Southwest Journal, May 3–16, 2018

Art-A-Whirl

Neighborhood Spotlight.

A preview of the annual open-studio tour returning later this month

PAGE B18

LINDEN HILLS PAGE B6

PAGE B1

Get Out Guide.

May 3–16, 2018 Vol. 29, No. 9 southwestjournal.com

Southwest light rail headed to court again Met Council’s dispute with a shortline railroad escalated in April

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

A regional dispute over who will own and control key portions of the future Southwest Light Rail Transit corridor escalated to the federal Surface Transportation Board in April — and then to U.S District Court.

Eager to keep the $1.9 billion SWLRT project on schedule and in the queue for federal funding, the Metropolitan Council petitioned the board for a speedy ruling on its plan

Whittier homeowner tests the limits of solar access

A Twin Cities & Western Railroad train hauls a load of freight through the Kenilworth Corridor.

File photo

to become the owner of both the 6.8-mile Bass Lake Spur and the 2.5-mile Kenilworth Corridor. The two form one contiguous section of an active freight rail route, and Met Council’s plan for a 14.5-mile extension of the Metro Green Line calls for light-rail trains to operate on a parallel set of tracks through much of the corridor.

SEE SOUTHWEST LIGHT RAIL / PAGE A16

District details additional cuts School Board to discuss budget May 8

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

home design. The Planning Commission approved the proposal April 9, and Whitebird is raising money to file an injunction in court to stop construction.

“The house is designed to collect, store and dissipate solar energy,” he said. “This is not a case of me whining about my windows getting shaded.”

A similar issue may arise in a four-story proposal at 429 W. Lake St., which is expected to shade solar panels next door at Schatzlein Saddle Shop. That project is currently on hold, according to developer Dan Oberpriller, though he said that’s not due to solar.

Minneapolis Public Schools leaders cut an additional $4.8 million from the district’s 2018– 2019 central-office budget this past month, after the School Board voted to restore $6.4 million in cuts to middle and high schools.

Superintendent Ed Graff and his team cut an additional $1.5 million from the district’s human resources department, nearly $670,000 from its academics department and $610,000 from its information technology department. They also revised their revenue projections upward by over $1.5 million, factoring in a $500,000 tax-credit rebate and a proposal from Gov. Mark Dayton to address special education underfunding.

“The implications of these reductions are wide-ranging, but with an eye to limiting service reductions as much as possible,” Graff

SEE SOLAR / PAGE A14

SEE SCHOOL BUDGETS / PAGE A12

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Leo Whitebird has always loved solar.

In the early ’80s, he and his roommates sketched plans to build a backyard greenhouse to generate solar heat.

So when he converted an office building on Harriet Avenue into his home and recording studio, he enlarged windows and added skylights to maximize solar gain and later added solar panels to the roof.

Now the storage company next door at 2845 Harriet Ave. S. plans to expand and build a three-story structure that would shade a small portion of the panels, and Whitebird said it would dramatically shade his windows. The proposal may test the extent of protections for “passive” solar

BY THE NUMBERS

$33.4

million

Total district budget cut for 2018–19

$18.6

Total budget cut to district’s central office

$14.8

Budget cut to district schools

million million

Source: Minneapolis Public Schools

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By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Restaurateur Hector Ruiz is planning a taqueria near 50th & Xerxes.

Photo by Michelle Bruch

50TH & XERXES

DR 49 The former Sew What building at 4953 Xerxes Ave. S. is under renovation to become a taqueria courtesy of Hector Ruiz, the restaurateur behind spots like Café Ena, La Fresca and Rincón 38.

The food is still in development — Ruiz builds out his restaurants first and creates the menus last — but he said it will feature global cuisine with no boundaries. It would likely seat about 40 people in winter and 60 in summer, and he may seek city approval for a rooftop patio.

The restaurant is tentatively called “DR 49,” referencing Ruiz’ grandfather, “Don Raul,” who founded a distillery in Mexico.

“It will be a little rustic place in the heart of Minneapolis,” Ruiz said.

He envisions fast-casual counter service with tacos, burritos and quesadillas on homemade tortillas, shifting to a more formal restaurant in the evenings with table service and a rotating menu.

He’s installing Gustavo Romero as executive

chef, and Ruiz said Romero’s background is similar to his own. They both grew up in Mexico, attended Le Cordon Bleu and trained in Europe.

Romero previously worked in California at Calavera. They became acquainted when Romero came to eat at Ruiz’ Costa Blanca Bistro, and Romero later cooked for a group at Café Ena, serving several courses including ceviche and tostadas with duck.

“It was so good,” said staff member Barbara Bullhead.

By bringing on investors and installing Romero as executive chef, Ruiz aims to spend more time with his surviving children, ages 21, 17 and 13. Ruiz said he made sacrifices to launch his restaurants. As an immigrant, he said his alternative was working multiple jobs for $10–$15 per hour. Now he’s working toward an MBA. “This is my new chapter in my life,” he said.

“Every restaurant has a piece of my life.”

Ruiz aims to open the restaurant in July.

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Peace Coffee goes independent Lee Wallace starts the day at her Kingfield home with a pour-over cup of Peace Coffee’s Pollinator Blend.

“I’m trying to usher in spring,” she said.

Then she heads to the Greenway building in the East Phillips neighborhood, where Peace Coffee is now roasting as an independent company. After outgrowing its parent organization, longtime CEO Wallace recently partnered to purchase the business with entrepreneur Kent Pilakowski.

Peace Coffee’s parent company was the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, based in Whittier, which works to advance policies that benefit farmers, ecosystems and social justice.

It launched Peace Coffee out of its basement in 1996, and Wallace retold the “accidental birth story” in a recent IATP podcast. As the story goes, IATP staff visited Mexican farmers ahead of the North American Free Trade Agreement and learned their biggest wish was new markets to sell coffee. About a month later, IATP received a surprise phone call: 40,000 pounds of coffee had arrived in Los Angeles ready to ship to Minnesota. Rather than return it, local staff quickly figured out how to roast and sell the coffee, and the profits left over were promising. They co-founded a cooperative in 1999 to buy direct from farmers.

“When we first started Peace Coffee, people weren’t talking about where coffee comes from.

There wasn’t this interest in the farmer behind the cup of coffee,” Wallace said. “… That has changed quite a bit.”

While interest in coffee farmers has grown throughout the industry, Peace Coffee continues to stand apart in its pay scale for farmers, Wallace said. Peace Coffee guarantees farmers a certain price and pays organic premiums as well as fair trade premiums on top of that.

Three cents of every pound of coffee goes into a grant that communities can tap into.

When Peace Coffee started buying from the Congo (a new bright and juicy Alchemy blend features coffee from a Congo co-op), farmers used the fund to install metal roofs on their houses. The fund aims to help communities become resilient in the face of climate change.

Wallace has said that Peace Coffee will continue aiming to grow — the more they sell, the more they can buy fair trade from farmers.

“Our whole reason for being is to show that you can run a profitable business that is successful on many different fronts,” she said.

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Mortimer’s, now with new food and new bands Mortimer’s transformation is complete. The stained-glass speakeasy space once home to Oliver’s is unveiled and open. It’s now the home for autotune karaoke, Trivia Against Humanity and bands booked by veterans of Uptown Bar and Cause.

The new menu of scratch bar food is also complete, much of it gluten-free.

“You never think gluten-free with bar food like this,” Carrie McCabe-Johnston said.

She spent lots of trial-and-error time in the Nightingale kitchen to perfect recipes like the

salt cod fish sandwich, topped with American cheese and jalapeno tartar sauce.

“It’s almost like fast food, but totally from scratch,” she said.

The menu also features tater tot hot dish, pizzas with updated sauce and crust, chop salad and a few carryovers from the old menu, including spicy wings and the Coney Dog served with tortilla chips to scoop the extra chili.

The kitchen is open daily for lunch and dinner and opens early for brunch on weekends.

Deirdre Olson Gentolizo works in a studio above her gift shop at 48th & Nicollet.

Photo by Michelle Bruch

48TH & NICOLLET

Rock Paper Silver Gift shoppers shouldn’t hesitate to open Rock Paper Silver by appointment — there’s a good chance that owner Deirdre Olson Gentolizo is upstairs in her studio, hand stamping and casting custom silver jewelry.

She uses the lost-wax casting process, which involves crafting a wax model, heating it and allowing the wax to melt away.

“The process really hasn’t ever changed,” she said. “Beautiful pieces in museums are made essentially the same way.”

She first tried an introductory silversmith class in college.

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sales and trade shows. She found a niche in customizable gifts, such as necklaces made from recycled glass, or wearable “blessing bars” engraved with words like “be still” and “joy.”

“I love doing things that are encouraging, or a way to say thank you,” she said.

The shop also showcases Minnesota artists like Credo Designs Ltd., TRISTAN Publishing, Design District and painter Sarah Holden.

The studio at 4816 Nicollet Ave. is open 8:30 a.m.–4 p.m. every Wednesday and every second Saturday of the month.

An event planned just in time for Mother’s Day is 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturday, May 12, featuring crafts and treats. For more information, visit rockpapersilvermn.com.

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 A5

Misfit Coffee Co. owner Marcus Parkansky hopes to bring the spirit of his mobile coffee operation to a new brick-andmortar location, the former Lyndale Urban Bean café.

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Misfit Coffee takes over the Lyndale Urban Bean On the move

Marcus Parkansky aims to disrupt the coffee market. So why is the young coffee entrepreneur behind Misfit Coffee Co. venturing into the traditional brick-and-mortar coffee shop?

Unsurprisingly, he hopes to do things differently.

Parkansky has purchased the Urban Bean at 24th & Lyndale from owner Greg Martin with a plan to translate the mobile coffee trailer’s social, event-driven experience into his first coffee shop.

Sometime in June, Parkansky said he hopes to have built out less of a study spot and more of a coffee bar during the day and a dimly lit lounge during the evening.

Rather than a place people bring headphones and work for hours and hours, it will be a modular hangout spot that hosts a variety of social events.

“I want to try and make the space that you go for a meeting or to have fun or to have a good drink,” he said. “We want people to gather and be there for the coffee … but we also want to utilize the space in a way where people come to be social.”

The brick-and-mortar shop is a long time coming for Misfit, which started in 2015 as a coffee trailer. The mobile shop isn’t a food truck but rather a 98-square-foot coffee operation towed behind a truck. Parkansky relocated to Minneapolis from Milwaukee but brought a relationship — and beans — from Milwaukee-based roastery Valentine Coffee Co. The business is known for its specialty drinks made like cocktails and its nitro cold-brewed coffee. Beyond the trailer,

Urban Bean owner Greg Martin has operated the cafe at 24th & Lyndale for seven years.

Submitted photo courtesy Urban Bean

Misfit has a burgeoning wholesale business with local fitness studios, coffee shops and advertising agencies.

Martin announced April 20 that he’ll be handing over the keys to Parkansky. Martin took over the retail space in 2011 after renovating the former Muddy Waters location and has operated the third-wave coffee shop for the past seven years.

Parkansky has been searching for a permanent home for Misfit for over a year.

He had explored the possibility of a space in the Sheridan neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis for several months, but that didn’t work out. Then Martin reached out to him about a potential sale.

“My big plan is that I wanted to open up something pretty large scale,” Parkansky said.

Parkansky envisions the shop as a coffee bar with actual bar service, though he’s not sure if a liquor license will work with the location. He plans to move the espresso machine so it’s not blocking employees from customers. Instead of a single barista working the counter, he said two people will be working at a given moment to serve drinks and encourage conversation.

The cafe’s constant presence will allow the trailer to be available for more events, a growing part of Misfit’s business. Parkansky said he’ll scale back the trailer’s hours at the Mill District’s Gold Medal Park during the week so it can take on more corporate events. Misfit also operates a coffee kiosk location at the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus.

“We’re all about going anywhere people ask us to be,” he said.

While he’s planning the café, Parkansky said Misfit will begin roasting its own beans for nitro cold brew for the trailer, shop and wholesale accounts. Eventually, he hopes to begin bottling or canning the coffee.

Parkansky is already working on the second and third Misfit locations. While details haven’t been finalized, the next shop will likely be a store-within-a-store in Minneapolis and potentially open later this year. Another brick-and-mortar location may open in downtown St. Paul.

But before then, Misfit customers can look for the first coffee shop to open at 2401 Lyndale Ave. S. around the end of the spring.

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The former police officer charged with murder in the July 2017 shooting death of Justine Damond intends to plead not guilty, according to a Hennepin County District Court document filed April 25.

The document indicates the attorneys representing Mohamed Noor intend to argue he was acting in self defense and used reasonable force when, as one of two officers responding to Damond’s July 15 911 call, he shot and killed her in the alley behind her home in the Fulton neighborhood. Noor’s employment with the Minneapolis Police Department was terminated in March on the same day he was charged with third-degree murder and seconddegree manslaughter.

The same document on file at the courthouse shows Noor’s defense intends to call Minneapolis private investigator William O’Keefe to testify at trial. No other potential witnesses are listed.

When he announced the charges against Noor on March 20, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said the ex-officer acted “recklessly” when he reached across his partner and fired his handgun from the passenger seat of their squad car. In an interview at the scene of the incident, Noor’s partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, said they “both got spooked” when Damond approached their vehicle in the dark alley.

Freeman said there was no evidence of a threat that justified Noor’s use of deadly force.

Attorney Tom Plunkett, part of Noor’s defense team, has said his client was acting in accordance with his training and department policy.

A 40-year-old native of Australia also known as Justine Ruszczyk, Damond was living in

Former police officer Mohamed Noor intends to enter a not-guilty plea in his murder case. File photo

Fulton with her fiance, Don Damond. They had planned to marry last August in Hawaii.

Under pressure from then-Mayor Betsy Hodges, former Minneapolis police chief Janeé Harteau resigned a week after the incident. Damond’s death also prompted changes intended to strengthen the police department’s body-worn camera policy. Although both Noor and Harrity were equipped with the cameras, neither camera was recording at the time of the shooting.

The next hearing in the case was scheduled for May 8.

City commits to 100 percent renewable electricity The Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution April 27 committing the city to using electricity from 100 percent renewable sources by 2030.

The timeline set for city facilities and operations is even shorter. The goal is to make their sources of electricity 100 percent renewable by 2022.

City Council Member Cam Gordon (Ward 2) said while it won’t be easy to achieve the goals, the city’s commitment is important and builds on targets set in the 2013 Minneapolis Climate Action Plan. That document — a roadmap for combatting climate change by aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing reliance on fossil fuels — called for the city to get 10 percent of its electricity from local, renewable sources by 2025.

“This is actually pushing ourselves pretty far,” Gordon said of the resolution.

Gordon co-authored the resolution with council members Steve Fletcher (Ward 3) and Jeremy Schroeder (Ward 11).

“This isn’t a resolution to make us feel good,” Fletcher said before the Council vote.

“This is a resolution that is really directing

resources, and it has a plan behind it to achieve the goals that we’re setting.”

In October, city staff delivered a blueprint report for achieving 100 percent renewable electricity in municipal operations by 2022.

It notes that municipal electricity consumption is expected to drop to 85 million kWh in 2022 from 101 million kWh today, and that the city’s participation in Xcel Energy’s Renewable*Connect program means it can claim that more than 18 percent of the electricity consumed by municipal operations already comes from renewable sources, like wind and solar.

Possible next steps for the city include installation of solar arrays on city-owned properties and investments in new wind farm projects. The city and Xcel area also discussing the concept of a city-owned renewable energy facility.

