A taste of RCV

2004 a smokin’ sensation

this camp

A precocious 4-year-old

rocks

Colin Kloecker and Troy Gallas are creating unique opportunities for creative people to make connections

Minneapolis residents learn about ranked-choice voting and choose their favorite candy bar // A14

wine may flow

Getting a whiff of C&G’s Smoking barbecue Flavor // b5

twin town Guitars gives young musicians chance to perform in a band

Holiday events

It’s the perfect time to try this squash soup recipe

Good reasons to stop hibernating and start celebrating

Flavor // B7

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

August 23–September 5, 2010 Vol. 21, No. 17 southwestjournal.com

August 10–23, 2009 Vol. 20, No. 16 southwestjournal.com

In season

Uptown wine tasting could be on again // A12

Art of This Gallery celebrates four years // B6

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

SOUTHWEST MINNEAPOLIS’ COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER

2005

Como-Harriet streetcar celebrates 100 years on the rails

HCMC clinic on the move City’s busiest clinic relocating three blocks north

BY DYLAN THOMAS

WHITTIER — Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) plans to hopscotch over the Lake Street Kmart and the Midtown Greenway, moving its busy West Lake Street clinic three blocks north to Eat Street.

In late April, HCMC was still negotiating the purchase of nearly three and a half acres in Whittier, but HCMC Vice President Mike Harristhal said he was confident the sale of the former GFI America, Inc.

see HCMC page A31

Of 1,100 streetcars of its type built by Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) between 1898 and the WWI era, car 1300 is one of two that survived intact — its sibling is in a Maine museum. Car 1300 rolled out of a St. Paul assembly plant in 1908,

see STREETCAR page A26

Kingfield housing project moves forward

BY JAKE WEYER

The sun is always shining in Greg Alford’s world.

That’s why he always wears sunglasses, why he’s not overly concerned about the nation’s financial troubles and why he and friend Chris Jackman, known as C.J., can start a brand-new restaurant without any previous experience and not worry about it.

“I just know that people are going to eat,” Alford said. “If you give them good food and reasonable prices, they’re going to eat.”

His theory has proven true so far. Since opening

C&G’s Smoking Barbecue June 8 at 48th Street and Nicollet Avenue, Jackman (C) and Alford (G) have had a steady stream of customers gobbling up their ribs, Coney dogs, sunfish, corned beef, chicken wings and other specialties.

The barbecue shop is one of several new independent businesses taking off in Southwest despite the stormy economic climate, a phenomenon that’s not limited to this area.

Any time is the right time Right now in the Twin Cities, within 25 miles of Downtown, there are roughly 2,000 new busi-

nesses being formed every month, said Patrick Boulay, president and CEO of startup resource New Business Minnesota.

“It’s a huge number,” he said. “It’s why we exist.”

That count includes everything from the weekend handyman service to the company looking to build a better heart valve, Boulay said, and the down economy isn’t slowing the boom.

Though some banks have tightened lending, interest rates are down, startup costs and overhead are low and the social-networking age has made SEE STARTUPS | A10

 Chris Jackman (pictured) and friend Greg Alford had no restaurant experience before opening C&G’s Smoking Barbecue at 48th Street and Nicollet Avenue this spring.

PHOTO BY ROBB LONG

BY JAKE WEYER

Developers of a 42-unit affordable apartment complex for young adults planned for 3700 Nicollet Ave. recently finished navigating a five-month community discussion about the development and hope to submit plans to the city in a few weeks.

Nonprofit organization Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation (PCNF) teamed up with youth service provider YouthLink on the project, called Nicollet Square. The development attracted an outpouring of community attention when it was initially proposed in November, prompting the Kingfield Neighborhood Association (KFNA) to set up a public process to educate the community and give feedback to the developers.

Rockin’ for the kids

After nearly a decade of school performances, neighborhoodfamous band Armatagious is looking to pass the instruments

SUBMITTED IMAGE

A rendering of the proposed affordable apartment complex at 3700 Nicollet Ave. That process ended in April with the KFNA board’s approval of eight variances for the project, which will serve as a recommendation to the Minneapolis Planning Commission.

The commission could make a decision on the development as soon as

op-ed

news

June.

The board also approved a community benefits agreement designed to hold PCNF to its word on

see HOUSING page A23

neighborhoods

A5

A8

B14

Senator says he has ‘mayor’ stitched into his underwear

Walsh reflects on his father’s old photos

Notes from a fashion bike ride

Spotlight on Coleman

Big district changes without students changing schools

Cycling in style

The Greatest

BY JAKE WEYER

Downsizing plan aims to minimize disruption

ARMATAGE — It started with a birthday. Armatage Community and Montessori School turned 50 in 2002 and staff wanted to celebrate with a big party and live music — something to get students going during the cold, slow month of January.

They needed a band. A band that would not only be appropriate for elementary-age kids, but one that would represent the neighborhood and, of course, get people dancing.

“The question was who would SEE ARMATAGIOUS | A16

BY DYLAN THOMAS

Minneapolis Public Schools administrators will attempt to minimize the number of students forced to change schools during a major district restructuring in 2010.

That was the direction given by a majority of the School Board during a July discussion meeting, a meeting that also revealed deep divisions among board members on some aspects

PHOTO BY JAKE WEYER

Children dance during an Armatagious performance July 21 at Armatage Park.

2008

Solstice storm

A recap of cleanup efforts // a17

Summer poetry the SWJ poetry project // B6

of the restructuring plan, known as Changing School Options.

Administrators were expected to return to the board with another set of revisions this month.

It was the second time the School Board asked for changes to Changing School Options.

School Board Chair Tom Madden pronounced the original version of the plan “DOA” in May. Changing School Options aims to downsize the district, SEE SCHOOLS | A15

photo by Robb long

Point, Wis. Today, only small brewpubs exist in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, St. Paul and Brooklyn Center have become home to surging breweries.

That could all change in the next 18 months, as three Minneapolis craft brewers intend to open their own microbreweries in the city.

If Minneapolis is on the verge of a brewery renaissance, then Southwest is the center of the movement.

All three craft brewers — Fulton Beer, Harriet Brewing and the newest to the scene, 612Brew — have similar

Nick HAlter

Faded Grain Belt beer signs still stand on taverns and along highways crossing Montana, relics of a 160-year Minneapolis brewing tradition.

But like those signs, breweries in Minneapolis have faded since their heyday in the 1960s, when Grain Belt and Gluek’s were major players on the regional and national beer scene. Thirty breweries have either folded or had their operations moved outside the city to places like New Ulm, Cold Spring and Stevens

backgrounds: They brew beer in garages of Southwest homes and they have used the taste palates of Southwest residents to help perfect their recipes.

