Bakery coming to 32nd & Hennepin PAGE A3 • The growth of seed libraries PAGE A14 • Lives touched by bandits PAGE B6 • The monuments of Lakewood Cemetery PAGE B8
July 11–24, 2019 Vol. 30, No. 14 southwestjournal.com
Hotel at Lake & Excelsior approved
‘Justice is a process’
Planning Commission approves 10-story hotel-and-condo building By Andrew Hazzard
Don Damond moves forward without moving away from Minneapolis
The Planning Commission has approved a 10-story, mixed-use condo-and-hotel building at Lake & Excelsior on a site currently occupied by a BP gas station. Submitted image
By Michelle Bruch
Don Damond sold his Washburn Avenue house in 2018. It had become too painful to walk the alley at 11:39 p.m. every Saturday and light a candle on the spot where a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed his fiancee, Justine. Although every glimpse of a squad car is difficult, Damond is still living two miles away in Southwest Minneapolis so he can advocate for police reform as a constituent of the city. “I want to make sure I still have a voice to make the changes that I think are necessary,” Damond said in a June 28 interview, adding that Justine lived for the transformation and evolution of people. “I think that her legacy is that: What can we change in policing as a result of this?”
Don Damond stands near a bench at Minnehaha Creek he dedicated in honor of his late fiancee, Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Photo by Chris Juhn
SEE DAMOND / PAGE A19
The Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve a 10-story, hotel-and-condo building at Lake & Excelsior. The mixed-use building, being built by Elevage Development Group, will have 20 condo units, 100 hotel rooms and about 11,000 square feet of commercial space. The building will stand 114 feet. Three residents of The Loop Condominium building on West Lake Street voiced concerns at the July 8 Planning Commission meeting about excess traffic at Lake & Excelsior and shared their displeasure at losing views of Bde Maka Ska. “The whole idea of living by the lake is to have a view of the lake,” said one woman who told commissioners she moved to the building because she could see the water. SEE HOTEL / PAGE A16
Zen center aims to expand minds, building The Midwest’s oldest Zen center is outgrowing its historic home on Bde Maka Ska By Zac Farber
There were very few Zen Buddhists living in Minnesota in December 1974 when Dainin Katagiri Roshi toured an old Spanish colonial mansion on the east shore of Lake Calhoun. Roshi, a Japanese-born Zen master, had moved from California to Minneapolis in a U-Haul two years earlier to become the founding abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, the first Buddhist center in the Midwest. (“I want to go to the place where nobody wants to go,” Roshi said before his move.) As he toured the house on the lake, Roshi
This Spanish colonial mansion was bought by the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in 1975. The center plans to expand the building. Photo by Zac Farber
was joined by Robert Pirsig, a St. Paul resident whose new novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — a study of Zen’s role in the “everyday world” — had sold 50,000 copies in the three months following its publication and would go on to sell more than 5 million. The goal of their visit was to find a permanent place for the dozen or so core members of the Zen center to practice their faith. The three-story house at first seemed too dilapidated and run-down to make SEE MEDITATION / PAGE A18
Charter schools making moves
Treatment of migrants
A budding industry
Architect artist
PAGE A6
PAGE A9
PAGE A12
PAGE B1