“It’s really important to have this resolution come now,” Schroeder said. “At a time when federal and state policymakers are undermining our sustainability and resilience as a city, it’s more important that we act locally to protect our future.”

southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 A7

Come see us at the

Pilot initiative aims to preserve affordable apartments Minneapolis offered a deal to rental property owners in April aimed at preserving the city’s dwindling number of affordable housing units.

The 4d pilot initiative, announced April 20

by Mayor Jacob Frey, is an effort to recruit more rental property owners into an existing state program that offers a property tax reduction in exchange for keeping a certain number of units affordable. The City Council on April 27 voted to approve a package of incentives that would lower barriers to participation, with the goal of adding 300 Minneapolis rental units to the program this spring.

“We are in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, and across the city tenants and property owners are feeling the pinch of increases in property taxes and their operating expenses,” Frey said. “However, we know we have a group of landlords — a large group of landlords — who would like to keep units more affordable if the finances would allow. What this program does is allow for it.”

The goal is to preserve so-called naturally occurring affordable housing before the tight housing market pressures landlords into raising rents. The affordable housing is referred to as naturally occurring because it isn’t government subsidized.

But it takes some type of subsidy to qualify for the state’s 4d program, so the city is offering one on the cheap.

For pilot participants, the city plans to cover the $10-per-unit fee the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency charges to apply for lowincome rent classification status, also known as 4d status. That classification comes with the 40 percent property tax reduction on affordable rental units.

The pilot was open to market-rate multifamily housing buildings with at least 10 units; 20 percent of those units must be occupied by and affordable to people earning 60 percent of the metro-area median income or less. That translates to below $949 per month for an efficiency, $1,017 per month for a one-bedroom or $1,221 per month for a two-bedroom. Tenant incomes for those units would be no more than $37,980 for an individual or up to $51,480 for a family of four.

To enter the pilot, the property owner must enter into an agreement with the city that commits them to keeping those units affordable for 10 years.

“It costs way less money to preserve any existing unit than it does to build fresh, and this policy … tackles the affordable housing we already have,” Frey said.

Optionally, rental property owners who join the pilot can also sign up for energy efficiency programs offered through local utilities to qualify for subsidies and rebates, increasing their potential savings.

“The beauty is it’s an improvement in the property for the owner which at the same time reduces the cost burden for the renter,” Frey said.

The pilot program has the potential to expand in coming years and was limited to just 300 units this year because the annual application window for the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency’s 4d program had closed. The state agreed to extend the window two months to early May for the Minneapolis pilot.

The deadline for Minneapolis landlords to apply was May 2.

Ward 7 City Council Member Lisa Goodman said naturally occurring affordable rental units are often found in small multifamily buildings, including many with fewer than 10 units. She said council members debated opening the pilot to those smaller buildings but set the minimum unit count at 10 to get as many rental units as possible into the pilot.

Goodman said landlords of small buildings are facing intense pressure to raise rents. As a hot housing market drives up rental rates across the city, apartment buildings are being assessed at higher rates and paying more in property taxes.

“This is not a giveaway to developers, it’s an acknowledgement that small property owners between two and 100 units have a problem keeping their units affordable just based on rising property taxes,” she said.

Minneapolis has about 38,000 naturally occurring affordable housing units, or roughly 23 percent of those available in the entire sevencounty metropolitan area, according to a city report. Rents average $600–$1,200 per month in those units.

Those units are also attractive to speculators who see the opportunity to purchase the properties and hike rents, according to that same city report. A metro-area vacancy rate of just 2.7 percent adds to the pressure.

Prior to a unanimous City Council vote to approve funding for the pilot, Council President Lisa Bender (Ward 10) said the program would help shield some of her constituents from fast-rising rental housing costs.

“This is such a huge issue in my ward, and I’m really, really excited that we’ve added this to the long list of things that we are doing in the City of Minneapolis to fight back against the displacement of renters that we’ve been seeing increasing year by year,” she said.

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A8 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

PUBLISHER Janis Hall jhall@southwestjournal.com

CO-PUBLISHER & SALES MANAGER Terry Gahan tgahan@southwestjournal.com

GENERAL MANAGER Zoe Gahan zgahan@southwestjournal.com

EDITOR Dylan Thomas 612-436-4391 dthomas@southwestjournal.com

ASSISTANT EDITOR Eric Best ebest@southwestjournal.com

STAFF WRITERS Michelle Bruch mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Nate Gotlieb ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Jenny Heck, Rebecca Noble Jahna Peloquin CREATIVE DIRECTOR Valerie Moe vmoe@southwestjournal.com

CLIENT SERVICES Delaney Patterson 612-436-5070 dpatterson@southwestjournal.com

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CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER Haley Anderson DISTRIBUTION Marlo Johnson 612-436-4388 distribution@southwestjournal.com

ADVERTISING sales@southwestjournal.com 612-436-4360

By Jim Walsh

Thank you, class of 2018: America’s conscience

A

round this time of year it’s been something of a tradition for this column to pay tribute to the spring’s graduating high school classes, and this tumultuous year I’m here to offer crib notes for what, by my lights, should be at the heart of every graduation speech or commencement address to America’s conscience, the class of 2018.

For almost two years we’ve been living under the gloom and doom of a would-be dictator and his revolving door of power-mad morons and a toxic “Truman Show”-esque version of democracy. But a few months ago, led by the survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting, America’s high school class of 2018 woke up this country by speaking truth to power and regularly and fearlessly roasting — on Twitter and beyond — the likes of “president” Trump, the NRA and his myriad flocks of racist, sexist, stupid sheep.

Hell yes and thanks for the kick in the butt, kids. As far as I can tell there hasn’t been a more impactful generation since young Americans volunteered to fight in and/or protest the world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. These kids who have taken to the streets over what’s right and what’s wrong are just as much leaders, heroes and soldiers who’ve responded not with the Calm Down and Carry On anesthesia drip of their parents and their parents’ media, but by fighting the good fight for the best parts of this country and calling BS on the bad.

Which undoubtedly gets under the skin of a Southwest Journal reader who writes me angry emails every time I have the audacity to call out “president” Trump for what he is and what he is not (a terrible person and an even worse excuse for a leader), but I don’t get too down about it because I only skim and delete her blind brainwashed rage, knowing full well that, over the last few months, she and the rest of ugly America’s ignorance has been mitigated by the smarts, courage and hope found in students from the class of 2018.

Lord knows I’ve needed the wisdom of these teens. Don’t ask why, but I still read, watch and listen to the local news, and I grow more and more uncomfortable and disgusted at the lack of any “controversial” opinion or lack of outrage being expressed about the times we the boiling lobsters are living through. Thank god

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So do your thing, commencement speakers.

Lift them up, celebrate them, challenge them.

Eden Prairie High School seniors Addie Rodriguez, Aubrey Rosenlund and Beth Kutina at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School-inspired March For Our Lives protest at the Minnesota State Capitol March 24. Photo by Jim Walsh

for music, other newspapers and media and the reporters, columnists and editors coming out of the class of 2018.

“Don’t trust anyone over 30” was the teens’ and twentysomethings’ slogan of the ’60s, born of a disgust with the older generations’ complacency and calcification in the face of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Here we are again, and for good reason, and likewise the class of 2018 will have a lot to answer for when they — the “mass shooting generation” as one Parkland student labeled his tribe — turn 30 in 2030.

And who can blame them for being fed-up with their elders? I watched the live broadcast of Michelle Wolf ‘s mostly hilarious roast of “president” Trump and the media at the White House Correspondents Dinner. I saw the pearl-clutching of the CNN hosts immediately afterwards and witnessed the similarly shocked tone of the Monday morning pundits, who once again bent over backwards to be “fair and balanced” in the face of this racist, sexist, classist “administration” and its supporters, and I thanked goddess for the funny, smart and angry girls and boys coming out of the class of 2018.

Which is something I find myself doing that a lot these days: Whenever all the mean white people get the best of me, whenever I think the morons have won, people are horrible, the media is corrupt and complacent and ageism, sexism and racism is now just part of the accepted human condition, I give thanks for the rebellious energy of the high school class of

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2018, many of whom will be on the front lines Friday when Trump and Pence speak at yet another NRA rally in Dallas.

So do your thing, commencement speakers.

Lift them up, celebrate them, challenge them.

These are brave, thoughtful young Americans, and we’re lucky to be living in their orbit.

Jim Walsh lives and grew up in South Minneapolis.

He can be reached at jimwalsh086@gmail.com.

CALL FOR SUMMER POETRY Yes, it’s only a couple weeks since the last blizzard, but spring is upon us ... and soon it will be gone.

We’re looking forward to a well-earned Minnesota summer. Deadline for the Southwest Journal Summer Poetry issue is May 14. If you write poetry or know someone who does, please send your best work to wilhide@skypoint.com.

— Doug Wilhide, Southwest Journal poetry editor

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 A9

Voices

From your lawn to our lakes Minneapolis is a diverse community, yet we all share one thing in common: our beautiful lakes. Our lakes unite people from all communities, providing a recreational outlet for all people. The lakes of our city truly distinguish it, but we are killing the lakes many of us adore.

The simple truth is that the fertilizer we place on our lawns winds up in our city’s lakes. Since the mid1900s, fertilizer’s popularity has boomed across the U.S., founded on the idea of creating a lush, healthy lawn to be the envy of the neighborhood. Most leading fertilizers use nitrogen and phosphorus, two chemicals capable of severely damaging lakes’ ecosystems.

While these two chemicals green up your lawn, a lawn cannot absorb every last bit of fertilizer. Just as your lawn benefits from nitrogen and phosphorus, so do algae in the lakes.

Increased exposure to these two elements accounts for the appearance of “dead zones,” areas on a lake’s surface almost entirely covered by algae. Algae deprive the water of oxygen, making it nearly impossible for aquatic animals to survive.

Between watering your lawn and exposure to rain, a significant amount of fertilizer is swept off your lawn and into storm sewers. Whether you live 50 feet or miles from a lake, all storm sewers drain into our lakes, creeks or rivers.

Many of us may be unwilling to stop fertilizing. There are more sustainable alternatives to keep your lawn pristine: using fertilizers with less phosphorus and nitrogen, fertilizing with the same fertilizer less frequently or creating a garden in part of your lawn instead of grass.

I am a 17-year-old who is passionate about our environment and ecosystems.

I have developed a love for the lakes that filled my childhood with joyful memories. I feel children for generations to come should have the same privilege.

Beck Woollen, Washburn High School junior Tangletown

A lake by any other name The article in the recent issue of the Southwest Journal about Nabil Amra, who is planning to sail around the world (“Around the world at 8 mph,” April 19–May 2 edition), mentions that he learned to sail on Bde Maka Ska. And that statement brings up an interesting point.

How can it be said he learned to sail on Bde Maka Ska? There was no lake then called Maka Ska. The lake he learned to sail on was called Lake Calhoun, the same lake I learned to sail on.

Lake Calhoun has a new name now, but when I learned to sail on it years ago, it was known as Lake Calhoun. And when I now think or speak of learning to sail, I think or speak of Lake Calhoun.

Arlene Fried Bryn Mawr

A missing vote The patriots’ rallying cry rose to the lips of neighbors gathered for a book group on a recent Wednesday night: “taxation without representation.”

The citizens of District 61B in Southwest Minneapolis are currently without representation in the state Legislature. Rep. Paul Thissen was appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court and unceremoniously left the people in his district in the lurch. This includes people who have voted for him, contributed to his campaign and worked to get out the vote for him.

At the close of the session when the final votes are counted, we will not be represented. What are the governor and Thissen thinking? Have they joined the ranks of the cynics? As one DFL staff person told us from Thissen’s empty office, “One vote won’t make a difference.”

In our minds, every vote counts.

Every citizen counts. This is the foundation of democracy. It seems in this case, private ambition may have trumped the public good.

Carolyn and Peter Hendrixson Lynnhurst

CORRECTION A Green Digest item in the April 19–May 2 edition misstated the name of the Plate to Garden compost event in the Lynnhurst neighborhood. The event, which was rescheduled, takes place May 12.

Good Grocer details mixed-use project Good Grocer wants to anchor a six-story apartment building at 2644 Nicollet Ave. S., a site previously used as a parking lot.

The building would house 80 dwelling units and a rooftop patio above the 8,500-square-foot grocery store. The site would hold 55 parking spaces in one level below ground and 25 spaces in a surface lot fronting 27th Street.

A nonprofit that works to expand access to fresh food by giving discounts to volunteers, Good Grocer left its former location at 122 E. Lake St. last winter to make way for Interstate 35W construction.

“In order to make the apartments more accessible to everyone, residents will be offered an ongoing renters discount at Good Grocer,” founder Kurt Vickman said in a letter to the city. “It is our belief that this building will not only give the neighborhood better access to healthy, affordable food, but will also help meet the growing demand for housing.”

The residences would include one- and two-bedroom units, most of them 479 square feet.

The project as proposed would require special city approval to increase the maximum building height, increase the parking lot’s street frontage, reduce landscaping, allow blank walls of more than 25 feet in width, allow fiber cement cladding in excess of 30 percent, and reduce the minimum ground-floor window requirement.

The site’s current zoning is C3A, a Community Activity Center District that allows four stories or 56 feet in height, and it’s part of a Pedestrian Oriented Overlay District, which emphasizes density and pedestrian-friendly design.

The long-vacant site was home to more than a dozen immigrantowned businesses until it was damaged by fire in 2004. The property later went into foreclosure. Most recently, it served as parking space for the Icehouse and Vertical Endeavors.

The Good Grocer will discuss the proposal with the Whittier Alliance neighborhood group in a meeting 6 p.m.–8 p.m. May 14 at Whittier Park.

Pending city approval, the grocer expects to break ground this summer and finish construction in the summer of 2019.

— Michelle Bruch

Plus

A10 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

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n 2015, when I broke the story that the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board was mulling the idea of a huge referendum to rebuild its tattered neighborhood parks, one potent image of that deterioration immediately came to mind.

It’s a sidewalk along the north edge of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, one I walked many Sundays to cross a footbridge over Interstate 35W to church.

The reason this sidewalk leapt to mind was its condition. Its slabs were heaved or slumped.

Many panels bore a web of deep cracks. In some, the concrete had degraded to mere powder. In others, it was so thoroughly pulverized that bare dirt replaced any remaining surface. The date stamps that recorded when the slabs were poured were so old that they were illegible. A park spokeswoman says there’s no record of when the oldest were laid.

I wondered how a Park Board could ignore such a hazardous walk. But it’s a big city with more than 150 neighborhood parks.

Unfortunately, this dreadful sidewalk remains unrepaired today.

I didn’t expect my battered sidewalk to be the first item fixed after Mayor Betsy Hodges and park commissioners agreed in 2015 on a $300 million compromise bailout for parks and streets.

But I was heartened when it popped up in an April 2017 Park Board announcement that said perimeter sidewalks in critical need of repairs would be fixed in 21 parks, including King, as part of a larger rehab program beginning the next month. But nothing happened at King.

In July, the Park Board announced that work on those perimeter sidewalks would be finished by the end of September — but only at 15 parks, still including King. Yet my sidewalk again remained untouched.

It wasn’t until February that the Park Board acknowledged that it had managed to fix sidewalks last year at only seven parks, only one of them in Southwest. That’s baffling, given that pouring sidewalks is among the most basic of park repairs.

A park spokeswoman attributed the nonperformance to contractor issues. Among the parks that didn’t get promised sidewalk improvements were Bryant, Loring, Fuller and Lyndale Farmstead in Southwest, Columbia Park, Northeast Athletic Field and Windom in Northeast, Gateway Park downtown, Sumner Field and Willard on the North Side, and East Phillips, Steele, Hiawatha school, Powderhorn and Longfellow in south-central Minneapolis.