The Minneapolis City Council has taken notice. In early August, after hearing testimony from the budding brewers, the Council passed a “Brew Beer Here” ordinance change sponsored by member Gary Schiff that will allow small microbreweries that don’t serve food to sell 64-ounce jugs, or “growlers” of beer to their

3 Voters turn out for hot, early primary electioNS

2010

Primary participation highest since 2000

by JAke weyer ANd dylAN tHomAS

With a DFL gubernatorial race as hot as the weather on the line, voters surpassed primary predictions Aug. 10, migrating not to their cabins but to the polls in numbers not seen in a decade.

The unofficial tally from the Secretary of State indicated that out of 3,806,763 eligible voters, 589,814 (15.5 percent) showed up at the polls statewide. The

last time a primary drew such a crowd was in 2000, when 602,690 voters (17.19 percent) cast a ballot. That’s despite worries that the early primary, moved up a month to give overseas absentee voters more time to submit a ballot, might stifle voting.

It didn’t, but some voters, including Terry Crouchet, who cast her ballot at Linden Hills Recreation Center, were caught See primAry // A16

See brew city // A18

Park Board organizing LRT advisory group

by JAke weyer

photo by jake weyer

Southwest residents Kristin Dittman (left) and Valeria Christensen cast their primary votes Aug. 10 at Armatage Recreation Center.

Adding another facet to the ongoing Southwest light rail discussion, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted last month to organize a citizens advisory committee (CAC) to mitigate the impact of the route on parkland.

Park Board commissioners, City Council members, neighborhood associations, Mayor R.T. Rybak and County Commissioner Gail Dorfman will appoint the 17-member CAC. The group will consider historical, cultural, See lrt // A11

2009

New indoor climbing venue Vertical Endeavor opens

PHOTO BY JAYME HALBRITTER

District details enrollment plan

photoS by MiChelle bruCh

BY DYLAN THOMAS

The cost of Minneapolis Public School’s efforts to accommodate growing enrollment in its lower grades is set to top $40 million.

The School Board could vote as soon as Nov. 29 on a $14.5million plan to reopen several closed school buildings and shift hundreds of classroom seats to make room for the influx of K–8 students. Earlier this fall, board members voted to spend $27 million to expand two crowded elementary schools, including Lake Harriet Community School’s lower campus in Southwest, bringing

Getting creative on class sizes

Southwest resident Nancy Lo honored with Recycler of the Year award

BY SARAH MCKENZIE

the total tab to about $41.5 million.

And it might not stop there.

As Budget Director Sarah Snapp explained at the Nov. 1 School Board meeting, the district had planned to put an estimated $4.7 million from the sale of two school buildings toward the cost of building its new headquarters at 1250 W. Broadway Ave., a $36.8-million project already underway. But the plan for increased enrollment includes reopening one of the buildings, Howe, and holds open that possibility for the other, Webster, if student population growth continues.

SEE ENROLLMENT // A13

Nancy Lo is the city’s no-impact woman.

She volunteers at zero-waste events all over town, works on recycling issues for Hennepin County and has a blog about her passion called the “Trash Basher.”

Lo even takes on other people’s trash to sort through it and find a way to divert it from the garbage stream. Her basement and garage at her home in the Fulton neighborhood are packed with piles of candy wrappers, chip bags and other junk she plans to recycle.

For her efforts, the Recycling Association of Minnesota recently named her the state’s Recycler of the Year.

SEE RECYCLER // A14

An enrollment increase makes a problem harder to manage By dylaN tHoMas

PHOTO BY SARAH MCKENZIE

Nancy Lo near her composting area in her backyard in Fulton.

WINDOM — Minneapolis Public Schools administrators and principals are finding creative solutions to the district’s “good problem” — rising enrollment — and the challenges it poses for managing class sizes.

Tight classrooms are nothing new in Southwest, where the district is spending $8 million to expand Lake Harriet Community School’s lower campus and the new Ramsey Middle School opened this year to accommodate wave of young students. But K-12 public school enrollment in Minneapolis increased by nearly 1,000

Ninety-two people turned out for a Windom neighborhood meeting earlier this fall. They complained of hotel guests throwing beer cans out of windows, and a constant flow of people from the motels approaching surrounding homes to ask for cigarettes and other things. One resident said she witnessed four drug deals in the nearby alley.

“I see people come out the window and jump the fence,” said resident Lindsey Bauer, requesting a better privacy fence.

In response, officials from the city department of health, regulatory services, police department, and state fire marshal’s office arrived

Get Out Guide.

KENNY

We talked with R.T. Rybak about post-mayoral life and his new memoir

PAGE B1

Fishing with Seekins // B12

When dogs bite

by Nick halter

see Motels // a12

parks update

Dog Park under scrutiny as budget tops $215K

By Nick Halter

students this year over last fall, and the classroom crunch is spreading.

“I think what it is, is we’re feeling it in more areas of the city,” said School Board Member Jill Davis. “We’ve always known the Southwest quadrant is tight, and I think it’s tighter than it used to be.”

The district’s targets are 26 students per classroom up to third grade and 32 students beyond that. North Side schools have a lower K-3 target of 21 students per classroom.

Jim Liston of the district’s Student Accounting Department said class sizes were “probably slightly over” district see class sizes // a13

What started as a $32,500 project to build a dog park at Martin Luther King Jr. Park has now grown into a $215,000 expenditure that has the Minneapolis Park Board looking for money to pay for the project.

The Park Board, after more than two years of debate, has finally received bids on a contract to construct a dog park at Lyndale Farmstead Park, on a 0.64-acre piece of land. The lowest bid recently came in at $191,400, which when combined with design and contingency costs, will well exceed the most recent project budget by about $80,000.

With the new budget, the dog see parks update // a17

As three pit bulls mauled a springer spaniel named Lucy, Dave Novak and three drywall workers kicked and punched the attackers in hopes of saving the smaller dog’s life. The police report notes that Lucy’s guts were spilling out as she ran for safety under a truck.

Odie, the reported leader of the roving dogs, tore

out an index card-sized chunk of Lucy’s side. Odie continued on the attack after Lucy ran under the truck, according to reports. John Schmeig said he grabbed one of his drywall stilts and beat on Odie until he finally ran away from Lucy.

Novak, who was hired to walk Lucy for her vacationing see dogs // a11

by Nick halter

photo by NiCk halter

The Minneapolis Park Board wants to build a dog park on what is now a parking lot at Lyndale Farmstead Park, but the project’s budget has ballooned to $215,000.

Matt Perry, who earlier promised to abide by the DFL endorsement, re-launched his campaign for Ward 13 City Council on June 17.

He’s not the only one challenging Linea Palmisano, who won the DFL endorsement on May 11. Missy Durant announced on June 14 she was also running for the seat, which is being vacated at the end of the year by mayoral candidate Betsy Hodges.

Durant is a human resources profes-

Perry

Durant

sional. She works for Salo, a seniorlevel staffing agency. She previously held the title of senior director of human resources for Best Buy, a job that brought her to Minneapolis from

Dave Novak, Doug Halliday and Becky Shedd play with Lucy, a springer spaniel. Novak was walking Lucy on May 11 when Lucy was attacked by three pit bulls. She nearly died. She's wrapped in a T-shirt now to protect her scars.

Photo by NiCk halter

City pushing forward on first phase of streetcars

2013 city election Ward 13 race

Perry back in, new candidate emerges in Ward 13 race

2011 Neighborhood Spotlight.

Catching up with R.T.

By MicHelle BrucH

A zero-waste warrior

Vote expected by end of November

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

Business owners pledge to address neighborhood concerns

The Aqua City and Metro Inn motels are coming under close scrutiny by the city of Minneapolis, spurred by increasing complaints in the Windom neighborhood.

A city inspection this fall has yielded new promises from the owners to clean up the motels at 5739 and 5637 Lyndale Ave. S., although police and city inspectors say conditions have vastly improved from a decade ago. “They know they have issues, but they want to reengage with the neighborhood,” said Amanda Vallone, coordinator of the Windom Community Council (WCC).

SEE VERTICAL // A12

2010

The Walker celebrates its 75th

Artist, angler

Valerie Barbaro climbs on opening day at the new Vertical Endeavors facility in Whittier.

SecTIoN

Kingfield attack highlights how the city handles dangerous dogs

BY AARON RUPAR

(From left) robert kasak, Adit kalra and ryan libby sit in the Uptown garage where they brew 612brew. the team plans to open a microbrewery in minneapolis next year.

Best of southWest IN THe

City keeping an eye on Windom motels

WHITTIER — Vertical Endeavors district supervisor Jason Noble describes his company’s new 26th & Nicollet indoor climbing facility as “probably the nicest climbing gym in the U.S.” Noble should know. He’s been climbing indoors for almost two decades and manages all four Vertical Endeavors locations, splitting his time between the Twin Cities, Duluth and Chicago.

It almost seems as though the old Ice House building at 2540 Nicollet Ave. S., built in 1900, was constructed with indoor climbing in mind.

“This was a perfect fit for us,” Noble said.

The building’s height allowed architects to build

PHOTO BY ROBB LONG

Lake Harriet Band Shell on warm summer days. Car 1300, which today runs an abbreviated track with a handful of other oldtime trolleys, served throughout most of Minneapolis’ streetcar heyday. But unlike most streetcars, it escaped dismantling or burning, allowing it to ride the rails just as it did when new.

China’s terracotta warriors return to the Mia art beat // B12

2007

June 24–July 7, 2013 Vol. 24, No. 13 southwestjournal.com

SCALING NEW HEIGHTS

New independent businesses take off in Southwest despite the stormy economic climate

Just as it was done a century ago, Jim Vaitkunas rang the signal bell, released the heavy, hissing brakes and ratcheted the throttle lever back a couple clicks.

Minnesota Streetcar Museum’s streetcar number 1300 effortlessly lurched its 23-ton

frame forward; its steel wheels clanking a familiar rhythm down the one mile of track between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun.

In years past, the Como-Harriet line stretched for 20 miles from St. Paul to Linden Hills and was sometimes bumper-tobumper with streetcars carrying loads of Minneapolitans to and from shows at the

Polly Norman

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

November 12–25, 2012 Vol. 23, No. 23 southwestjournal.com

Slump doesn’t scare startups

BY JAKE WEYER

a roundup of holiday events and festivities

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

A brewery renaissance

Volunteer streetcar motorman Bill Arends makes his way to the front of the Minnesota Streetcar Museum’s number 1300.

an army for the emperor

holiday events

City back in the mix for a stadium funded by gambling // A4

November 14–27, 2011 Vol. 22, No. 23 southwestjournal.com

Art ambitions

2006

Gambling now a hot topic

Florida 10 years ago. Her top client right now is Schwan’s Durant is 51 and lives in the Fulton neighborhood with her partner, Samantha, and their two kids. She said she has no political experience and didn’t go for the DFL endorsement because she didn’t know the process.

“I am really new to all of this,” Durant said. “I haven’t been involved in politics in the past. The whole endorsement process is new to me. I line up

A six-year-old plan to bring streetcars back to Minneapolis for the first time since 1954 is coming together quickly this summer.

The City Council has two key votes coming up before the end of the year. One is a vote on June 25 to authorize a property tax revenue capture from five parcels along the NicolletCentral corridor. The other will likely come later this year to choose a more precise route of where the line will go.

see ward 13 // a5

see streetcars // a18

by Nick halter

2012 Neighborhood Spotlight.

510 Groveland’s new tenant

Get Out Guide.

KINGFIELD

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2013

Rose Street leaving Linden Hills PAGE A3 • A Tokyo-style, late-night crepe shop PAGE A4 • Big development at Franklin & Lyndale PAGE A7 • Tasting the flautas at Prieto PAGE B6

October 31–November 13, 2019 Vol. 30, No. 22 southwestjournal.com

Nonprofit takes on troubled apartments

Southwest Minneapolis’ Community Newspaper

July 8–21, 2013 Vol. 24, no. 14 southwestjournal.com

February 12–25, 2015 Vol. 26, No. 4 southwestjournal.com

HistoriC Histori C

Margaret Miles (left), Cathy ten Broeke and their son, Louie, at their Linden Hills home.

voW voWs Ws s

photo by breNt NelSoN

April 7–20, 2016 Vol. 27, No. 7 southwestjournal.com

Margaret Miles and Cathy ten Broeke will be the first same-sex couple married at City Hall on Aug. 1.

2013 city election Mayoral candidate profile

Winton: City needs fresh eyes and a back-to-the-basics approach By nicK halter

Mayoral candidate Cam Winton. photo by kriStiN lebbeN

A black Toyota Prius pulls up and stops. On the bumper is a “Vote No” sticker, a sign of support for same-sex marriage. The man in the car often speaks about the importance of affordable housing, equality and how much he likes public buses. He works in the wind energy field.

Out of the car steps Cam Winton. He’s a Republican. He’s running for mayor of Minneapolis as an independent. According to politicos, he’s got a realistic chance of winning the race in a left-leaning city.