All politics is local, the old saw says. I’ve been going to King Park for 42 years, although it’s far from the only park I use. I’ve watched both improvements and baffling changes.

The biggest improvement added a spacious gym in the 1990s, which made Election Day less cramped for voters and gave kids a refuge off the

streets. A sprinkler system installed at the park’s south end promised better turf and a premiere field for the park’s thriving youth soccer teams.

A playground that combines kid-magnet equipment with a civil rights theme opened in 2015.

On the flip side, the park’s best tennis courts long ago were commandeered for a pay-to-play indoor tennis bubble, although that at least extends the playing season and offers lessons for all ages. More baffling was the decision made outside the neighborhood to plop a fenced baseball field financed by the Twins over the sprinklered soccer field in 2007, rendering the soccer pitch useless for the area’s burgeoning Latino population raised on futbol. The park also lost its skating rink.

There’s any number of reasons a park’s sidewalks can fail. One is age, although the 1938 WPA tennis courts at a nearby park were playable into the 1990s. Another is substandard work or materials by the crews that build them.

A third is the use of mechanized equipment to clear snow or to renovate the tennis complex.

But the most likely reason for this walkway’s failure is the fact that the park was originally a wetland. According to David C. Smith’s parks history, the Park Board in 1919 hauled in 15,000 cubic yards of fill for the park’s low north end shortly after the site was purchased. It’s a tactic used to create countless acres of parkland, from dredged areas at Lake of the Isles to filled areas like Pearl Park to the glacial river bottom under The Parade. But fill and dredged soils settle, especially if they’re dumped over the peaty soils of a wetland. That’s why the original King Park building had to be constructed on piles.

All those factors, plus underfunded maintenance, have created a stroller-wrecking sidewalk that’s impossible to navigate with a wheelchair.

That crumbling sidewalk serves a purpose beyond that of most park sidewalks. It’s the walkway to the I-35W footbridge, which is soon to be replaced by a new span that’s wide enough to serve both pedestrians and cyclists, unlike the cramped, cage-like crossing there now. That footbridge also serves something of an equity role. The building of the freeway cut off nearby lower-income, predominantly black neighborhoods from the park, and the footbridge restored their park access.

The bridge and the dilapidated sidewalk also play a larger transportation role by carrying the RiverLake Greenway, a foot-bike route between Lake Harriet and the Mississippi River that I originated in the 1990s.

It’s not like the Park Board doesn’t know about this battered section of park sidewalk. I’ve made sure of that. Park Board Chairman Brad Bourn used to live a few houses away from it.

The Park Board now says that it will fix both interior and perimeter sidewalks at up to 51 parks this year. It promises to fix the worst first.

We’ll see.

A cracked and crumbling sidewalk on the edge of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in Kingfield.

Photo

by Steve Brandt

A12 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com FROM SCHOOL BUDGETS / PAGE A1

wrote in an April 20 letter. “Nevertheless, with this round of additional central office reductions service delivery to schools, staff, families and community may not be as efficient and effective.”

The release of the additional cuts came 10 days after a 5-4 vote by the School Board to restore the additional funding for middle and high schools. The district distributes that money, called time-adjustment funding, to middle and high schools on a per pupil basis to add time to the school day.

Graff and his team had cut the time-adjustment funding as part of their plan for ending a projected $33 million budget deficit for 2018–2019. The deficit is due to enrollment declines, negotiated salary increases, increases in the costs of state and federal mandates and other factors, according to the district.

Supporters of the School Board’s vote on April 10 said middle and high schools faced disproportionate budget cuts that would leave schools such as Washburn High School unable to operate.

Opponents said it would be a continuance of poor budgeting practices and could jeopardize other district programs and services.

The School Board’s resolution did not allow the district to make additional cuts to schools or lower its reserve funds beyond current levels, meaning the cuts had to come out of the district’s central office.

Central office takes cuts In his April 20 letter, Graff wrote that he and his team stand by their initial budget recommendations, which he said they arrived at using an equity lens while considering structural changes necessary to create stability. He wrote that they maintained a commitment to the district priorities of equity, social-emotional learning, literacy and multi-tiered systems of support in identi-

fying the additional cuts, despite a short timeline.

The additional reductions put the total cut to the district’s 2018–2019 central-office budget at $18.6 million. District leaders cut over 20 department budgets by a total of $14.2 million and required departments to absorb nearly $4.4 million in salary and benefits increases.

They also cut school budgets by $14.8 million, making nearly $6.9 million in program adjustments and requiring schools to absorb $7.9 million in salary and benefits increases.

Graff walked through each of the department cuts at the School Board Finance Committee meeting on April 26. He said there was probably not one cut that didn’t affect students and that district leaders were trying to find ways to offset that impact.

Graff said departments under the purview of the district’s chief of Academics, Leadership and Learning cut the equivalent of nearly 56 full-time positions, including one of the district’s four associate superintendents.

These are not easy reductions throughout the district. There’s no easy solution, but I also feel like we’ve done our part with trying to maintain a high level of integrity and an equity lens and those priorities that we’ve set forth.

— Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff

The largest academics cut, at nearly $2.4 million, was to the district’s teaching and learning department, which subsequently eliminated the equivalent of 13 full-time positions. Graff said the cuts will require teachers and principals to take more time to ensure that curriculum and implementations occur, adding to their roles and responsibilities in the classroom.

The district also cut its special education department’s budget by $1.7 million, leading that department to eliminate the equivalent of 21 full-time positions. Graff said the district’s special education staff will receive less guidance from the special education department because of the cuts. He added that the department reduced clerical support roles, reduced its traveling health office and is discontinuing a pilot multi-tiered systems of support training, among other changes.

Outside of academics, the district cut over $2.4 million from its transportation budget after reducing its number of bus routes because of bell-time changes at 20 schools. It also cut over $2.1 million from its human resources department and over $1.8 million from its information technology department.

The district also made sizable cuts to athletics (nearly $500,000), research and assessment (nearly $379,000), finance (over $250,000) and communications ($275,000), among other departments.

“These are not easy reductions throughout the district,” Graff said. “There’s no easy solution, but I also feel like we’ve done our part with trying to maintain a high level of integrity and an equity lens and those priorities that we’ve set forth.”

Passes to full board Graff said the district would have trouble hiring the most desirable candidates if the board were to again change the district’s

budget recommendations. He added that the district would put its state aid at risk and would have to rely on its dwindling fund balance if the board does not pass the budget by June.

Superintendent Ed Graff “The district’s better served by an improved and timely budget, as required by the state, than by returning to the drawing board for a small portion of what we’re trying to address here,” Graff said.

Still, the board doesn’t appear to unanimously approve of the budget. Board Member KerryJo Felder, who was elected from North Minneapolis, said she doesn’t feel like some of the board’s values came out in some of the cuts and that she wished she had more time to review the budget.

Graff said he, too, would have liked more time to evaluate the additional cuts, noting the months district leaders put into their initial recommendations. He noted that he has asked board members on numerous occasions throughout the school year, both privately and publicly, to tell him their priorities and values.

“I think that yes, it would be nice to have more time to have these conversations,” he said. “But I don’t know how else to present it other than we’ve had these conversations.”

The five-member School Board Finance Committee voted to advance the district’s 2018–2019 budget to the full board by a 4-0 vote. Board Member Bob Walser abstained, saying he didn’t feel like he had enough time to review the budget.

The School Board will review the 2018– 2019 budget proposal at its May 8 meeting and vote on the final budget in June.

southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 A13

Moments in Minneapolis

By Cedar Imboden Phillips

Piping their way to success

D

o readers recognize any of the men shown here? This undated photograph came to us with a note saying that it shows students in Dunwoody Institute’s 10-month baking course. Baking had long been a part of Dunwoody’s offerings; as early as 1915 Dunwoody was offering both night and day shifts to accommodate the schedules of working bakers. By the 1950s, cake decorating was listed in advertisements as a standalone option in addition to the baking classes. Dunwoody baking and cake decorating graduates went on to work in local bakeries, hotels, restaurants and food companies both locally and nationally. Today’s readers may notice that this class is entirely male; in 1972, Dunwoody welcomed its first full-time female cake decorating student, Patricia Schaeffer of New England, North Dakota. Dunwoody, now known as the Dunwoody College of Technology, closed its baking school, although their alumni continue to make their mark on the industry.

Cedar Imboden Phillips serves as the executive director for the Hennepin History Museum. Learn more about the museum and its offerings at hennepinhistory.org or 870-1329.

Image from the collection of the Hennepin History Museum

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A14 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com FROM SOLAR / PAGE A1

The city’s solar ordinance While the City of Minneapolis has adopted a solar ordinance, the option to protect solar energy systems is limited to certain cases.

City staff consider the impact on solar whenever builders apply for a conditional use permit to build above the maximum height dictated in the zoning code. Solar shadowing is one of several factors city officials take into consideration, along with factors like traffic congestion, alliance with city policies and the scale and character of the surrounding area.

“Outside of that, we really don’t have much of an ability to prevent new construction or other obstructions from partially or fully shading solar energy systems,” said City Planning Manager Jason Wittenberg. “If a building complies with its setback requirements and complies with its maximum allowed height in a zoning district, there is very little to nothing that we can do if that building would result in shadowing an existing solar energy system.”

A test for solar access That’s the case on Harriet Avenue. Premier Storage could build up to four stories, but the company is only proposing three stories.

“It will not shadow the solar 100 percent of the time. There will be some impact at certain times of the day during certain periods of the year, but we’ve found that it was minimal shadowing impact,” Principal City Planner Hilary Dvorak said at the April Planning Commission meeting.

“I think it is really important that we allow for solar, protect those rights. We don’t have a mechanism in this review to do so, and I think that the impacts are low,” said Commissioner Sam Rockwell.

He noted that easements provide a legal tool to protect access to sunlight, which aren’t present in this case.

Leo Whitebird, pictured at his Whittier home, hopes that his lawsuit will result in more protections for passive solar homes. Photo by Michelle Bruch

Premier Storage President Todd Jones said they designed the new building to be sensitive of its neighbor to the north. He said the building rises 31–35 feet instead of the 56 feet allowed by right. A study found no shadowing of the solar array in the summer months, but on the winter solstice, the panels would be shaded 5–45 percent at different times of the day.

“The impact is very limited and minor,” he said at the Planning Commission meeting. “We have acted neighborly [to be] responsible with our design. … We are very

proud of the design of this new building and believe it fits well with what is happening up and down the Greenway.”

Whitebird started a GoFundMe campaign to raise a “solar defense fund” to help cover legal costs. He raised $930 from 24 people in 19 days. He’s hoping to stop construction and see his entire house design fall under the proper definition of a solar energy system in state law, rather than only the panels. He points to state law that says land use plans shall contain “an element for protection and development of access to

direct sunlight for solar energy systems.”

“The issue here is there is no precedent,” he said. “… Does this protect passive solar?”

When Whitebird and his wife bought the Whittier neighborhood house in the mid-90s, they gutted the first floor, enlarged windows and added a second-floor bay window. Three new skylights provide sunlight in winter and open to provide ventilation in summer. Whitebird estimated that the solar gain offsets more than $200 per month in heating costs each winter.

Whitebird said he’s not trying to argue

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that every home has a right to full sunlight, but he said his own house should be protected because he designed it expressly to capture solar energy.

They added solar panels in the mid2000s, and Whitebird recalls that the system cost about $14,000 with a portion offset by rebates. Whitebird said he is retired, and as his wife approaches retirement, they are counting on the energy savings.

A proposal for a new self-service storage building at 2845 Harriet Ave S. would rise three stories, below the height limits on the site.

Image courtesy City of Minneapolis

State solar laws vary A provision in state law allows property owners to voluntarily negotiate solar easements. But such easements are not common, said Brian Ross, senior program director at the Great Plains Institute.

“In reality, they would be extraordinarily expensive in most cases,” he said, explaining that an attorney would view the easement as harming a property’s value and development potential.

“They would say, you just have to pay me so much money that you might as well buy my property,” he said.

The Whitebirds renovated their home at the 2800 block of Harriet Avenue to enlarge windows, add skylights and install solar panels. The City Planning Commission recently approved a three-story self storage building in the neighboring surface lot.

Photo by Michelle Bruch

While Minneapolis is considered a SolSmart “gold” community for advancing solar energy, Ross said it’s in the middle when it comes to solar access. He said the most aggressive city is Boulder, Colorado, which protects a hypothetical “solar fence” around some solar arrays. California gives solar owners some rights over neighboring properties, like the ability to trim trees that begin to shade panels.

“There are some states that have stronger solar protections than Minnesota does written into state law, but even in those cases usually you’re only protected from unanticipated changes,” he said. “You’re not protected from [a development allowed by] right.”

In Miami, Jody Finver of Solar United Neighbors of Florida said she’s worried about her neighbor’s plan to add a second

story that would shade her solar panels. She wants to secure an easement, but she said this is new territory for city officials and the discussions haven’t progressed. She said the adoption rate for solar is low but growing.

“We’re seeing more homeowners go solar, and we’re also seeing more teardowns and

We of course hope and encourage that people invest in putting solar energy on their rooftops.

— City Planning Manager Jason Wittenberg

rebuilds. This might become an issue. But as of now, it seems like we’re the only people that are affected,” Finver said.

As the City Council works to reduce Minneapolis’ carbon footprint, solar is part of the focus. The Council recently signed on to join two community solar gardens, and a group of property owners in The Wedge is exploring a solar co-op.

Wittenberg said he presumes that people who invest in solar understand the potential that it could be partially shaded at some point in the future, whether through trees or construction.

“I assume that is part of the equation that people have to do when they are investing in solar,” he said. “… We of course hope and encourage that people invest in putting solar energy on their rooftops.”

A16 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com FROM SOUTHWEST LIGHT RAIL / PAGE A1

But Twin Cities & Western Railroad, which moves $1.5 billion in freight through the corridor each year, argues that Met Council and its partner in the deal, the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority, haven’t done enough to ensure SWLRT construction and operations won’t hurt its business. The Glencoe-based shortline railroad and many of its customers in southwestern Minnesota and South Dakota are urging the Surface Transportation Board to reject Met Council’s request or at least put off a decision until after a public comment period. Congressman Collin Peterson echoed the shippers’ concerns in his own letter to the board.

TC&W is also seeking a remedy in federal court. The company filed a complaint April 23 in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis alleging Met Council’s actions are preempted by federal law governing interstate commerce and that they would violate a 1990s trackage rights agreement that guarantees TC&W’s ability to operate in the corridor.

In a letter to the Surface Transportation Board, TC&W argued the pending legal action is reason enough to reject Met Council’s request. As an alternative, it suggested the board issue a “housekeeping stay” until a federal judge has time to review the matter.

In a statement issued April 23, Met Council Chair Alene Tchourumoff said she was “disappointed” TC&W had chosen to file suit, adding that the offers made to the railroad “were always responsive to their interests, as well as the shippers who rely on those tracks, while balancing our responsibility to the public.”

“Our approach continues to focus on preserving the trackage rights agreements TC&W has today, and we will continue to approach this relationship in good faith,” she said.

TC&W President Mark Wegner returned a phone call April 23 but said he had to consult with the railroad’s attorneys before answering questions on the record. TC&W is the only freight rail operating in the corridor, and it runs about four trains and 160 loaded cars over the Bass Lake Spur and Kenilworth Corridor each day.