“I think the city is absolutely eager to elect someone who is not part of any political machine,” Winton said in an interview. “I think the city is absolutely eager to elect See winton // a12

A push to put pedestrians first City rolling out several strategies to make streets safer for walkers

‘IT’S EXCITING TO CARE’ Local social club pushes for action on climate change

Artist Scott Nelson is blind, and he walks along Hennepin almost every day on routes between his garage studio and destinations like the YWCA. Cars have hit Nelson twice in Uptown in recent years, and he’s asking city officials and neighborhood groups to find more ways to improve safety for pedestrians.

“I’m continually looking for the safest route,” Nelson said.

In one of the accidents, Nelson was walking south in a crosswalk at Hennepin & 31st. He heard a teenage girl scream, he heard tires spinning on the wet March pavement and he walked into the side of a vehicle. After the accident, the city restored See pedeStrianS // a14

2014

Joe Knaeble sifts debris out of hundreds of pounds of salt at his garage in The Wedge.

Photo by Michelle Bruch

A WAR ON ROAD SALT

April 5–18, 2018 Vol. 29, No. 7 southwestjournal.com

DAMOND’S FATHER PLEDGES

Hundreds gather to memorialize Justine Damond, shot and killed by police in July

‘justice for Justine’

Wedge resident on a

Mediators tackle d fast-paces eviction

By Michelle Bruch

PEDESTRIAN DEATH ON LYNDALE IGNITES PROTESTS

mission to educate people about harmful impacts of rock salt on city’s waterways

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

At least 50 people crowded into a Whittier home last January (600 were invited), toting their own plates and silverware for a potluck. The basement was stacked with fliers and petitions to sign. Attendees learned about the rate of global warming from a city staffer, and they were invited to pick up worms for compost. They stood up to give one-minute

“soapbox” pitches and discussed topics like winter biking and car sharing.

The new social club has formed with the goal of giving people tangible ways to confront climate change and other community issues.

SEE SOCIAL CLUB / PAGE A19

Katherine Bisanz, Max Musicant, Grayson Carr and Justin Kader of the Whittier social club.

Photo by Michelle Bruch

New city-utility board starts work

Weighty decisions on School Board’s agenda

The Clean Energy Partnership Board will focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Votes in coming months will plot a course for the district

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

By Michelle Bruch

August 24–September 6, 2017 Vol. 28, No. 17 southwestjournal.com

Confronting Climate Change

By Sarah McKenzie

The way Margaret Miles and Cathy ten Broeke see it, if you’re lucky like them, you get the chance to get married twice.

The couple’s first wedding took place in 2001 in front of more than 200 friends and family at St. Stephen’s Church in the Whittier neighborhood. Now they are preparing for their second wedding. This time, their union will be recognized by the state of Minnesota.

Miles and ten Broeke will be the first couple married by Mayor R.T. Rybak at City Hall on Aug. 1.

They will be wearing the same wedding dresses they did for their first wedding, their 5-year-old son Louie will be sporting a tuxedo and once again, many of their friends and relatives will be there to witness their commitment to each other.

The couple said they are honored and humbled to be part of the weddings planned for Aug. 1 — the day the new state law legalizing same-sex marriage goes into effect.

“I feel like the city is marrying us,” Miles said during a recent interview with ten Broeke at the couple’s home in Linden Hills. “I feel like I’ve been in a 72-hour hug with the City of Minneapolis.”

Ten Broeke said that while their commitment ceremony in 2001 was a joyous and an exciting time, planning for this wedding brings with it different and powerful emotions.

“I don’t think it’s about being the first couple at all,” she said. “That’s very fun and we’re so See weddingS // a10

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

Mayor Betsy Hodges will chair the Clean Energy Partnership Board, a new group that will guide the city’s collaborative effort with its gas and electricity utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Laura McCarten, regional vice president for electricity provider Xcel Energy, was elected vice chair at the board’s first meeting, which also included representatives from natural gas provider CenterPoint Energy and was held Feb. 4 at the McKnight Foundation’s downtown riverfront headquarters. A draft of the plan outlining the partnership’s first two years of work is expected by May. That plan could include strategies for increasing citywide participation in energy-

efficiency programs, cutting municipal energy use or giving Minneapolis utility customers more options for choosing less-polluting sources of energy.

Board Member Joe Vortherms, vice president of gas operations for CenterPoint, said the city-utility coalition “is the first that I’m aware of in the country.”

The partnership grew out of the city’s negotiations last year over renewal of its utility franchise agreements with CenterPoint and Xcel. Those agreements establish the fee Minneapolis collects in exchange for allowing the utilities to operate on public property.

SEE CLEAN ENERGY / PAGE A21

Major decisions on the direction of Minneapolis Public Schools lie ahead for a School Board that welcomed three new members and an interim district superintendent in the first month after students returned from winter break.

Those decisions include setting a process and timeline for selecting a new, permanent superintendent to succeed Bernadeia Johnson, who officially stepped down Jan. 31. At the same time, the board is grappling with several key policy questions that extend directly from Johnson’s vision for a district where schools drive change and improvement.

It’s “absolutely a big year,” said Jenny Arneson, who represents Northeast’s District 1 and was elected School Board chair by

her colleagues in January.

Five of nine current board members voted in September to Arneson adopt Acceleration 2020, a five-year strategic plan for the district. (A sixth, Tracine Asberry, abstained from the vote.) That plan embraced the main theme of Johnson’s legacy-defining SHIFT Initiative: migrating financial resources and decisionmaking power to schools from the district’s central office and, in exchange, expecting SEE SCHOOL BOARD / PAGE A17

2015

Joe Knaeble’s garage in The Wedge is filled with nearly 300 pounds of rock salt. He’s collected the salt with a broom and a dustpan over the past two years, collecting the excess from sidewalks and streets before it ends up in the Chain of Lakes.

“I try to get out in the spring, because the spring rains wash it out into the storm sewers and lakes and streams,” he said.

According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the chronic level of salt content in Minnehaha Creek is harmful to aquatic life. That

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

threshold is 230 milligrams per liter, which equates to one teaspoon of salt in a five gallon bucket of water.

“One of the challenges with chloride is it’s an invisible pollutant. It dissolves in water, and you never see it,” said Brooke Asleson, watershed project manager for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

“Concentrations could be skyrocketing and you’d never see it. It may not be a very obvious problem.”

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

Numbering more than 400 two decades ago, there are only 17 Minneapolis Public Schools employees with the job title of educational assistant left.

All of those remaining have at least 25 years of experience in the district, according to their union, and that includes everything from working alongside teachers in the classroom to supervising students out on the playground or in the lunchroom. But the positions open to them have dwindled, and in many cases roles formerly performed by educational

assistants are now jobs for people with a different title, associate educator.

“It’s like we’re playing musical chairs and they take away a couple of jobs and now we have people try to all sit down in not enough chairs,” said Rose Shetka, an educational assistant at Barton Open School since 1991.

It’s a game educational assistants are playing, some argue, because the district appears to value two years of college education over decades of in-school experience.

SEE ASSISTANT / PAGE A10

it was a surreal detour from plans set months earlier. They expected that night to be onboard their flights to Hawaii, where Damond was to marry her Minneapolis fiancé, Don, in less than a week’s time.

Instead, they were sharing their memories of Damond, who was killed by police July 15 after

calling 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her Fulton neighborhood home. Damond approached the police vehicle when it entered an alley near 51st & Washburn and was shot by one of the two responding officers.

“Justine should not have died,” her father, John

A portrait of Justine Damond stood next to the flag of her native Australia during an Aug. 11 memorial service for the Fulton neighborhood resident shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer in July.

Photo by Dylan Thomas

SEE DAMOND MEMORIAL / PAGE A10

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Christopher Mendez delayed paying rent on his Lyndale neighborhood apartment, just to see what would happen.

Rent was due on the first of the month. He came home from work on the sixth to find a notice on his door: If he didn’t pay in 24 hours, an eviction would be filed.

“My heart stopped when I saw that notice,” said Mendez, who quickly paid up. “… Every time I come

in the building I am very aware of the notices on doors around the sixth and seventh.”

Mendez works with Community Mediation and Restorative Services on a pilot project aiming to mediate potential evictions before they are filed in court. The Hennepin County pilot, which involves the local

Pro bono counsel Larry McDonough, Kristen Nelson and Laurie Swansen (l to r) meet with low-income tenants and landlords prior to Housing Court eviction hearings March 28. Photo by Michelle Bruch

By Andrew Hazzard

Wedge Live blogger John Edwards and other protesters stand face-to-face with the driver of a pickup truck during an Oct. 25 rally in which activists demanded immediate safety improvements for Lyndale Avenue.

Earlier in October, a Minneapolis man was fatally struck by a driver several hundred feet from the protest site.

Submitted photo

The death of a pedestrian crossing Lyndale Avenue has created a rallying point for activists protesting unsafe conditions on a county road long labeled as one of the most dangerous streets in Southwest Minneapolis.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Oct. 13, 54-year-old Theodore J. Ferrara was struck by a driver while attempting to cross Lyndale midblock between 25th and 26th streets.

Ferrara, an artist and musician remembered for being a generous friend with many talents, died three days later from his injuries, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.

In the wake of Ferrara’s death, a crowd of dozens gathered on Oct. 25 to demand safety improvements to Lyndale. They marched back and forth through the intersection at 25th & Lyndale, near where Ferrara was struck, stopping traffic and chanting slogans such as “This is a crosswalk!” and “Safe streets save lives!”

Drivers honked at the protesters, who yelled back. One motorist bumped a protester with his car, driving into the man at more than 5 mph. The man backpedaled to safety and afterward appeared unharmed. The driver sped away.

SEE PEDESTRIAN DEATH / PAGE A15

SEE EVICTIONS / PAGE A18

Over the course of 14 years at 3121 Pleasant Ave., Mrs. Dominguez paid rent to two owners later stripped of their rental licenses, fought a rent hike from a third owner and worked with Legal Aid to take a fourth landlord to court.

In 2018, she joined other tenants renting from Villa Nova Real Estate Holdings to tell Hennepin Housing Court about daily cockroach sightings, leaky windows, a unit with two layers of wet carpet, an intruder entering an unlockable window and a mold investigator whose hair became damp inside a humid apartment. Dominguez said she still gets a court-ordered $200 monthly reduction in rent, because although the windows were replaced, she’s still waiting for other repairs a year later.

Now the affordable housing nonprofit Aeon has purchased her building, along with 15 other apartment complexes, with a commitment to keep rents affordable for the long term. Given her experience, Dominguez is cautious.

“I want to wait and see,” said Dominguez, who works with Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (United Renters for Justice) and, speaking through a translator, requested her first name not be printed. “We would like it that they don’t raise the rent, especially not year after year. And we also want to make sure that when we call, repairs are made.”

Aeon purchased the 220-unit portfolio in July for $26.9 million, according to property records. Mayor Jacob Frey highlighted the transaction in his budget address the following month, saying it would help preserve affordable housing and prevent displacement.

SEE AEON / PAGE A14

SEE ROAD SALT / PAGE A12

Educational assistant: a disappearing district job EAs say Minneapolis values a two-year degree over decades of experience

Hundreds of people gathered Aug. 11 to remember the life of Justine Damond, filling the rows of benches at the Lake Harriet Bandshell and spilling onto the grass beyond on a warm late-summer evening.

For Damond’s friends and family, some traveling to the service from her native Australia,

see LABOR page 30

sw life

news

2002

“We started brainstorming plans for how to make it ‘relive,’” said Bill Peterson, chairman of St. John’s building committee.

Soon, they had their solution: to resurrect the tree as a conference table for the church’s new library, part of its 4,000square-foot, $1.5 million expansion project called “Imagine St. John’s.”

One day after church, the congregation gathered around the tree and acknowledged it with a blessing ceremony, recalled St. John’s Rector Mariann Edgar Budde.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announces his decision March 30 not to charge the two Minneapolis police officers involved in Jamar Clark’s shooting death.

Photo by Sarah McKenzie

Federal probe continues in Jamar Clark case

By Sarah McKenzie / smckenzie@southwestjournal.com

Federal authorities continue to investigate the fatal police shooting of Jamar Clark.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are reviewing evidence to determine if Clark’s

death involved any violations of criminal civil rights statutes.

Once that process ends, the Minneapolis Police Department will continue its internal SEE JAMAR CLARK / PAGE A14

2016

Met Council’s agreements with railroads raise local concerns

Average response to Priority 1 calls is longest in the 5th Precinct

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

Minneapolis officials expressed concern at the Metropolitan Council’s plans, announced in mid-August, to add 10-foot-high, 3-foot-wide crash wall along a roughly mile-long section of the Southwest Light Rail Transit corridor.

The wall was a late addition to the nearly $1.9-billion SWLRT project, which will extend the METRO Green Line 14.5 miles to Eden Prairie. From the perspective of Minneapolis officials, the wall was just one of the surprises contained in a series of agreements Met Council officials negotiated with two freight rail operators, BNSF and Twin Cities and Western, both of which will share a portion of the SWLRT corridor through Minneapolis.

Met Council members unanimously approved the agreements Aug. 16.