Met Council now finds itself in the position of defending the SWLRT project in two separate federal court cases. Met Council recently prevailed in a federal environmental lawsuit, but the local group that sued the regional planning agency — Lakes and Parks Alliance of Minneapolis — announced earlier this month it would appeal U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim’s decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Rising tensions Tensions between Met Council and TC&W rose sharply this spring, five months after they broke off negotiations on a light rail construction agree-

This map presented to the Southwest Light Rail Transportation project’s Corridor Management Committee in March shows which entities would own, operate on and be responsible for sections of the shared corridor if a Met Council plan goes through. Submitted image

ment. Before talks froze, Met Council was close to sealing a $16 million deal with TC&W. The proposed agreement committed the Met Council to spending up to $11.8 million to replace siding tracks in the Bass Lake Spur that would be relocated to accommodate the project. TC&W would get up to $4.2 million, partly for its cooperation on construction and partly to compensate the railroad for any construction-related interruptions in its service.

Met Council members voted to OK the broad terms of the deal in August. But after that vote, agency officials said, TC&W returned with yet more demands — demands that would’ve put Met Council in the position of insuring the railroad against losses unrelated to light rail construction.

Wegner disputed that version of events in an April 13 letter to Tchourumoff, the Met Council chair, writing: “We have never contemplated grabbing additional revenue at SWLRT’s expense. We merely insist that we do not incur losses we would not have occurred but for the presence of SWLRT on the freight corridor.”

In the railroad’s version of the story, presented in letters and the federal complaint, they were close to a final agreement that would have met TC&W’s concerns about the four years of heavy construction planned for SWLRT, tentatively scheduled to begin this year and continue through 2022, with light-rail transit service beginning in 2023. There were several outstanding issues still on the table

when Met Council stepped away from negotiations and was silent for months — until it presented TC&W with a take-it-or-leave-it offer this spring.

In a phone conversation that took place before the federal suit was filed, Wegner said the railroad assumed Met Council was simply distracted during the months of silence. During that time, it was dealing with the Lakes and Parks Alliance lawsuit, putting the SWLRT civil construction contracts out for bid and developing a mitigation plan for a 10-foot high, mile-long crash wall only recently added to another section of the future light rail’s path.

The March settlement offer was, he said, “a complete surprise.”

A new plan Seeking a way around the impasse with TC&W, Met Council announced a new plan with the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority in March.

Met Council would purchase the Bass Lake Spur from its current owner, Canadian Pacific Railway, for up to $27.45 million. At the same time, the railroad authority would transfer ownership of the Kenilworth Corridor, valued at $66 million, to Met Council. The deal also placed the railroad authority in the role of common carrier, making it legally responsible for maintaining freight service on both sections of track.

Met Council then presented new settlement

terms to TC&W: $11.9 million to cooperate during light-rail construction and quit any claims against the project, plus $230,000 for expenses since talks ended last year. Given until April 18 to respond, TC&W rejected the offer.

In his letter to the Met Council’s chair, Wegner pointed out a key area where, in the railroad’s view, the agency’s offer fell short.

The deal would increase TC&W’s tax obligations, opening a $3.2 million gap in the siding replacement project, and add to its ongoing property tax liabilities.

“Forcing TC&W to absorb these taxes is tantamount to asking TC&W to subsidize the light rail project,” he wrote.

The suit filed by TC&W April 24 names the Met Council, railroad authority and Canadian Pacific Railway. It alleges the Met Council’s current plan “will substantially and unreasonably interfere” with TC&W operations.

Another issue raised by the railroad is the replacement for the siding tracks in the Bass Lake Spur. Asked about current plans for their replacement, Kate Brickman, director of communications for Met Council, said the agency would address the question in a future filing with the Surface Transportation Board. Without access to the roughly 16,000 feet of sidetracks, the railroad alleges in its complaint, it will be unable to sort railcars or park trains temporarily.

The complaint also questions the rail authority’s ability to carry out common carrier duties, alleging that it has “demonstrated a hostile attitude towards rail freight transportation.”

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By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Neighborhood Forest provides trees to Minneapolis students A local organization is giving close to 7,000 tree seedlings to students in six states this year, including hundreds to students in Southwest Minneapolis.

Neighborhood Forest will provide the seedlings for no cost to students at Lake Harriet Lower and Carondelet schools and United Methodist Preschool, among others, in conjunction with Earth Day and Arbor Day. Its goal is to give children a way to connect with nature, which could in turn inspire a sense of environmental stewardship, director Vivek Narula said.

“The simple act of tree planting, it has such an important role to play and such a big impact,” he said.

Narula, who grew up near Toronto and lived there for nearly 20 years, has been director of Neighborhood Forest since 2013.

His brother, Vikas Narula, founded the organization in 2010, modeling it after a program in which he participated as a college student in Fairfield, Iowa. In three years with the program, Vikas Narula and his friends distributed over 30,000 trees to tens of thousands of schoolchildren across southeast Iowa.

“It was the most rewarding work I had ever done,” Narula wrote in a 2013 blog post.

“Seeing the smiling faces of all those kids, knowing that we were doing something that was going to beautify our communities — it filled my soul with feelings that no amount of money could buy.”

Narula moved to the Twin Cities after graduating and worked for years in the medical software

industry. He made the decision to start Neighborhood Forest in 2009, after a viral infection forced him to take an extended leave from work.

“As you can imagine, this gave me more ‘free’ time than I had in a long time,” he wrote in another blog post. “I read, listened to music and did a lot of reflecting.”

Students at Lake Harriet Community School pose with tree seedlings they received from Neighborhood Forest in 2017. The organization is giving close to 7,000 tree seedlings to students this year.

Submitted photo

Narula wrote that he kept coming back to his work on the trees program while in college, adding that he made up his mind to start a similar program. His organization gave away 450 trees at four schools in Minneapolis in its inaugural year and in 2015 gave away close to 5,000 trees and more than 40 schools in six states.

Vivek Narula estimated that the organization will have distributed 28,000–30,000 trees after its big distribution this spring.

Neighborhood Forest relies on local businesses and organizations to sponsor the program at area schools. The organization distributes the seedlings to students, who typically plant them in their families’ yards.

Vivek Narula said the organization tracks the trees over time. He added that the trees it provides are native to the states in which they’re distributing them and said he hopes the organization can expand to every state.

The Fulton Neighborhood Association sponsored trees this year for Lake Harriet Lower, Carondelet and United Methodist Preschool. Schools interested in receiving trees this year can still reach out to Neighborhood Forest. To learn more, visit neighborhoodforest.org.

Fulton committee chair, city encourage pollinator protection The chair of the Fulton Environment Committee is urging residents to take note of the City Council’s 2015 resolution declaring Minneapolis a pollinator friendly community.

John Dillery noted the resolution encourages Minneapolis residents to avoid pesticide usage, avoid planting flowering plants treated with systemic insecticides and discontinue the sale of pesticides and plants treated with systemic insecticides. The resolution also encourages residents to plant more pollinator forage on their properties and utilize organic or chemical-free lawn and landscaping practices.

“Pollinator populations are in sharp decline because of an ongoing loss of plants that feed and shelter them combined with a large-scale expansion of pesticide use by homeowners, landscapers, property managers and farmers,” the city wrote in an April 25 press release. “Neonicotinoids and other systemic pesticides have been shown to kill and weaken bees and other pollinators.”

Growing vegetables, herbs and fruits requires bees, butterflies and other pollinators, the news release notes. It notes that alternatives to pesticides can cost less and dramatically boost habitat for pollinators.

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People who answer 10 questions in a survey, which will be open from May 14–18, can win free plants and seeds. The first 190 people will get vouchers in the mail to pick up five native, pesticide-free perennial plants at no cost June 22–24. Others can claim wildflower seed bundles and pollinator push gardens, containers that hold wildflower seeds and nutrient-rich growing material.

Learn more about the survey and how to protect pollinators at minneapolismn.gov/ environment/bees.

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By Eric Best / ebest@southwestjournal.com

Park commissioners pass changes to outdated ordinances The Park Board is preparing to pass several revisions to its ordinances involving spitting, bathrooms and prohibited conduct in the city’s park system.

The board’s Administration & Finance Committee unanimously voted April 18 to approve a repeal and two revisions to what park legal counsel describe as outdated and overbroad laws that park police rarely enforce. The full board is expected to vote on the changes in May. Commissioners plan to repeal PB2-14, which criminalizes spitting in any boat, canoe, building or walk-in in any park or parkway. Chief Jason Ohotto said in a report to the board in March that park police haven’t cited anyone under the law in at least three years.

They plan to revise PB2-13, an ordinance that is meant to criminalize drug use,

vandalism and sleeping in the hundreds of bathrooms in the city’s park system, by taking out vague words like “lurk,” “loiter” or “lie in wait.” Park police have only issued four citations for lurking in bathrooms in the past three years.

The new ordinance would read: “No person shall, in restroom facility, sleep, remain for any period of time beyond that required to use the facility, or enter for the purpose to engage in any criminal act.”

The board’s prohibited conduct and language ordinance, PB2-16, would get the largest edit under the revisions. Nearing 100 words, the current version of the law contains several outdated words and bans what the board’s legal counsel described as constitutionally protected speech. Commissioners plan to take out the first clause that prohibits “threatening, profane, abusive,

disorderly, insulting or indecent language, conduct or behavior.”

The new ordinance would read: “No person shall in or upon any park, parkway, beach, playground, park facility, or park waters use language that by its very utterance inflicts injury nor use language or engage in conduct that tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace; nor shall any person gamble, or intentionally engage in any indecent, lascivious, lewd or demonstratively offensive conduct.”

In his report, Ohotto described the ordinance as an umbrella law for disorderly conduct. Park police have issued 54 citations under the ordinance in the past three years.

Citywide Commissioner Londel French has said that revising these laws is part of a larger mission of improving relations between the Park Board and communities of color.

He brought up a recent incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks in which two young black men were arrested and removed from the café for suspicion of trespassing. The April 16 incident sparked conversations nationwide about how the country’s antiloitering laws have historically been used to discriminate against people of color.

“This is one of the reasons why (these changes are) good. It’s a social justice issue,” he said.

The board may open up the revisions to community input, according to a staff report. The changes will require two readings at the full board and a public hearing prior to the board’s final vote.

Improvements coming to Washburn Avenue playground Monkey bars, a see-saw and a zip line are among the many playground improvements coming to the Washburn Avenue Tot Lot this year.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s Planning Committee approved a concept plan April 18 to overhaul the small, half-block neighborhood park in Southwest Minneapolis. The existing 1990s-era playground will be replaced this spring and summer.

“We have playground equipment that’s pretty old and needs to be updated,” said Crystal Passi, a design project manager with the Park Board.

The concept plan calls for a small zip line, likely a first for President Brad Bourn’s District 6, he said, as well as slides, swings and shade structures. Wood fiber surfacing would replace the existing sand in the playground.

The Park Board is funding the improvements with more than $231,000 from its capital improvement fund. The board is expected to approve a contract for the work in May. Demolition is slated to begin at the end of the spring.

Once rebuilt, the Washburn Avenue Tot Lot would feature new monkey bars, slides and a small zip line, according to a new concept plan.

Image courtesy of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board

Park Board, partners weigh new Cedar-Riverside facility Over the next year the Park Board and its partners will look at building a new multi-use facility in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood where need for community space has vastly outgrown the popular Brian Coyle Center.

As part of an agreement approved April 18, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board will explore working with the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, Augsburg University and Pillsbury United Communities to add another community center to the most densely populated neighborhood in the city. Local leaders say the area’s large East African community and other residents require another place to gather beyond the aging one-story center.

“It is extremely busy. The Brian Coyle Center is old, crowded,” Assistant Superintendent of Planning Michael Schroeder said.

“I think the needs in this community are significant enough where it’s reasonable to imagine that we would have two facilities.”

How the shared facility would work out is still unclear, but Augsburg would provide the land — a large parking lot at Riverside & 25th on the east side of its campus — and the YMCA and Pillsbury United Communities, a nonprofit that operates the existing Brian Coyle Center, may operate or program the building. Augsburg may replace displaced stalls with structured parking, Schroeder said.

Park staff and partners will study how feasible a second center is through more than $300,000 of funding from the Legislature.

Schroeder said the project likely won’t look quite like a recreation center or a YMCA facility.

“We don’t know what it would be, but this initial stage would help us resolve that,” he told commissioners during an April 8 meeting.

Amano Dube, director of the Brian Coyle Center, said the need for resources in the area is intense because the center is a regional destination for East-African communities across the metro area looking for family programming, kitchen space or a place to play.

“Over the years, the issue of space … and the number of amenities for different age groups has been a critical issue,” he told commissioners.

Schroeder said a new facility would bring the area up to speed with neighborhoods that have seen investments like the new Northeast Park Recreation Center in Northeast Minneapolis.

“There is no comparison between the facilities,” he said.

The new center would also mean that residents would still have the access to resources while the Brian Coyle Center sees potential future renovations.

A20April A2 May 6–19, 3–16, 2017 2018 / southwestjournal.com / southwestjournal.com

REMODELING SHOWCASE

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s soon as they entered the East Isles home they would eventually buy, Megan Lanigan and Rod Lauture knew they wanted to change it. “We walked in here and right away, we said, ‘At some point, we want to do something with the kitchen,’” Lauture said. “It obviously needed something.”

Even the previous owners thought so. They left Lanigan and Lauture with three sets of architectural plans for remodeling the rear of the 1907 home. One would have removed the butler’s pantry. Another would have expanded the kitchen four to six feet further than the couple wanted, eating up most of the small backyard. A third would have expanded the house and attached it to the detached garage, completely eliminating the backyard.

Lanigan and Lauture wanted to preserve some of the yard, and Lanigan definitely wanted to keep the pantry.

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REMODELING SHOWCASE removed a gate and three stairs that led to the garage, and constructed a new back door that makes it easier to reach the yard.

The remodel added eight feet to the rear of the home and only took two feet of the yard. It was the second job House Lift had done for them. The first was removal and replacement of the front porch in 2016. They found House Lift in a newspaper ad and checked for reviews on Angie’s List.

Some bidders came in higher and one a lot lower, and they selected House Lift for its reputation and flexibility regarding building materials. The company also didn’t demand a design deposit before the couple signed a contract. And it was local, with an office and showroom nearby on Nicollet Avenue South.

House Lift is very familiar with the older homes around the Minneapolis lakes, according to owner and president Randy Korn. Kitchen expansions are the most common addition the company does, as well as adding a first-floor half-bath and a mudroom.

“This is one of the most popular things we do in this area,” Korn said. “People want a main-floor bath. They want somewhere to put coats when they come in from the garage.”

Working on older homes since 1991 has also given the company lots of experience with the dreaded remodeling surprises. Korn keeps a cool head. “Any time we open up 100-year-old framing, we run into some challenges with making it work,” he said. “We didn’t find that much rotted wood. It was more just trying to fit standardized lumber.

That’s why we ended up pretty much taking most of it down. It was easier than to build onto what was there.”

The deck above the back porch seemed to have been homemade, according to Lauture. “It looked like a death trap. There was no way it was up to code,” he said.

House Lift began working on Lanigan and Lauture’s kitchen expansion in late August 2017 and finished in

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That came in handy shortly after House Lift had finished removing the deck and put in the rough framing for the addition. A big rainstorm caused a leak in the

middle of the night. “I called them and they came over and fixed it,” Lauture said. “Done.”

He and Lanigan are already thinking about Phase II of the kitchen remodel. They want House Lift to replace the cabinetry, lighting and appliances and expand it slightly into the addition with a floor-to-ceiling pantry and a slightly longer island, “hopefully, in the next two years,” Lauture said.

The kitchen remodel added eight feet to the rear of the home and only took two feet of the backyard, something that was very important to the homeowners.

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A22 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

Public Safety Update

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Uptown YWCA hires off-duty police in response to threats The Uptown YWCA at 2808 Hennepin Ave. S. received at least three threats of violence between March 30-April 23, according to police reports.

According to police: On April 23, shortly after 10:30 p.m., a suspect called the business from an unknown number and threat-

ened to “shoot up the place.” The building was evacuated, and the threat didn’t materialize. Police linked the incident to two earlier calls.

On March 30, an unknown man called shortly before 8 p.m. and said he would bring a gun to the YWCA. On April 6, shortly

Murder case ends in guilty plea A man who pleaded guilty to killing another man under the Interstate-394 bridge last summer will be sentenced to 210 months in prison, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.

A witness told investigators that suspect Duane John Blackbull, 43, returned laughing from an argument with victim Kristie James Steinke, 48. According to court documents, Blackbull said he beat Steinke and threatened to kill the witness if he told anyone.

before 11 p.m., a suspect called the front desk and made verbal threats over the phone.

YWCA spokesperson Corinne Mattli said staff immediately contacted Minneapolis police, and police are investigating. The facility hired off-duty police to increase security, she said.

Shooting near Lake & Pillsbury injures three

“We ask that if you see something suspicious while on the premises, please alert staff to the issue,” reads a YWCA statement.

“The safety of our members, staff and the community is our top priority. The facility remains open for normal business hours.”

POLICE OPEN UP THE STATION Open House at Stevens Square-Loring Heights police substation 1 p.m.–5 p.m. May 12 1905 1st Ave. S.

Police said they found Steinke naked, unconscious and lying on his stomach under the I-394 bridge near Linden Avenue West and Dunwoody Boulevard. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said he died of complex homicidal violence.

A volunteer group called Project 6:8 calls Steinke by the nickname “Wolf ” and honored him in the December homeless memorial march.

“We miss him so much,” the group said in a Facebook post.

Gunshots at the 3000 block of Pillsbury Avenue South injured at least three people on April 22, according to police.

The incident occurred at about 7:15 p.m.

Officers responded to a sound of shots fired and transported one victim to Hennepin County Medical Center. An unknown person dropped off two other victims at the hospital. Police said all three received treatment for minor gunshot wounds.

There are no arrests in the case, and the investigation is ongoing, police said.

Meet the Franklin-Nicollet beat officers, greet block patrol members and taste free food provided by the Uptown Lunds & Byerlys.

5th Precinct Open House 5 p.m.-7 p.m. May 16 3101 Nicollet Ave. S. Free food. Learn about the police department.

CARAG survey solicits a new name The Calhoun Area Residents Action Group wants residents to complete a six-question survey to help choose a new name for the CARAG neighborhood.

“The acronym can be confusing and has become outdated since Lake Calhoun was renamed Bde Maka Ska. We’re looking for a

new name that communicates our location in Minneapolis,” states the survey.

The survey asks people to rate a dozen suggested names, including Bryant Square, Henn-Lake, Lower Uptown, Lyn-Lake, LynTown and Uptown Corners. There is space to suggest new ideas as well.

The neighborhood hopes to hear from renters in particular, as they make up more than 70 percent of the neighborhood.

Survey respondents who live or own property in CARAG enter a drawing for a $50 Pizza Luce gift card.

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News

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Former MPS Athletic Director Tucker joining nonprofit Trent Tucker, the former University of Minnesota basketball star, NBA player and Minneapolis Public Schools athletic director, is joining the staff of a nonprofit focused on providing meals to children in need.

Tucker said in an April 23 interview that he was planning to start with Minneapolisbased Hunger Impact Partners in a week or two. Tucker, who will be the director of stakeholder engagement, said he’s excited to be joining an organization that is moving the community in a positive direction.

“Food plays so many critical and wonderful parts in a person’s life, and if you’re able to provide those opportunities for kids, it becomes a game changer,” he said.

Tucker, who grew up in Flint, Michigan, was a basketball star for the Gophers in the late ’70s and early ’80s, leading them to a Big Ten championship in 1982. He subsequently played 11 seasons in the NBA before working as a broadcaster, founding a foundation and earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. Tucker then worked as a community outreach and youth development coordinator for the University for several years

before the Minneapolis district hired him as athletic director in 2013.

Tucker, who resigned in February, said he had a wonderful time with the district, adding that graduation rates and GPAs among student-athletes improved and that more students started participating in athletics. He said the public schools treated him well and that “at some point, you realize it’s time to move on to do something different.”

Tucker said his resignation did not have to do with the district’s placing North High School athletic director Leo Lewis and Southwest High School athletic director Ryan Lamberty on administrative leave. The district put Lewis on leave in December and Lamberty on leave in February, on the same day Tucker resigned.

Both Lewis and Lamberty were still on leave as of April 23, a district spokesman said.

Hunger Impact Partners CEO Ellie Lucas said Tucker will lead a campaign to get kids to take advantage of meals provided in afterschool enrichment programs. She said he will be doing a series of public service announcements for the effort, known as the Hungry for Wins campaign.

Lucas said Tucker understands school districts and added that he has strong insights as it relates to kids and communities.

“He will be a great advocate for us,” she said.

Hunger Impact Partners focuses on increasing participation in and access to four federal childhood nutrition programs. It looks at data from state agencies to find communities where large numbers of kids qualify for federal meal programs and where access to and participation in those programs is limited. It then supports local schools and other organizations in their efforts to build up or increase participation in those programs.

“The idea is that we’re sort of a catalyst,” Lucas said. “It’s all predicated on what the need is for that particular site or community.”

The organization said in its 2016 annual report that it hopes to reduce the missing-meal gap in Minnesota by 30 million meals.

In addition to working to provide afterschool meals, Hunger Impact Partners works with local agencies on school-breakfast programs, meal programs for kids up to age 5 and summer-meal programs. The organization developed a mobile app last year, called

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Visit hungerimpactpartners.org to learn more about the organization.

Barton parents rally for school safety Several dozen parents of Clara Barton Open School students rallied for school safety on the morning of April 20 in solidarity with other actions across the U.S. The parents and some students held signs with messages of safety and kindness during the 20-plus minute event, which took place outside of the school and came on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

“Inspired by the courageous young people in Parkland, Fla., and across the nation, we are coming together to demand our leaders act and to say #NoMore to gun violence,” parents wrote in a press release about the event.

Parent Kari Sharff, who was in attendance, said she became involved with gun-control efforts after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. She said it’s important for people on both sides of the gun-control debate to realize they want the same thing, which is to protect kids.

Multiple Barton students stood outside with the parents, and several were preparing to participate in a rally at the state Capitol later in the day. Eighth-grader Nadia Bierbaum said no student should wake up and have the fear of being shot at school.

“We should keep on fighting until change is made,” she said.

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Student Caleb Stipkovitz added that if students don’t keep demanding action, lawmakers won’t feel as much pressure to do something. He said

one change should be banning AR-15 sales, while student Ella Scott said another should be stronger background checks.

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CLASSIC FULTON BUNGALOW • $375,000 Deceivingly spacious and nicely updated with original charm. 3 beds, 2 baths, sunroom.

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Southwest Journal May 3–16, 2018

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B2 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

LANDSCAPE SHOWCASE

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EAST HARRIET YARD NO LONGER THE NEIGHBORHOOD EYESORE 3 Bears Landscaping finds the right balance with reclaimed brick

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randon Serpette’s 3 Bears Landscaping was a brandnew company in 2015, when it took on the front yard of Chandra Stone and Paul Sonda in Minneapolis’ East Harriet neighborhood. It’s a project Serpette still shows off in photos today.

Shaded by a large boulevard tree, the yard’s grass was patchy. The neighborhood letter carrier had worn a path across it, and the owners, who like to sit out front to watch their children play, wanted a small patio for their chairs.

Stone and Sonda decided to make the letter carrier’s path permanent and prettier, and Serpette proposed using reclaimed brick to build that path and a round patio. The west-facing yard also got new sod and beds of perennials.

Stone had wanted to extend the brick walk along the side of the house to the back yard, but Serpette suggested stepping stones for variety.

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Phase II of the project – the back yard – took place in 2016. Stone and Sonda had had a paver patio installed in the back yard when they bought the house, but the rest of the yard had become overgrown and “like a Creeping Charlie bed,” Stone said. “We were the eyesore of the neighborhood.

We kind of scrapped everything and started over.”

Starting over included some new fencing and enclosures for the air conditioning unit and garbage bins. The bottom portion of the house’s rear wall needed some decorative camouflage as well. “Our brick has had three different patch jobs, and I wanted something that would vine and cover it,” Stone said. “(Serpette) recommended not-crazy vining.

It’s a slow-creeper blue hydrangea.”

3 Bears also built a raised vegetable garden, installed flower beds along the fence and garage, and new trees in the corner beds. At Sonda’s request, the company installed a “pondless” water fountain made of basalt pillars and surrounded by decorative stone.

Stone appreciated that 3 Bears was willing to split and move some existing hostas, and to keep some of the yard’s daylilies, rhubarb and sedum.

“For the back yard, they came as soon as the snow melted, and we had good conversations about what we were going to do the next year,” Stone said. Now they’re talking about future projects.

Designing the front patio with reclaimed brick was challenging to Serpette, who was accustomed to using interlocking pavers. So was the young company’s lack of equipment and staff at the time. His company now has a project manager, 13 employees and a lot more experience.

These days, 3 Bears recommends installing natural garden bed edging instead of the black plastic edging that was more popular at the time. To create a natural edge, the company cuts four inches down into the soil and fills that space with mulch rather than using plastic or other types of borders.

3 Bears used reclaimed brick to build a path and a round patio. The west-facing yard also got new sod and beds of perennials. The owners like to use the patio to watch their kids play in the front yard.

Serpette is still proud of this job, and Stone is pleased that the family’s yard is no longer the eyesore of the neighborhood.

“Really, just the way we laid everything out, the design turned out pristine in my opinion,” he said. “It was just really pretty.”

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B3

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Fulton resident Pam Gleason choreographs chess-themed dance video

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Pam Gleason had long wanted to create a dance centered on chess, a game that had been a key part of her family’s life for about 18 years.

This winter, the Fulton resident did just that, choreographing a chess-themed video for her dance organization’s April show.

Gleason created a routine based on a famous 19th century chess match known as “The Evergreen Game.” She had the dancers, one for each piece of the chessboard, reenact the game, complete with color commentary and some added dancing after the game’s end.

“To me personally, it was such a joy to work in those two realms, in the chess world and dance world, and bring them together,” Gleason said.

Gleason became closely involved in the chess world when her son Wes Cannon was a kindergartner at Lake Harriet Community School about 18 years ago. Cannon’s kindergarten teacher suggested that he take up the game, and he subsequently began competing with the club at the school’s upper campus.

Cannon showed aptitude in the game, according to former Lake Harriet coach Alex Adams, who had the club compete against other schools. By the end of Cannon’s kindergarten year, the team was ranked third and the state and 24th in the country, according to a

To me personally, it was such a joy to work in those two realms, in the chess world and dance world, and bring them together.

— Pam Gleason, co-director of MotionArt

2001 Southwest Journal article on the team.

“He doesn’t consistently beat everybody in the club, but he has beaten everybody in our club,” Adams said at the time.

Cannon said that a lot of his childhood was comprised of attending chess tournaments, noting that he won a couple of state events.

He became less involved with the game as he moved onto Southwest High School and eventually to the University of Minnesota, but he has returned to it since college, competing in multiple tournaments since graduating.

Gleason has also started to compete, joining Cannon at a tournament in Chicago last summer. She said she started seriously thinking about creating a chess-themed dance after watching the matches there and noticing the idiosyncrasies in how the players moved.

“I decided to actually put that thought into action,” she said.

Gleason said she was looking for an unusual game out of which she could make a dance and that her younger son, Will Cannon, who also plays chess, mentioned “The Evergreen Game.”

The game, played in the 1850s, featured one of the players sacrificing several key pieces, including a rook and his queen, to eventually checkmate the other player.

In Gleason’s video, dancers wearing white and black costumes reenact the game, while Adams offers color commentary. Wes Cannon plays the role of the triumphant king.

Gleason said that the dancers for the piece ranged in age from 18 to 80, adding that while many of them were new to chess, some, such as Cannon, were new to dance.

“I think that everyone learned from each other, and that was really fun,” Gleason said.

She said that dance and chess are two activities that can be for people of all ages and added that both utilize the part of the brain that deals with spatial reasoning.

“There are infinite possibilities in dance and infinite possibilities in how one can play a game of chess,” Gleason said.

Gleason’s video was part of a show called “Games People Play” put on by MotionArt, the dance organization she co-directs with Diane Moncrieff. She said she hoped the show would move people and that audience members would be able to find some humor in it.

MotionArt offers modern dance classes for people of all age ranges and abilities at locations around Minneapolis.

Visit motionartmn.org to learn more about the organization.

As a kindergartner, Wes Cannon was featured on the front page of the Southwest Journal for his chess acumen.

Top: Pam Gleason (right center) on stage during her dance organization’s show last month. Gleason choreographed a chess-themed dance video for the show, called “Games People Play.”

Photo by edwardbock.com

B4 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

By Rebecca Noble

Six months in the sun Opening day for the Kingfield Farmers Market is May 20. All three of the Neighborhood Roots farmers markets were preparing for a new season.

Submitted photo

The sun is shining and the weather is warm.

Farmers market season is finally here!

The Fulton Farmers Market opens for its seventh season on Saturday, May 19, and the Kingfield Farmers Market launches into its 17th season on Sunday, May 20. In about a month, the Nokomis Farmers Market will open for its fifth season on Wednesday, June 13.

The six-month outdoor season of the Fulton, Kingfield and Nokomis farmers markets is a unique opportunity to connect with food producers and shrink your food footprint. All of the vendors at Neighborhood Roots farmers markets make or grow everything they sell, and most live within an hour-and-a-half radius of the market.

Shopping at the farmers market means your money goes directly into the hands of hardworking farmers and food makers. Your family and your community are nourished when you do your weekly grocery shopping at the markets!

Spring came a little late this year, so fruits

NEIGHBORHOOD ROOTS FARMERS MARKETS 2018 SCHEDULE Fulton Farmers Market 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Saturdays, May 19–Oct. 27 4901 Chowen Ave. S. Kingfield Farmers Market 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m.

Sundays, May 20–Oct. 28 4310 Nicollet Ave. S. Nokomis Farmers Market 4 p.m.–8 p.m.

Wednesdays, June 13–Sept. 26 5167 Chicago Ave. S.

and veggies at the market will start off slowly, with variety and abundance growing each week.

Farmers will have plenty of fruit and vegetable plant starts for the first month, so come ready to fill your garden.

Early season veggies include radishes, rhubarb, spring greens and asparagus, soon to be followed by spring favorites like strawberries, snap peas, green onions and new potatoes.

Starting right at the beginning of the season, farmers will be bringing meats, cheeses, honey, maple syrup, preserves and even wool fiber.

We are excited to welcome lots of new farmers and food makers to the markets this year, along with the many tried and true vendors who will be returning.

At the Fulton Farmers Market, check out the unique and delicious fermented vegetables from Topos Ferments; stock up on pasture raised chicken, pork and beef from Johnson Family Pastures; and sip a refreshing kombucha from Nifty Brewing. Finca ElMar Coffee Co.

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will also be joining Fulton this year with coffee beans and fresh-brewed coffee direct from their family farm in Honduras.

Say hello to a few new faces at Kingfield this year as well. Double Dog Kombucha will be bringing cans of delicious kombucha with unique flavors. Try tasty gyoza and banh mi sandwiches from Dumpling, and pick up early season, greenhouse-grown fruits and veggies from Frost Kissed Farm.