Police see increase in emergency response times

City Council Member Kevin Reich criticized a “lack of transparency” in the negotiations around the wall, intended to serve as a barrier between light rail and freight trains, which he said city officials first learned about less than a week before the vote. Reich, who chairs the council’s Transportation Committee, also raised questions about plans to shift the Cedar Lake Trail, a popular bicycle and pedestrian path that runs parallel to the future light rail line, as well as the Met Council’s commitment to accept liability for any incidents involving both freight and light rail trains in a shared corridor owned by BNSF. SWLRT Project Director Jim Alexander said “corridor protection” — the wall — was SEE SWLRT PROJECT / PAGE A7

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Eight minutes after Justine Damond reported a woman’s distressed call for help, she called 911 a second time to make sure police had the right address.

Officers arrived in 9 minutes, 41 seconds, according to an incident detail report.

The response time landed close to the citywide average for Priority 1 calls in the second quarter of 2017, which is 9 minutes 47 seconds. In Southwest Minneapolis’ 5th Precinct, the average Priority 1 response is 10 minutes 22 seconds.

That average should be “closer

to nine” minutes, said City Council Member Blong Yang, chair of the Public Safety, Civil Rights & Emergency Management Committee.

“And sometimes when these numbers go up, it typically tells us something about what’s happening in the police department,” Yang added.

The current response is on the high end of available response time data since 2003. Priority 1 response times hovered close to 8 minutes in 2003–2004, rose SEE RESPONSE TIME / PAGE A11

2017

Designing for growth Minneapolis’ next comprehensive plan aims to add housing while tackling disparities and climate change

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

A draft of Minneapolis 2040, an update to the city’s comprehensive plan that continues to focus density along transportation corridors and opens all neighborhoods to fourplex construction, was released March 22 in the form of an interactive website.

Like past comprehensive plans, the document is meant to shape the future growth of Minneapolis, touching on land use, economic development and the natural environment.

But this comprehensive plan — a draft that could change as the public offers feedback over the coming months — differs from those that came before, said Heather Worthington, the city’s director of long-range planning, because its guidelines are focused on two key city priorities: achieving racial equity and responding to climate change.

“It’s not just about infrastructure,” added

Public Works Director Robin Hutcheson, who said the draft comprehensive plan places land-use and development planning “in a supporting role” to 14 goals identified last year by the City Council, such as increasing civic participation, improving the health and safety of Minneapolis residents and attracting new residents and jobs.

To address the creeping unaffordability of Minneapolis housing, the plan encourages new multifamily housing development in all parts of the city, including those currently zoned for single-family housing. It proposes eliminating minimum parking requirements, a significant factor in the cost of new development.

It also includes clearer, more specific guidance for new development, including a built form map that illustrates, parcel-by-parcel, the SEE MINNEAPOLIS 2040 / PAGE A14

Washburn community rallies against budget cuts School’s budget reduced 13 percent for 2018–19

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Members of the Washburn High School community are rallying to increase the school’s funding for 2018–2019, after Minneapolis Public Schools reduced the school’s budget by 13 percent as part of districtwide budget cuts.

Washburn parents and students are advocating to restore more than $1 million that the school has used to fund support staff positions and a seven period school day. They note that the school eliminated the equivalent of more than two dozen positions, including one-third of its support-staff positions,

in response to the budget cuts.

“The proposed cuts to Washburn don’t just compromise our classrooms, they put our kids at enormous risk,” Diana Benjaafar, a Washburn parent and site council co-chair, said in a press release. “The physical, mental, and emotional well-being of our kids is being threatened.”

The community action comes nearly a month after the Minneapolis district released its plan for addressing a projected $33 million deficit in its general SEE SCHOOL FUNDING / PAGE A12

2018

Witness others’ ‘songs and stories’ at Theater 45° New Plymouth Congregational Church program gives a voice to marginalized groups

Founding board members of the Alliance of Latinx Minnesota Artists kick off their performance Oct. 21 at Plymouth Congregational Church. The alliance is one of six groups that is participating in the church’s new Theater 45° program.

Photo by Chris Bohnhoff

By Nate Gotlieb

Nora Montañez stood in the center of Plymouth Congregational Church’s chapel, replaying a conversation she once had with her young daughter.

“Who is illegal?” Montañez asked, intoning a child’s voice. “Are you illegal?”

Returning to her adult persona, Montañez stared out at the audience in front of her.

“The word illegal and immigrant should not be in the same sentence,” she said.

Montañez, founder of the Alliance

of Latinx Minnesota Artists, is among the actors participating in a new theater program at the Stevens Square church.

Called Theater 45°, the program gives members of marginalized groups a space to tell their own stories in ways they see fit.

Founders Seth Patterson and Ashawnti Ford said they hope the performances build understanding and drive people to action.

“Once we hear somebody’s story, it’s now SEE THEATER 45° / PAGE A11

Drag story hour at the Walker

Everett & Charlie and Suzie Marty

Historic conservation in Whittier

Coding the WWI armistice

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CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 1 Actor Beatty 4 Spirited horse 8 Cold-weather omen on Groundhog Day 14 Prefix with Pen 15 Leisurely pace 16 Dwell 17 Getaway car driver 19 Flowery van Gogh painting 20 Superficially highbrow 21 Play segments 23 Cheese go-with 24 Injured in the bullring 26 Golfer’s dream 30 Put inside 32 German “east” 33 Dead __ Scrolls 34 Bank acct. addition 35 Little trickster 36 One of 50 on the U.S. flag 37 You can’t go back after passing it 42 Went up 43 35-Down relative 44 Land in the Seine 45 Lennon’s love Yoko 46 Chinese chairman 47 Everlasting 51 Kit and caboodle 54 Hundred Acre Wood creator 55 Help 56 Lab safety org.?

58 Clinton and Obama, astrologically 59 Escape 62 Tops of sewing fasteners ... and what the starts of 17-, 26-, 37- and 51-Across can have

64 In a fair way 65 Ivan or Nicholas 66 Observe 67 Common people, with “the” 68 “Family Guy” creator MacFarlane 69 “Cats” monogram

10 From China, say

DOWN 1 Genre for Enya 2 Screenwriter Nora 3 Low-calorie cola, familiarly 4 100 percent 5 Most populous città in Italia 6 Geronimo’s tribe 7 Japanese box lunch 8 __ Lanka 9 Hardly a social butterfly

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11 “The Simpsons” character named for a dance era 12 Keats’ “__ on a Grecian Urn”

38 Charlie Chaplin’s actress granddaughter 39 Quarantines 40 Runs smoothly 41 K thru 6

13 Director Craven

46 The “M” in LEM

18 Face sketcher’s horizontal reference

47 Type of tax 48 Phillies’ div.

22 NFL replay review aid

49 Voltaic cell terminals

25 “Please stop!”