Nokomis should be your Wednesday afternoon destination this year. New vendors include Moonchild Naturals, who will have naturally flavored sparkling beverages; Brush Prairie Farm, with fruits, mushrooms and veggies; and Wha’ Jamaican, who will be cooking up tasty jamaican fare.

For a full list of the many brand new and returning vendors, visit our website at neighborhoodrootsmn.org and subscribe to the market newsletters.

In addition to shopping for tasty, local foods, the Fulton, Kingfield and Nokomis farmers markets are a great place to connect with your neighborhood community. Each week, the market will have kids activities, cooking demos, live music and much more!

Mark your calendar for seed planting at Kingfield on May 20, the rhubarb bake-off at Fulton on June 9 and the opening day celebration at Nokomis on June 13.

In order to make all the markets happen, we need help from neighborhood folks like you.

Volunteers help with market setup and teardown, storytime, kids activities, cooking demos and more. As little as an hour or two per month can make a huge difference. For more information on volunteering at the market, send an email to volunteers@neighborhoodrootsmn.org.

The 2018 season of the Fulton, Kingfield and Nokomis farmers markets will be filled with amazing local foods and quality time spent with your community. Mark your calendars for the opening days, and don’t miss a single market.

The six-month season goes by fast!

Rebecca Noble is the farmers market manager for Neighborhood Roots. She has been working for the markets since 2014.

4/26/18 3:38 PM

southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B5

Mill City Cooks

Recipes and food news from the Mill City Farmers Market

Opening day

G

rab your favorite tote bag and your grocery list: Mill City Farmers Market opens outside for its 13th season on Saturday, May 5.

Get ready to shop the market’s curated assortment of over 130 farmers, food makers and artists. All of these vendors follow the market’s Sustainability Statement, ensuring all products at the market — from lettuce to a can of jalapeño-ginger kombucha — are sourced with the health of our land, local economy and people in mind.

In 2017, Mill City Farmers Market’s Saturday and Tuesday markets drew in over 115,000 local food enthusiasts who enjoyed shopping the wide assortment of vendors and the market’s unique programming — including chef-led cooking demonstrations every Saturday at 10:30 a.m., farm-to-table breakfast, dinner and lunch from local restaurants and food trucks, free outdoor yoga classes June through September, live music every week and so much more.

Bring the family! On opening day, actors from the Guthrie Theater will be preforming dramatic readings of their favorite children’s books at 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., and the market’s kids’ vegetable tasting club, Power of Produce, will be kicking off for the season. In the program, kids ages 3–12 can taste a seasonal vegetable at the Information Booth and earn a $2 token to spend on produce at the market, empowering them to make healthy choices.

Discover these programs and find all the local ingredients you need for the lettuce wraps recipe below 8 a.m.–1 p.m. Saturdays.

The market, which overlooks the mighty Mississippi River and Stone Arch Bridge, is located in between the Guthrie Theater and the Mill City Museum at 704 S. 2nd St. Find more healthy, seasonal recipes and learn more about the market at millcityfarmersmarket.org.

— Jenny Heck

Submitted photo

LETTUCE WRAPS By market chef Jenny Breen • Serves 4 Ingredients 1 teaspoon sesame oil 2 teaspoons sunflower or other neutral oil, divided 1 small yellow onion*, diced small 8 ounces mushrooms from Cherry Tree House Mushrooms*, chopped small 3 cloves garlic*, minced 1-inch piece ginger, peeled minced (about 1 tablespoon) 3–5 tablespoons hoisin sauce 1 8-ounce can water chestnuts, drained and chopped small

1 pound chopped chicken thighs or breasts from Sunshine Harvest Farm* or 1 pound crumbled tofu, cooked and set aside 2 tablespoons tamari or other soy sauce 2 tablespoons rice vinegar 1 package cooked soba noodles from Dumpling & Strand* or 2 cups cooked rice 2 small or 1 large heads lettuce* about 6 green onions*, sliced thinly 1–2 medium carrots*, grated red pepper flakes, to serve

Method Heat sesame oil and 1 teaspoon neutral oil in skillet. Add onions and sauté 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, garlic and ginger and sauté another 2–3 minutes.

Add hoisin sauce, water chestnuts, cooked meat or tofu, tamari and rice vinegar and combine to heat through.

Mix with cooked noodles or rice.

Open each lettuce leaf and place two spoonfuls of filling inside. Garnish with grated carrots, green onions and red pepper flakes.

*Ingredient available at Mill City Farmers Market

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B6 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

Neighborhood Spotlight. Linden Hills

Southwest to host annual Strut: Guitar Festival

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Southwest High School will host its third-annual festival showcasing public school guitar education programs on May 18-19.

Strut: Guitar Festival gives students a chance to show off their guitar skills and meet students from other schools, said Ruth LeMay, Southwest’s director of guitar education. It includes one day of workshops and rehearsals and another of a Battle of the Bands and concerts.

“It’s about kids having the opportunity to be themselves and show everything they’ve learned through the years,” LeMay said.

LeMay and Lake Harriet Upper School music teacher Jen Cuff founded the festival in 2016 as a way to celebrate guitar education. LeMay said they also wanted a way to show younger students the opportunities they have to continue guitar in high school.

IF YOU GO Strut: Guitar Festival A two-day event for guitar students in grades 5–12 When: May 18–19* May 19 at Southwest High School: 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Battle of the Bands 5 p.m.–8 p.m. concerts Info: Visit strutfest.com to learn more. *May 18 is student workshops

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Students in Ruth LeMay’s guitar orchestra at Southwest High School pose for a group photo.

The orchestra will play in the annual Strut: Guitar Festival, which includes a concert on May 19 at Southwest.

Photo courtesy Ruth LeMay.

“We wanted something that was more than just coming together and playing a couple of tunes,” she said.

LeMay, a music educator for over 30 years, has developed guitar programs at multiple Minneapolis public schools, including Washburn, Edison, Field and Southwest. Her program at Southwest has grown to include five classes, with offerings for beginners, students at intermediate and advanced levels and students with special needs.

LeMay also teaches a guitar orchestra with about 35 students.

Students in LeMay’s program start by learning

classical guitar and, if they choose, can move onto acoustic, electric, bass guitar or other instruments. All learn how to read music, unless they have needs that require adaptation.

Some students go onto form bands, LeMay said, and others focus on classical solos. Others yet become singer-songwriters or experiment with different genres or instruments.

“I try to say ‘yes’ a lot more than I say ‘no,’” LeMay said.

At Lake Harriet Upper, Cuff ’s program includes three guitar orchestras and three rock band classes. She said about 200 sixth-,

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seventh- and eighth-graders play guitar each week at the school.

Cuff began teaching guitar at Lake Harriet Upper after she and LeMay took a training class from the organization Little Kids Rock in March 2011. She said she created the first rock band class specifically for two students who were struggling.

“This has been a safe haven for kids,” Cuff said of the guitar program. “This pathway has created so much joy.”

Strut: Guitar Festival will feature more than 200 students in grades 5–12 from at least four schools. The festival will include 26 hours’ worth of workshops on May 18 centered around the various aspects of a band, from drums, to vocals to song writing and musical theory.

“It’s designed by us, but it’s (based on) listening to kids,” LeMay said.

She said the Battle of the Bands on May 19 will include two divisions: one for groups playing arrangements learned from chords and/or tab and another for students playing from sheet music with traditional musical notation. The sessions are free and open to the public.

Winners in each grade level and category will receive a small prize and will perform in the evening concerts.

Visit the festival website, strutfest.com, to learn more about the festival and to participate, donate, sponsor students or become a volunteer.

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B7

Neighborhood Spotlight. Linden Hills

Taking action on climate citywide

By Dylan Thomas / dthomas@southwestjournal.com

With a new name and an expanded mission, the nonprofit formerly known as Linden Hills Power & Light is aiming to inspire climate action beyond the borders of its home neighborhood.

Founded in Linden Hills in 2007, the organization now called Minneapolis Climate Action hired a part-time executive director a year ago and then launched into rebranding itself and expanding its mission. After focusing its volunteer-driven efforts on leading a composting pilot project, forming a reusable bag cooperative and recruiting households into an energyefficiency program in and around its home in Linden Hills, Minneapolis Climate Action’s leaders want to share their expertise with other neighborhood organizations.

“We are hoping to have a greater presence throughout the city, not just in Linden Hills, and advocate progressive policy at the City Council and citywide. And we think that we can do that much more effectively by engaging other neighborhoods,” said Forrest Theisen, the 2010 Southwest High School graduate who now leads the organization.

Minneapolis Climate Action will be working with the Hennepin County Green Partners program in four Northeast neighborhoods to raise participation rates in the city’s curbside organics recycling program, one example of how the organization intends to grow its citywide impact.

Minneapolis Climate Action also advocates for climate solutions at both the city and state level. Theisen is a City Council appointee to the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, and Minneapolis Climate Action joined the

successful push to pass a City Council resolution setting the city on a course to use electricity from 100 percent renewable sources by 2030. The resolution passed in April.

Minneapolis Climate Action was a prominent backer of an ordinance, passed by the council in 2016, banning stores from giving out plastic bags.

The ban was blocked by the Legislature before taking effect last year, but the organization is active at the Capitol testifying against proposed state statutes that would preempt local municipalities’ ability to regulate single-use plastic bags and carryout food containers. A Minneapolis ordinance in effect since 2015 requires reusable, recyclable or compostable to-go containers.

“Forrest and the board have been really good advocates to bring the community perspective to this,” said Megan Kuhl-Stennes, associate director of policy, advocacy and fundraising for Eureka Recycling.

Kuhl-Stennes said they sit side-by-side with representatives from national environmental

IF YOU GO Trailer Trash Bash When: 7 p.m. May 19 Where: Lake Harriet Commercial Club Building, 2720 W. 43rd St (above Wild Rumpus) Info: Tickets are $40 in advance at mplsclimate.org or $45 at the door

organizations when they testify at the capitol, but Minneapolis Climate Action is one of the few — and possibly only — groups that brings a city-level perspective to the debate.

“I think there really is a space that they are filling as coming out of Minneapolis and representing Minneapolis. There’s definitely a place for them and a need,” she said.

Felicity Britton, the organization’s former executive director and a current member of its board of directors, said that was the opening the organization saw when it launched its rebranding.

“It looked like there was a part for us to play on that city level,” Britton said. “No one else was operating as a city-level organization” Operating beyond Southwest Minneapolis and its Linden Hills base could be an opportunity for Minneapolis Climate Action to grow its donor base and staffing, she added. At press time, the organization was preparing to host the thirdannual Trailer Trash Bash on May 19, its single most important fundraising event of the year.

Currently, Theisen is the 501(c)3 organization’s only paid employee. He said the nonprofit had an operating budget of just over $15,000 last year and raised nearly $19,000, with most of the donations coming from individual donors.

Britton said collaboration with neighborhood organizations is built into the organization’s model.

“Because we’re lean, we like to leverage existing resources that are out there,” she said. “It just makes sense to work with these groups that already have the knowledge of their community.”

Joy Gottschalk, president of the Tangletown Neighborhood Association board, has been

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convening neighborhood organization “green teams” and environmental committees regularly since 2015, with the goal of building a Theisen. File photo citywide network to work locally on environmental initiatives.

“When your neighbors are doing something and you chat with them about it, it becomes more accessible,” she explained.

The effort is driven, like most everything at the neighborhood level, by volunteers.

The involvement of Minneapolis Climate Action and Theisen, she said, helps to keep the momentum going and projects on track.

“They’re bringing some support to this grassroots effort for neighborhoods’ environmental committees to come together,” Gottschalk said.

One of Minneapolis Climate Action’s most ambitious efforts has been its ongoing quest to establish a community solar garden that would allow a group of subscribers to purchase locally produced solar energy for their homes.

“It’s been a bit of a struggle, but we really pride ourselves on being one of the first groups to really involve the community and try to push one of these forward,” Theisen said.

“Our role is to test innovate programs and if they work — or even if they don’t work — we can help others learn from our example,” Britton added. “We like to be out on the edge and try new things and see what works.”

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B8 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

Neighborhood Spotlight. Linden Hills

Round two for big changes to Linden Hills fest Will include family stage, info on Minneapolis 2040

By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@southwestjournal.com

Hennepin County Library – Linden Hills will have story time at the annual Linden Hills festival on May 20.

Photo

by Nate Gotlieb

The Linden Hills Neighborhood Council made major changes to last year’s annual Linden Hills festival, adding a beer garden and farmer’s market and changing the layout of the event. But a deluge of rain combined with below-average temperatures led to lower-than-usual turnout, neighborhood coordinator Becky Allen said.

“A lot of people didn’t come out because of the weather,” she said, noting that the festival day was the best weather day of that week.

The council is hoping for better luck this year, as it prepares for the 44th installment of the festival. It runs 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Sunday, May 20, at Linden Hills Park.

The council is keeping many of the changes it made last year, including the beer garden and having the farmer’s market at the park in the morning. It’s also adding a family stage that will include presentations from Hennepin County Library – Linden Hills, The Bakken Museum and the Rubies First Tech Challenge robotics team.

Vendors will include local restaurants and businesses such as Tilia, Clancey’s Meats and Fish, Terzo and Red Wagon Pizza Co., which is again sponsoring the beer garden.

The festival will also include the traditional

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Neighborhood Spotlight. Linden Hills Vendors for the annual festival will include local businesses such as Clancey’s Meats and Fish, Terzo and Red Wagon Pizza Co., which is sponsoring the beer garden.

Photos by Nate Gotlieb

bike parade kickoff at 11 a.m., a silent auction (11 a.m.–3 p.m.), art fair, yoga, bounce houses and inflatables. In addition, the neighborhood council will host a neighborhood garage sale the day before. (Visit lindenhills.org/neighborhood-garage-sale to learn more or sign up for the sale.)

The council uses funds raised at the festival to help support its grant program, through which it provides stipends of up to $1,000 to local clubs and organizations.

Recent recipients have included the Linden Hills Bocce Club, the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra and Strut Guitar Festival.

Linden Hills Festival organizer Steve Birch said the neighborhood council plans on displaying information about Minneapolis’ draft comprehensive plan, Minneapolis 2040, at the festival. The council hopes to gather feedback on the plan from a broad

range of neighborhood residents, Birch said.

“We think it will be a different type of feedback than if we do it during the workweek,” he said.

Minneapolis 2040 (online at minneapolis2040.com) outlines a vision of the city that includes reduced racial disparities, more residents and jobs and affordable and accessible housing, among other goals. The draft plan lays out hundreds of action steps the city will take to reach those goals, including increasing job training and encouraging multifamily housing construction on public transit routes.

Arguably no action step has generated more scrutiny than one that would allow property owners to build four units on any residential property.

Birch said the neighborhood council hopes to show how the city is currently

zoned and how it would be zoned under the new plan. He raised the question of how additional population would affect the city’s schools and said there have been a lot of questions about what the fourplex proposal would mean for parking.

The city’s comprehensive plan website allows users to give feedback on specific

We think it will be a different type of feedback than if we do it during the workweek.

— Steve Birch, Linden Hills Festival organizer

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The city is also planning to hold five open houses on the comprehensive plan, including 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m. May 12 at the Northeast Recreation Center, 1530 Johnson St. NE, and 5:30 p.m.–8 p.m. May 14 at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Recreation Center, 4055 Nicollet Ave. S. Ward 13 City Council Member Linea Palmisano will also host a public conversation on the plan with the city’s long-range planning director, Heather Worthington, on May 23 from 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m. A location has not yet been announced.

Visit lindenhills.org/linden-hills-festivalmay-20th to learn more about the festival.

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B10 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com FROM ART-A-WHIRL / PAGE B1

It’s the second year Dameun Strange has had a top-down view of the artistic chaos known as Art-A-Whirl.

Now in its 23rd year, the country’s largest open studio tour draws more than 40,000 art lovers to Northeast Minneapolis to check out artists in their natural habitats.

Strange, executive director of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association since 2016, said the biggest thing he has learned — apart from “you can never depend on the weather” — is that each year families will line up before studios even open to buy art, despite the notion that breweries have taken over Art-A-Whirl.

“I think I’ve learned despite the rumors that a lot of the people that are coming to Northeast and are visiting artists and checking out art and buying art,” he said.

Weather permitting, NEMAA central will be located in a kiosk at Logan Park to help whirlers find their way across the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. There are three easily accessible areas to check out during this year’s Art-A-Whirl, May 18–20.

The heart of the whirl Strange calls Quincy Street the “heart of ArtA-Whirl.”

Thanks to the nearby Northrup King Building, the largest of the studio buildings participating in Art-A-Whirl, the intersection of 14th & Quincy is ground zero for finding one-of-a-kind art.

Inside the complex web of 10 studio buildings you’ll find Goldenflow GlassWorks, a glassblowing studio that churns out gold leaf-filled snowdomes. Owners Dan Mather and Rollie Reis-Mather started making them as a side business decades ago while he drove limousines on weekends. This year, the two plan to showcase the studio’s growing lighting business, which has led to large-scale art instal-

taco service from Centro at Popul Vuh from chef José Alarcon and the team at Lyn 65.

The weekend will serve as a preview of the concepts at 1414 Quincy St. NE with menu items like tacos and churros, along with margaritas, beer and wine.

Indeed Brewing, Architectural Antiques and studio buildings like the Solar Arts Building, Thorp Building and 1330 Quincy Street Studios also make Quincy Street a popular Art-A-Whirl destination.

The main drag

NEMAA’s membership is still largely based in Northeast’s studio buildings, such as the Casket Arts Building in Logan Park. Photos courtesy of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association

lations that combine Mather’s glass blowing and metalwork.

The studio opens to the public on Saturdays in the fall, but Mather said Art-A-Whirl is their biggest day by far, with roughly 5,000 people expected to come in and out of the studio over the weekend. It’s become a tradition since they participated in the first Art-A-Whirl 23 years ago.

“We see a lot of people from out of town, a surprising number people from out of state,” he said.

ART-A-WHIRL Where: Northeast Minneapolis Arts District When: 5 p.m.–10 p.m. Friday, May 18; noon–8 p.m. Saturday, May 19; noon–5 p.m. Sunday, May 20 Cost: Free Info: nemaa.org

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.

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Artists sell work and host live demonstrations within studios and galleries during Art-A-Whirl weekend.

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Following the success of a new live gallery space in the Northrup King Building, Strange said NEMAA will continue to host Art N|Motion with about two-dozen rotating artists creating work throughout Art-A-Whirl weekend.

The third-floor studio flips the traditional gallery space on its head, combining the live artistic element of a studio with the showroom of a gallery. By the end of the weekend, guests will be able to buy the work that they saw as a blank canvas just days ago.

On that floor whirlers will find another recent addition to the building. Revel Art Gallery, a new artist space, opened at the end of March.

Founder Thomas Unise said he’ll be showing art from Julie Garretson, Barret Lee, Darren Terpstra and Janella Fesenmaier. Next door in his co-working office, Growth Lab, Unise will show even more work.

Outside the building, whirlers can find food trucks. But this year will bring a pop-up

Sheridan’s 13th Avenue connects restaurants, galleries and studios from Rogue Buddha Gallery to the east to the Grain Belt Studios near the riverfront.

On the same block as the warehouse studio building, which boasts nearly 130,000 square feet of space for artists and creative businesses, an ominous carved head is visible from the parking lot. The face, a piece Nick Legeros

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B11

made for his daughter’s school’s rendition of “The Wizard of Oz,” is attached to the bronze sculptor’s studio.

This year, Legeros said his studio will mostly serve as a gallery space showcasing his work, from a bronze cast he made of his son to a large bronze relief of the American flag he’s working on for a client. Typically, he doesn’t do much business selling $20,000 bronze sculptures to wandering guests, but Legeros said Art-A-Whirl is an important networking opportunity.

“If you don’t reach out to people, what makes you think they’re going to reach out about your work?” he said.

Tracing 13th Avenue, whirlers will find the Food Building at 13th & Marshall hosting local artists throughout the weekend. Resident businesses Baker’s Field Flour & Bread and Red Table Meat Co. will have a pop-up shop selling meats and baked goods.

Just beyond Main Street there’s Ann Meyers’ Gumball Boutique, which will have a pop-up vintage shop and guest artists selling their own wares. Meyers said one shopper will win a basket full of local artisanal items in a drawing.

The neighborhood’s eateries are planning several special treats for the event. Across the street, the mixologists at Young Joni’s back bar will create a signature Art-A-Whirl cocktail. Sleepy V’s, formerly known as Rebel Donut Bar, at 13th & 2nd will have live donut painting with Christopher Brown from 5 p.m.–7 p.m. Friday, donut face painting from 1 p.m.–3 p.m. on Saturday and a donut coloring contest all day on Sunday. Inside, Sleepy V’s will feature work from artists Brown, BrieAnna Lindquist and Loren Seel in addition to providing discounts for those with “I Bought Art” stickers.

Their neighbors, Social Catering Co., will be providing barbecue steam buns and dim sum throughout the weekend under the direction of chef Joe Wagner and his wife Michelle, owner Jaren Turley said. Craig Kaiser of Cry Baby Craig’s will have his new retail shop open to sell hot sauce.

The core of the weekend’s music sits with Anchor Fish & Chips and the 331 Club.

Anchor will bring in local Monica LaPlante on Saturday and Minneapolis band Romantica on Sunday, in addition to other artists throughout the weekend. The 331 Club will have new

Photographer Lisa Roy teamed up with her neighbor, woodworker Francis Keys, to create what she calls PrintShapes, or photographs printed onto curved wood.

Submitted photo

ROOFING

performer every hour of Art-A-Whirl, from Gaelynn Lea (5 p.m. on Sunday) to Mark Mallman and Charlie Parr (7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday).

Strange said Theater Latte Da will open the doors of the Ritz Theater to give tours and give whirlers a behind-the-scenes look at the theater company’s musical productions.

Next door, Rogue Buddha Gallery, a NEMAA member, will be showcasing owner Nicholas Harper’s fine art and portraits — “classically based with a contemporary bent,” he said — in the main gallery and nearly a dozen artists in two smaller gallery rooms.

Harper said the weekend will likely bring a couple thousand people inside Rogue Buddha.

“In terms of sheer traffic, (Art-A-Whirl) is huge,” he said.

The one-stop shop The Pillsbury A-Mill isn’t really in Northeast Minneapolis, but its concentration of artists, not to mention its riverfront real estate, make it a destination, Strange said.

“The A-Mill is an isolated area for Art-AWhirl,” he said, “but it has a beautiful view of the city, lots of artists in the area (and) Main Street is known for its restaurants.”

A group of artist-residents have taken on the mission of making the historic mills — now more than 250 units of affordable artist housing — into an Art-A-Whirl hotspot with more than 50 artists on display. In addition to booths and open studios, many residents simply open their door and sell art directly out of their homes.

“Our building is a very fun place to explore,” said Sarah Callahan, an organizer with Artists of the A-Mill, in an email.

In the building whirlers will find Theresa Angelo of Lost and Bound Books in the third-floor atrium. The old-school bookbinder applies medieval binding methods and customizable foil stamping to create handbound books and cards.

A-Mill artist Sue Mooney will have work, such as “English Pilot,” for sale during Art-A-Whirl weekend. Submitted image

Sue Mooney is a self-taught artist who creates funky and vibrant portraits of animals wearing goggles, sunglasses or simply a goofy expression under the moniker Wild Barking Moon. Mooney and her canvases will be located on the seventh floor in the clubroom.

Lisa Roy, a wedding photographer by trade who now creates unique landscapes, will open her studio on the fifth floor to whirlers. She has partnered with her neighbor, a woodworker, to create rounded woodprints of her scenes of waterfalls and sunsets.

“I wanted to do something different. They’re totally one-of-kind,” she said.

Stray Dog, chef Kevin Kraus’s takeover of the Nicollet Island-East Bank neighborhood’s Bulldog, will offer food and cocktails in three locations throughout the A-Mill complex.

The community’s performance hall on the first floor and a fourth-floor atrium will host a lineup featuring bands like Alex Kish, BZB Trio, Hot Pink Hangover, Stone Arch Isles, and more.

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B12 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

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CONNECT Like NEMAA on Facebook | Follow @NemaaMN on Twitter and Instagram Visit us online at nemaa.org/art-a-whirl | Tag us in your #ArtAWhirl photos and spread the word about your artwork, events, or experiences as a visitor!

STOP BY DURING ART-A-WHIRL®

LIVE ART & PERFORMANCE DURING ART-A-WHIRL ® Viewers are invited into the spacious Third Floor Gallery in the Northrup King Building to see art being made right before their eyes. Painters, sculptors, performance artists, musicians, and more will be working on easels, explaining their processes, and performing in the space, creating an engaging and interactive experience for the public.

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B14 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

RADDLER Ingredients 1½ oz. Tattersall Grapefruit Crema ¼ oz. lemon juice 1 can Pilsner beer Directions Combine ingredients in a pint glass (ice optional).

Photo by Eric Best

Tattersall has the summer’s cocktails Logan Park micro-distillery aims to be the go-to guide for backyard beverages

By Eric Best / ebest@southwestjournal.com

Art-A-Whirl is a more than a busy day at Tattersall Distilling. Staff are a little fearful of the open studio tour that takes over Northeast Minneapolis for three days.

“We just get crushed. It’s a day people are afraid of,” co-founder Jon Kreidler said.

Luckily, the micro-distillery has learned a thing or two over the past two years since Kreidler and Dan Oskey founded it inside Logan Park’s Thorp building, the birthplace of Art-A-Whirl.

Tattersall will have multiple bars inside and outside the building. The distillery has had an open call for artists without studios in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District in order to bring in fresh artwork and put further emphasis on local creatives.

“I think it’s going to be really cool because it’s going to be another big place where people can go and it puts the highlight on the artists,” he said.

Beyond Art-A-Whirl, the distillery’s cocktail lounge is still at capacity nearly every night, Kreidler said. Tattersall has rapidly outgrown its original 9,500-square-foot space in the back of the historic warehouse complex on Central Avenue. It’s tripled in size in order

to house hundreds of barrels so it can age new whiskeys, rums and other spirits.

The footprint of its spirits has followed suit. Tattersall released its first whiskey over the winter and Kreidler said it has flown off shelves, but they should have more in the fall. The distillery’s aquavit and barreled gin receive most of the critical acclaim, Kreidler said, and recently its bitter orange liqueur picked up a best-in-class award from the American Craft Spirits Association.

Fueled by demand from bars and restaurants, Tattersall’s distribution will hit the 20-state mark this spring. Kreidler and Oskey work with eateries to get their spirits on the menu, even consulting with restaurants to design cocktail menus with various Tattersall spirits at no cost so they can build long-term customers.

“It’s always better for somebody else to give you a compliment than to say something good about yourself, and that’s what restaurants do,” he said.

In addition to consulting for restaurants, Tattersall has resources for home bartenders to try their hand at making the distillery’s recipes. The goal? To make Tattersall a

starting point for any beverage.

“We want to become the go-to authority on cocktails,” Kreidler said.

Tattersall launched a free app over the winter that’s grown to roughly 400 recipes for classic cocktails and the distillery’s own creations, such as the Bad Hunter, a popular cocktail combining carrot juice, ginger and the distillery’s aquavit.

BOOTLEGGER Ingredients 2 oz. Tattersall Lime Crema ¾ oz. lemon juice ½ oz. simple syrup 3 oz. soda water Small batch of mint Directions Muddle mint, lemon juice, simple syrup and lime crema in a glass with ice, top with soda water. Garnish with lime wedge.

“You don’t feel so bad drinking it. It’s good for me,” he said.

Tattersall puts out two seasonal “Cabin Cocktail Recipes” books each year with step-by-step guides to creating simple cocktails during a weekend getaway or backyard barbecue. Think beverages made from whatever is in that flask in the tackle box and a couple mixers, or a big pitcher of ingredients people likely already have at home.

“Think about how Minnesotans drink during in the summer, if it’s at the cabin, at the patio, at the boat. How do you do it?

You’re not taking six bottles and mixing all sorts of stuff,” Kreidler said.

From this summer’s “Cabin Cocktail Recipes,” Tattersall has two simple drinks to make. The first, the Bootlegger, is “probably the Minnesota cocktail,” Kreidler said. Tattersall consulted with Target Field’s new Bat & Barrel Bar, which has it on its menu.

The second is a Raddler, a drink combining a pale lager, lemon juice and the distillery’s unique grapefruit liqueur.

“They’re really easy, but for the summertime they’re great,” he said.

southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B15

Planning Commission approves apartment project near 36th & Bryant

By Michelle Bruch / mbruch@southwestjournal.com

Planning commissioners approved plans April 23 to build 41 apartments at the Southwest Senior Center site near 36th & Bryant, calling it the type of development the city should encourage.

Owners Jeff Hall, Sean Sweeney and Alex Gese proposed a new four-story building (rising 50–57 feet, depending on the grade) with 20 spaces underground. Hall said they’re seeing demand for micro-units and walkability.

“We love the neighborhood, and we’re excited to be investing in it,” he said.

The developer dropped a petition for a closer southern setback for balconies at the request of the city and the neighboring homeowner.

Several neighbors speaking at the Planning Commission meeting said they don’t object to redevelopment of the senior center, but they do object to the proposed scale of the project, along with its impacts on privacy, shadowing and safety in the alley.

“I think every foot of it makes a difference to somebody’s quality of life,” one resident said.

Michael Pillsbury said he favors density, but the proposal is twice as tall as it ought to be and should include commercial space.

Richard Stuerman said the project is “bursting at the seams,” and said commissioners should think about the scale of the project, which he said would increase the number of mailboxes on the block to more than 120 from 80.

Collage Architects President Pete Keely said the fourth floor is set back from the building

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edge and the first three floors would rise 35 feet, comparable to the scale of buildings across the street. A slope that dips in the northwest portion of the site makes the building rise 57 feet at the corner, he said.

Some meeting attendees spoke in support of the proposal.

Lonnie McQuirter, owner of the 36 Lyn Refuel Station, praised developer Gese’s other

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ventures, which include Nighthawks and Five Watt Coffee.

One Longfellow resident who previously rented in the neighborhood said he started biking and busing to work when his car broke down. He never went back to commuting by car, and said he used the savings for a down payment on a house.

“The opportunity to live in that transit-rich

neighborhood is what allowed me to become a homeowner,” said the resident, who identified himself as Ethan. “… I would ask that you make variances that allow the developer to make this property as affordable as you can.”

Some residents suggested that the city should receive more in exchange for granting variances, such as affordable units.

“If you put up a 41-unit building, there really needs to be some diversity there. I want our neighborhood to look like our city,” said resident David Wheeler.

Keely said units would not fall under the definition of affordable housing, but the smaller unit sizes would make them more affordable.

The Planning Commission unanimously approved the plans, with the exception of balconies that would have been about eight feet from the home to the south.

Planning Commissioner Jono Cowgill explained his vote by saying a shorter two- or three-story building would be more expensive for renters.

“The more difficult we make it to have more units, the more difficult it’s going to make it for there to be affordability in our community,” Cowgill said.

Commissioner Nick Magrino said he likes seeing similar projects with less than 50 units and about half as many parking spaces.