27 __ de corps: camaraderie 28 Not at all far 29 Pull down, as a salary 31 Minn. college named for a Norwegian king 35 Business name abbr.

36 Squeaky clean, as an operating room 37 “No __!”: “Easy!”

50 Tenant 52 Detroit NFL team 53 Dr. visits 57 Med. school subject 59 Diamond, for one 60 Sister of Zsa Zsa

SWHS students accomplished some amazing things on BLAST Day and did a lot of good in their community. Here’s a summary by the numbers: 825 Volunteer shifts covered from conducting a food and toiletry drive, to packing sandwiches for our local homeless community, volunteering at Feed My Starving Children, and delivering food to those in need. We also gave back by supporting local elementary schools through reading and art projects and spending time in the community and school picking up trash, cleaning our space, and shoveling for some neighbors in need. 2,465 Hours of volunteering 620 Sandwiches were made and donated to the Sandwich Project 1,236 pounds of canned and non-perishable food items were donated and collected by the student body and brought to Joyce Food Shelf 505 pounds of Hygiene/Toiletry products were donated/collected by the student body and brought to Simpson House THANK YOU SWHS

61 TV’s Burrell and Pennington 63 Princely title: Abbr.

Crossword answers on page A10

1/21/20 12:41 PM

Southwest High SWJ 012320 4.indd 1

1/10/20 1:32 PM

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

B14 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

1990–2020

By Linda Koutsky

Shake hands with a wax James Garfield Singular St. Paul museum also features wooden ‘wall pockets’ and an exhibit on Slovenia

D

President Garfield himself sits on a settee in the Garfield Room of the Julian H. Sleeper House.

Photos by Linda Koutsky

o you have a great aunt or uncle whose house is packed with nostalgic treasures? Mine was Great Aunt Evelyn. She lived in a Park Avenue bungalow with built-in bookshelves, a large fireplace mantle and antique display cases with curved glass doors. Her vast collection of mismatched patterned teacups, framed Buzza mottos and porcelain figurines given to her throughout her 94-year life were set on every surface. She saved everything.

There wasn’t any direction or mission to her collecting other than sentimentality. But as a kid, I marveled at her beautiful things.

Many other people are better collectors though, perhaps even curators. Dr. Seth C. Hawkins is one. He not only has a specific plan for his collecting; he has multiple.

Though they seem unrelated, he can persuade you otherwise. His collections are displayed in a house museum in St. Paul that’s been open to the public since 1993. I finally went there in late December.

Julian H. Sleeper was a St. Paul entrepreneur, real estate speculator and hotel manager

who built the house in 1884. Originally on Holly Avenue, it was moved by Sleeper in 1911 to St. Albans Street, next to a boardinghouse he also owned. Hawkins bought the house in 1993 and entirely restored the interior in a Victorian Arts & Crafts style that would have been popular when the house was built.

The first floor has a parlor, dining room and study all covered in wallpapers by the premier designer of the era, William Morris. Interlocking leaves and scrolls cover the walls and gold stars sparkle on the ceiling. Eastlake and Renaissance Revival furniture, wooden “wall pockets,” artworks and collectibles of the era blend together to represent what an emerging upper-middle-class family home looked like at the height of the Gilded Age. More William Morris wallpapers and art reproductions tower overhead as one climbs the stairs to the second floor. Additional period rooms are filled with political cartoons, artworks featuring owls and a Chinese emperor’s bed from the 1860s. When you ask a question on the tour, be prepared for a lengthy and entertaining answer that

1990–2020 begs for even more questions.

Before moving to St. Paul, Hawkins lived in New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught classes on 19th-century American public speaking and became an expert on the speeches of James A. Garfield (1831– 1881). Garfield was elected the 20th president of the United States in 1880, but served for only 6½ months before he was assassinated. Hawkins has amassed what he calls “the definitive collection” of Garfield memorabilia. Photos, campaign ribbons, banners, letters, signed documents, proclamations, souvenirs and a life-size wax replica of Garfield fill an upstairs room. Some favored guests of the museum have been shown the rope Hawkins claims was used to hang Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau.

Across the hall is a room packed with Hawkins’ baseball memorabilia. He often refers to himself in the third person as “Dr. Fan,” a nickname awarded to him in a 1986 Sporting News column. Hawkins has traveled around the country to watch in person as the last 21 major league baseball players earned their 3,000th career hits. His favorite modern star, he says, is Ichiro Suzuki, whose focus on speed and singles resembles Gilded Age ballplayers like “Wee Willie” Keeler.

After walking through the kitchen, packed with everything from a vintage enamel stove to old canned goods to a plate from the St. Paul Grill, Hawkins led me

LUNCH TIP German chocolate cake was rumored to be President Garfield’s favorite dessert. Try some, along with a large variety of lunch options, at the nearby Cafe Latte, 850 Grand Ave., St. Paul.

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B15

IF YOU VISIT The Julian H. Sleeper House Museum is open by appointment only. Tours are conducted by Dr. Seth C. Hawkins himself and take approximately two hours. Several public events are also held in the house throughout the year.

Where: 66 St. Albans St., St. Paul Cost: $9 per person; champagne toast is $11 extra Info: julianhsleeperhouse.com or call 651-225-1505 to make reservations.

A hidden museum resides in this St. Paul Victorian mansion.

into the basement. The large room doubles as an exhibit space and tourism office for the country of Slovenia. Artifacts in glasscovered cases are topped with a lineup of travel brochures and souvenir airplanes from the now defunct national airline.

(Some items were procured with the assistance of one Melania Knauss.) When I asked, “Why Slovenia?” Hawkins simply said it was an underappreciated country.

Located in central Europe between Italy, Austria and Croatia, Slovenia was part of the former Yugoslavia until 1991. This St. Paul basement is an official tourism office

and has been visited by the U.S. ambassador to Slovenia.

Visiting the museum on a personal tour by the collector reminded me of wandering through Aunt Evelyn’s house. Stories swirled around the objects and made new connections. At the Julian H. Sleeper House Museum I learned about the Gilded Age, President Garfield, baseball and Slovenia.

Where else can you experience that mix?!

Follow Linda Koutsky on Instagram at @why_stay_home for more adventures.

One of three rare Victorian wall pockets hanging on William Morris-designed wallpaper.

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Serving people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds, HOBT collaborates with SCHOOLS and COMMUNITIES on unique, interactive ART RESIDENCIES that nurture the creative spirit and encourage a sense of joy and wonder.

If you are interested in an art residency for your school or organization, visit hobt.org or call 612.721.2535 for more information.

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7/1/16 10:54 AM

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

B16 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

Community Calendar.

By Ed Dykhuizen

WINTER AT THE WALKER 2020 Trek through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden on snowshoes and then have a drink and try crafts indoors.

On Jan. 30, see a special presentation of wintry films.

When: 5-9 p.m. Thursdays, Jan. 23 and 30 Where: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl. Cost: Free Info: walkerart.org/calendar

FIRE & ICE FAMILY SKATING PARTY

BETWEEN TWO FIRES: TRUTH, AMBITION AND COMPROMISE IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA

Enjoy a night with your family and friends skating to a DJ set or keep warm with hot chocolate and a bonfire.

When: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Fridays, Jan. 24, 31 Where: Friday, Jan. 24: Armatage Recreation Center, 2500 W. 57th St.; Friday, Jan. 31: Kenny Park, 1328 W. 58th St. Cost: Free Info: minneapolisparks.org

MINNESOTA INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS FORUM: MINNESOTA SWEDES RAISING CANE Local historian Marilyn McGriff discusses an early-20thcentury Minnesotan doctor who promoted the sale of Cuban land parcels to his fellow Swedish Americans.

When: 10 a.m.-noon Saturday, Jan. 25 Where: Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave. S. Cost: Free Info: hclib.org

When: Throughout February Where: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Ave. S. Cost: Free Info: new.artsmia.org

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29 Where: The Museum of Russian Art, 5500 Stevens Ave. Cost: $5-$15 Info: tmora.org

CELLULAR CINEMA: CAVE FESTIVAL The third edition of the Festival of Cinematic & AudioVisual Experimentation (CAVE4) offers a lineup of visiting artists and curators presenting a diverse array of screenings, performances and discussions.

Alongside the Art Shanties, kites of all shapes, sizes, colors and themes will fly over frozen Lake Harriet.

Other family activities at the festival include ice fishing, snowshoeing and a marshmallow roast.

HOPE IN THE STRUGGLE: A CONVERSATION WITH JOSIE JOHNSON

When: Noon-4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25 Where: Lake Harriet Cost: Free Info: minneapolisparks.org

Josie Johnson will discuss her memoir, “Hope in the Struggle,” about her experience championing social justice through the ongoing civil rights movement in the United States, specifically in Minnesota.

NATIONAL LUTHERAN CHOIR HYMN FESTIVAL

When: 2-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1 Where: Linden Hills Recreation Center, 3100 W. 43rd St. Cost: Free Info: minneapolisparks.org

The 60-member National Lutheran Choir’s program will feature anthems interspersed with readings, as well as hymns, which will give audience members the chance to join in.

One-hour public tours will be offered daily, highlighting the exceptional historical and creative cultural contributions made by African American artists.

In this narrative tour of modern-day Russia, Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, shows how the Putin system is made possible by the compromises of its citizens, whether in business, politics or the arts.

When: 7-8:30 p.m. and 9-10:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31 and Saturday, Feb. 1 Where: Bryant-Lake Bowl & Theater, 810 W. Lake St. Cost: $6-$15 sliding scale, $5 with student ID Info: bryantlakebowl.com/cabaret-theater

FOURTH ANNUAL HARRIET KITE FESTIVAL

CELEBRATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART HISTORY

1990–2020

FIRE & ICE, 13TH ANNUAL RUBE GOLDBERG BUILD

When: 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26 Where: Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 4100 Lyndale Ave. S. Cost: Free Info: nlca.com

People 18 and older will build one part of a giant causation contraption with mechanical features that include frozen water and flames. Food, drink, tools and materials provided.

AUTHOR TALK: BILL LINDEKE AND ANDY STURDEVANT

When: 7-10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1 Where: Leonardo’s Basement, 150 W. 60th St. Cost: $20 in advance, $25 at the door Info: leonardosbasement.org

In “Closing Time,” Bill Lindeke and Andy Sturdevant dive into tales from famous and infamous drinking establishments from throughout Twin Cities history.

THE MINNESOTA DRINKING GAME In this 8th-anniversary show, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” will be performed by Twin Cities talent.

When: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29 Where: Walker Library, 2880 Hennepin Ave. Cost: Free Info: hclib.org

When: 10:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1 Where: Phoenix Theater, 2605 Hennepin Ave. Cost: $10 Info: phoenixtheatermpls.org

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1990–2020

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B17

Get Out Guide.

The City of Lakes Loppet Winter Festival fuses nature, sports, art and community in a joyful celebration of the outdoors.

By Sheila Regan

There’s cross country skiing, fat bike racing, obstacle courses and sports you’ve never heard of. With races and rides spanning the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes and Theodore Wirth Park, the festival has something for everyone.

Enjoy the experiences, sculptures, food and drink areas, and much more, all in the crisp winter air amidst beautiful trees, water and parks. Here are a few activities we recommend checking out.

Loppet festivities When: Friday-Sunday, Jan. 31-Feb. 2 Where: Lake of the Isles Info: loppet.org/events

Photos courtesy of Todd Bauer / tmbimages.com

LUMINARY LOPPET

SURLY BREWING BEER GARDEN & BLOCK PARTY

Lake of the Isles lights up with candles and glow sticks for the Luminary Loppet, where people ski, walk or snowshoe through the luminous night. You can start at one of four different tents around Lake Harriet or in the channel between Bde Maka Ska and Lake of the Isles. Afterwards, stay for the REI Co-op Luminary Party, an outdoor concert with music by Dr. Mambo’s Combo, Surly Brewing Co. beer and hot chocolate.

When: 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1 (Luminary Party goes until 10 p.m.)

Where: Lake of the Isles Cost: $35, $20 youth 16 and under Info: loppet.org/events/luminary

In between watching races, stop by the beer garden for food trucks, beer and socializing.

When: 5-9 p.m. Thursday-Friday, Jan. 30-31; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2 Where: Loppet Village at The Trailhead, 1221 Theodore Wirth Parkway Cost: Free Info: loppet.org/events/village

SOUTHWEST JOURNAL SNOW SCULPTURE CONTEST

MYSL SUPERCARNIVAL Ski games for the whole family are offered at the MYSL super carnival. With relays, ski ball, an obstacle course and more, this is a great option for kids, happening before the Minne-Loppet youth races.

Teams of four compete to transform blocks of snow into works of art in the course of five hours. Whether you are feeling artistic yourself or just want to watch, it’s a fun event that celebrates winter wonder.

When: 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1 Where: The Trailhead, 1221 Theodore Wirth Parkway Cost: Free Info: loppet.org/events/supercarnival

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1 Where: The Trailhead, 1221 Theodore Wirth Parkway Cost: Free Info: loppet.org/events/sculpture

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ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

B18 January 23–February 5, 2020 / southwestjournal.com

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southwestjournal.com / January 23–February 5, 2020 B19

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