“I hope this is something the city continues to find ways to encourage,” he said.

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B16 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

Gadget Guy

By Paul Burnstein

A device with a mission

T

his month I got to try out a product from EJ Case, a local startup company based in Edina that manufactures and distributes a multi-use device called the XTorch. The XTorch is a portable, handheld device — a rechargeable, solar powered flashlight, lantern and cell phone charger all in one.

It gets even more interesting. According to a statement on their website, their mission is “to bring mobile light and power to those who suffer without,” partnering with international nonprofits “in support of their efforts in disaster relief, refugee aid, medical and general humanitarian outreach.”

Said founder Gene Palusky: “The idea of the XTorch came to me after my time spent working in Equatorial Guinea, Africa and the Dominican Republic, where I witnessed the difficulties the local populations suffered each day and night due to the lack of reliable light and power.”

Palusky continued: “We have devices in over 20 countries, working in partnership with humanitarian non-profit organizations that focus on emergency relief, refugees, medical outreach and orphanages. We have also just begun to sell domestically via our website and use part of the profits to donate devices around the world.”

Their website states that 25 percent of the XTorch’s retail net profit will be donated to assist non-profit organizations to support children’s education, women’s safety and small business development. Sounds like a great mission to me!

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The company has already helped Compassion International, Haiti by providing 195 XTorches to school-aged children to help them with reading and studying in the dark. They also donated to Medical Ambassadors International for their midwife training programs in Argentina and Haiti, where midwives are often working and traveling in the dark.

The Xtorch is designed for camping and off-grid use, as well as emergency use when one’s home electrical power goes out. It is physically built for these uses too, being water resistant and built to float. Additionally, it has a spring-activated clip for hooking onto your other gear, a glow in the dark gasket and is built of high-impact ABS/polycarbonate.

I love the company’s mission and the applications for the device. My main takeaway is that this is a flashlight and lantern first and foremost and a cell phone charger second.

The company claims that the XTorch can charge a cell phone up to 50 percent, and that is a great additional feature, but not a major selling point domestically in my opinion.

It was slow to charge my phone, but no complaints here, as this is great as a backup device for your phone, helping you get some juice into a dead device as opposed to charging your phone up for a fresh day of use.

The XTorch sells for $44.95. And remember that 25 percent of retail net profit gets donated towards charitable causes.

The XTorch lacks any method of checking the current battery charge in order

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The Xtorch works as a backup phone charger, but it is more effective as a flashlight or lantern that can be used outdoors or in emergencies. Submitted image

to tell whether it needs to be recharged or not. This would be nice feature to have, so you know whether you need to charge your charger so that it is ready when needed. It would also help to know how much time is left while it is charging.

It comes with multiple micro-USB cable connections for Android and a lightning cable connection for Apple devices. However, it is not USB-C compatible without an adapter or using your own USB-A to USB-C cable, and this is worth noting as many new Android smartphones are coming with USB-C.

Aside from its benefits to disaster relief and general humanitarian outreach, I consider the XTorch an excellent device for camping and keeping in the car or home for emergencies.

Paul Burnstein is a tech handyman. As the founder of Gadget Guy MN, Paul helps personal and business clients optimize their use of technology.

He can be found through gadgetguymn.com or via email at paul@gadgetguymn.com.

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B17

Ask Dr. Rachel

By Rachel Allyn

Channeling your inner boss A

s I look back over the years, I realize how much I’ve struggled to assert myself. I can think of a handful of examples from work or with my husband in which I might feel frustrated or disagree yet I remain silent. It’s not that I’m confused about how I feel, it’s just that I struggle to actually tell the other person. How can I learn how to speak directly to people and be more assertive?

Effective communication is essential to our wellbeing as social creatures, yet how many of us actually received education about it in school as a kid? Not only was this absent academically, but most of us didn’t have models for it in our household growing up.

Communication skills are so crucial, and yet the majority of people fumble their way through, learning by trial and error or avoiding it altogether when it feels too tricky.

You fall in the latter camp.

The problem with stuffing your feelings versus expressing them is that you build resentment toward people, and possibly even contempt, over time. This doesn’t do you or the other person any favors.

Keep in mind what Andre Lorde stated: “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

Not asserting yourself doesn’t mean your issues magically dissolve. Quite the contrary.

Typically, the energy of those feelings builds

until you eventually explode more aggressively.

Being assertive is about recognizing what you need and asking for it. This comes from having enough self-worth and self-respect to know you have a right to be heard and acknowledged.

You may have learned as a child that even if you expressed your needs they were disregarded or ignored. You may have also learned to avoid conflict because of the drama or silence you witnessed when people’s needs weren’t aligned — and as a result avoid confrontation.

Keep in mind that clear communication

can actually prevent conflict or confusion later. There are many possible outcomes from being assertive that are actually productive and provide clarity.

Specific steps involved in asserting yourself include being aware and honest about your needs and how they represent your underlying values; taking responsibility for your needs rather than blaming others; and being unapologetic, yet trying to find a balance between the different views of those involved. (Hint: empathy helps.)

Remember that communication is about

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more than words. It’s about eye contact, facial expression, posture, gestures, tone and cadence of voice. Embody a stance of strength and grace rather than thinking you have to be a bully to be heard.

Being assertive doesn’t mean you are demanding something (“You need to do this …”) but rather that you’re speaking from your own experience (“I feel I need this …”).

I’m a fan of a method called Nonviolent Communication (NVC), also referred to as Compassionate Communication. NVC theory believes that all human behavior stems from attempts to meet universal human needs and suggests “people identify shared needs, revealed by the thoughts and feelings that surround these needs, and collaborate to develop strategies that meet them. This creates both harmony and learning for future cooperation,” as Wikipedia puts it.

Assertiveness is all about asking for what you need in a manner that respects others.

This stands in opposition to being passiveaggressive, something Minnesotans — ahem — have a bit of a reputation for.

So don’t delay. Start channeling your inner boss, as the kids like to say, and let yourself be heard.

Dr. Rachel Allyn is a licensed psychologist in private practice. Learn more about her unique style of therapy at DrRachelAllyn.com.

Send questions to Rachel@DrRachelAllyn.com.

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B18 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

Get Out Guide.

‘GOLDEN GIRLS’ BAR CRAWL “Golden Girls” has long carried an unlikely cult status, thanks in large part to its progressive values and whip-smart humor.

Last year, the 1980s sitcom about a group of elderly women who share a home in Florida enjoyed a revival when Hulu picked up the full series, allowing fans to stream the show 24/7. That inspired everything from themed merchandise and an off-Broadway puppet parody to a “Golden Girls” Bar Crawl in Minneapolis, created by LGBTQ nightlife promoter Flip Phone to get a Guinness World Record for the most people dressed as the characters in one place at one time. (More than 1,100 showed up.) This year’s version attempts to top last year’s total, with five participating venues, drag performances, piano sing-alongs, trivia and dance parties. Plus, 10 percent of all bar sales will be donated to LGBTQ advocacy group, OutFront Minnesota.

By Jahna Peloquin

When: Saturday, May 12, 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Where: The Pourhouse/The Exchange, The Saloon, The Shouthouse, Mercy Restaurant and Union Rooftop Cost: $20–$42 Info: flipphoneevents.com Submitted photo

‘MARISOL’ Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera’s darkly absurdist play, “Marisol,” reflects the social and spiritual upheaval of the early 1990s and urges society to recover its compassion for humankind. Winner of the 1993 Obie Award, this poetryinfused play is a surreal urban nightmare and tale of survival in post-apocalyptic New York City, in which angelic warfare, mental illness and the disintegration of modern society have descended upon the city. The story follows a young Puerto Rican woman named Marisol Perez through a disturbing and disorienting world that pushes the boundaries of conventional theology, personal relationships and the pathology of fear and paranoia. Presented by two-time Ivey Award–winning Theatre Coup d’Etat, an independent theater company based in Minneapolis, this restaging combines actor-driven movement with black box-style staging for what is sure to be a dramatic production.

When: May 4–19 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: SpringHouse Ministry Center, 610 W. 28th St. Cost: $18–$40 Info: theatrecoupdetat.com

‘REWRITING CONTEMPORARY PAINTING’ In recent years, the art world has seen a move away from postmodernism and conceptual art, and back to the basics. Under the critical umbrella of formalism, today’s contemporary painters are eschewing narrative concerns and putting the focus on basic visual aspects of painting, such as brushwork, color, space, line and texture.

Two MCAD alumni, Josh Meillier and Shannon McElree, are two Twin Cities–based painters working in this realm. In this dual exhibition, the artists are using only black and white, the lack of color serving as a means to eliminate distraction from the materials being used, as well as to play with the way the panels absorb light or reflect it. Meillier’s works explore mark making, material and process using a mix of paints, papers, tapes and other materials to explore the possibilities and limitations of various media. McElree’s gestural abstract paintings, often created on out-size masonite panels, contain a sense of fluidity and movement.

When: Douglas Flanders & Associates, 818 W. Lake St. When: May 12–July 7; opening reception: Saturday, May 12, 6 p.m.–9 p.m.

Cost: Free Info: flandersart.com

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B19

Cinco de Mayo +

Kentucky Derby Parties This year, Cinco de Mayo and Kentucky Derby land on the same day: Saturday, May 5. Whether you’re a fan of margaritas or mint juleps, there are plenty of parties celebrating both occasions

Dalton & Wade Kentucky Derby Party

Betty Danger’s Kentucky Derbatante

Derby de Mayo

As far as authenticity is concerned, Dalton & Wade is an ideal spot to take in the Kentucky Derby. The whiskeycentric, southern-inspired bar and restaurant is hosting a viewing party on its rooftop with views of the downtown skyline, multiple big screens, a barbecue feast, outdoor games, mint juleps and, in a nod to Cinco de Mayo, piñatas and margaritas.

Leave it to Betty Danger’s Country Club — the kooky, retro hot spot that combines Tex-Mex food and cocktails with mini golf and a full-sized Ferris Wheel — to throw a great Cinco de Mayo–Kentucky Derby fusion party. They’re pulling out all the stops with a derby hat contest, a mint julep bar, live ponies (!), inflatable horse races, mini golf and a derby ball.

Celebrate the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo in style at Brick x Mortar, a new members-only social club in downtown that’s rarely open to the public. The event includes a viewing of the derby, a live brass band, miniature horses, Southern-style fare from Soul Bowl, hand-rolled cigars and a live DJ, plus piñatas, margaritas, cervezas and tequila. A portion of proceeds benefits nonprofit This Old Horse, which provides sanctuary to retired horses.

When: Saturday, May 5, 2 p.m.–6 p.m.

Where: Dalton & Wade, 323 N. Washington Ave. Cost: $45 Info: eventbrite.com

When: Saturday, May 5, 2:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m.

Where: Betty Danger’s Country Club, 2501 Marshall St. NE Cost: $15–$20 Info: bettydangers.com

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When: Saturday, May 5, 1 p.m.–7 p.m.

Where: Brick x Mortar, 314 N. 1st Ave. Cost: $30 Info: brxmo.com

4/26/18 3:34 PM

B20 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

By Linda Koutsky

Does snow influence creativity?

O

ne time I heard that Minnesota has an abundance of creative people because we have so much time indoors in winter. This was a really long winter.

As I sit writing this in my studio, I see distinct piles on nearly every surface of projects both finished and in-progress. I am certain my own creative output increased this winter.

As that last debilitating snowstorm that brought Minneapolis to a halt was approaching central Minnesota, I was riding its leading edge.

I spent a few days in northern Minnesota then took a quick break in Alexandria on my way home. While in a thrift store sorting through a pile of vintage Christmas wrapping paper (it’s never too early!) a radio announcer said schools would be closing at 2.

I heard something was on the way but the sky was just slightly overcast and didn’t seem threatening. But Alexandria is known for its blizzards.

So I asked the store clerk for her professional opinion. She said I should get on my way. I hopped on Interstate 94 as flakes began to swirl and the darkened sky filled my rearview mirror.

LUNCH TIP They know their customers might get weak from exhaustive shopping, so the in-house cafe serves sandwiches, wraps, paninis, soups, espresso drinks, fruit smoothies, ice cream and homemade cookies and bars.

I must have been moving faster than the storm, though, because an hour later it seemed to lighten up a bit, just as I passed a billboard for Crafts Direct: “Inspire. Create. Decorate.” Then, in smaller type: “The Midwest’s largest independently owned arts and crafts store.”

I’d seen their billboards for years. The square footage always seemed to go up, and a few years ago they added a cafe. But I always seemed to be in a hurry and couldn’t stop.

I checked my mirror again. Not too dark. How long could it take? I took exit 158 into Waite Park.

I used Google Maps to find the store because it was hidden in an industrial area. A large parking lot appeared to my right. Set back from the road was a series of Western-style storefronts in different colors with a variety of awnings and typographic signs visually announcing the store. I had arrived!

Crafts Direct has 40,000 square feet of craft supplies. The vast space is divided into sections with 32 numbered rows. Help desks are located along one wall. Most of the endcaps show project examples for inspiration.

I thought of the approaching snowstorm. Would I have time to get to the other end and back?

There was an entire aisle of glue and tape.

A fabric and yarn department, rubber stamps, scrapbooks, paper crafts, floral, wedding, candle- and soap-making supplies, beads, jewelry findings, wood, paint, picture frames, children’s crafts, candles, racks of colorful scissors, home goods, cookware — even clothes! It was the largest and most exhaustive craft store I’d ever been in. My basket soon got heavy.

You’ll need binoculars to read signs at the other end of the store.

Photo by Linda Koutsky

Crafts Direct’s roots go back to 1990. This is their second location, and they’re still run by the original family. They have classes, a creativity passport for loyal shoppers, a Quilt Block of the Month program, online shopping and an extensive social media presence.

The company also believes in giving back to the community. Shoppers receive 40 percent off an item’s price if they donate $1 to the store’s Charity of the Week program. Those accumulated dollars, plus an additional corporate donation, are given to different charities each week.

So far this year it totals $24,800.

Crafts are a booming business today.

The craft industry increased by more than $1 billion between 2011 and 2016 and is even stronger today.

I believe that we’re in a similar situation to the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 1800s.

Back then people rebelled against the mass

production of the machine age. Artists created items by hand and worked in ceramics, leather, metals, textiles and other materials.

According to the Craft Industry Alliance, more young people and men are getting involved with crafts. Nearly half the people shopping at Crafts Direct when I was there were men. And they were shopping, not just lingering behind someone else.

Today, we are diligently making things with our hands to counterbalance our digital lives.

Crafting has changed and evolved over the years. Projects have gotten more complex and sophisticated. According to industry experts, coloring books are on their way out. Current trends include more succulent gardens, hand lettering, embroidery, fabric stencils, weaving and macramé, retro typewriters and sewing machines, linoleum block printing, marbling paint and the continued use of glitter. Stores that offer creative projects as entertainment are still on the rise.

After spending about an hour-and-a-half at Crafts Direct, I went to my snow covered car with a clear vinyl yardage to make a tote bag, two-part epoxy resin for a state fair project, some rug hooking supplies, a bamboo handled spatula, a cluster of artificial flowers and a quarter yard of stretch knit fabric for some flip flops I’ve been meaning to alter.

I’ll be busy.

For comments or suggestions write to weekendtourist@mnpubs.com. Follow Linda Koutsky on Facebook for more tourist tips.

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B22 May 3–16, 2018 / southwestjournal.com

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5:31 PM

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•

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southwestjournal.com / May 3–16, 2018 B23

PAINTING

REMODELING

TO PLACE YOUR AD CALL OWEN AT 612.436.4392

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13

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1/4/18 11:51 AM

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4/26/18 10:34 AM