Como press from 2006- 2007 |
2006- 2007
2007 - Field Notes: Como SE Minneapolis
The Wake October 10, 2007 excerpt - Rumbling tracks from the approaching train, roaring exhaust from the passing bus, warning screams from the police siren – all call Southeast Minneapolis home. The bells don’t ring out from Turtle Community School any longer. Home for-sale signs seem to be the latest lawn ornament. Discarded red plastic party cups blow through the allies. The Como neighborhood acts as the sponge for University of Minnesota students who want to live close to campus but not exactly on it. People who rent out-number the home-owning residents almost 2-to-1, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. . . See full article here - |
2007 - Concrete jungles' dirty secret: Miles of unpaved streets
"Concrete jungles' dirty secret: Miles of unpaved streets: Urban centers have been called concrete jungles for years, but in Minneapolis and St. Paul, some streets have never been truly paved." by Pam Louwagie, Star Tribune, December 3, 2007 excerpt - . . . Jeremiah Peterson has been talking to Ostrow's office a lot lately. Since buying his house in southeast Minneapolis four years ago, he has grown disgusted with the condition of his street just off Hennepin Avenue: The sides are crumbling. Patches of asphalt, plopped down to fill divots, form bumps. And the roadway slopes like "a huge crescent moon," he said. He found out a while ago his street had never been paved -- just oiled and later patched with asphalt. The University of Minnesota student and Iraq war veteran who grew up near Brainerd, Minn., said he never expected such rough road conditions in a major city. "I definitely thought all of Minneapolis was paved," he said. "I lived on a long dirt road [near Brainerd] and quite frankly that road was much nicer." . . . |
2007 - SE Como residents oppose removing homes for Grand Rounds ‘missing link’
"Southeast Como residents oppose removing homes for Grand Rounds ‘missing link’," by Bill Hoffman, The Bridge, November 17, 2007 excerpt - Plans for the latest alternative route for completion of the “missing link” in the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s (MPRB) Grand Rounds parkway met stiff opposition at the Southeast Como Improvement Association’s (SECIA) November meeting. Many of the 45 residents and SECIA board members at the crowded meeting voted to oppose all Park Board proposals that would remove homes to make way for a route to complete the Grand Rounds parkway. The three-mile “missing link” would complete the 50-mile parkway circle around the city. At the meeting, George Puzak, vice chair of the Park Board’s citizen advisory committee, presented the new alternative route, called G5. The north-south route would turn west from Industrial Boulevard onto East Hennepin Avenue, then turn south into Southeast Como and follow 27th Avenue Southeast between Hennepin and Como Avenue, just west of the university’s family student housing complex. The route would veer slightly and then continue south across the railroad tracks (see map, courtesty of Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board.) . . . |
2007 - Protests prompt rerouting of parkway: Como neighborhood residents feared disruption, leading to a recommendation to shift the link east near Hwy. 280
"Protests prompt rerouting of parkway: Como neighborhood residents feared disruption, leading to a recommendation to shift the link east near Hwy. 280." by Steve Brandt, Star Tribune, September 23, 2007 excerpt - . . . A more direct route for connecting St. Anthony Parkway and East River Road drew determined opposition from Como neighborhood residents last week. That route, mostly following Stinson Boulevard and 18th and 19th Avenues SE., is one of three corridors still being evaluated by a citizen committee charged with recommending a route to bridge the parkway gap. But Como neighbors expressed sufficient fear over losing homes and gaining traffic if a parkway bisects their area that committee Chairman John Erwin said he thinks the industrial area route running east of the neighborhood is preferable. Park Commissioner Walt Dziedzic agrees. . . |
2007 - Counter Intelligence: Happy birthday, indeed
Counter Intelligence: Happy birthday, indeed: Seventy-five years is a long time by any measure, but in the restaurant business, it's an eternity, which is why the milestone calls for a celebration. That's the plan from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Manning's Cafe (2200 Como Av. SE., Minneapolis) . . ." by Rick Nelson, Star Tribune, May 30, 2007 excerpt - Seventy-five years is a long time by any measure, but in the restaurant business, it's an eternity, which is why the milestone calls for a celebration. That's the plan from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Manning's Cafe (2200 Como Av. SE., Minneapolis), when owner Larry Manning (grandson of founder Ralph Manning) will mark the event with 75-cent hot dogs, sodas and tap beer. Happy birthday. . . |
2007 - Como worries about losses
"Como worries about losses," by Vadim Lavrusik, Minnesota Daily, May 1, 2007 excerpt - In his State of the City address last month, Mayor R.T. Rybak spoke of the urgency of keeping the middle class thriving in Minneapolis, using Southeast Como as an example. But with recent changes in the neighborhood, Como could lose exactly what Rybak spoke about - its middle-class families and homeowners. The Tuttle Community School will close later this year; the Southeast Library closed in December. The Southeast Como Improvement Association's future is uncertain as Neighborhood Revitalization Program funds are set to expire in 2009, which will end funding to programs that help improve the neighborhood. . . |
2007 - Divided board votes to close six schools
"Divided board votes to close six schools," by Steve Brandt, Star Tribune, April 13, 2007 excerpt - Before a disappointed standing-room-only crowd, a badly fractured Minneapolis school board voted Thursday night to close six more schools, but that's not the end of the job. The closings will deal with barely one-third of the district's classroom surplus, and more school closings loom. "There will be more pain ahead," said Board Chairwoman Pam Costain. At the end of a sometimes tumultuous four-hour meeting, Superintendent Bill Green's administration got its way, but at the cost of a nasty fraying of relations among some rookie board members who were elected last fall. The 6-1 vote will close 209 classrooms, forcing almost 2,100 students and their families to choose new schools. But the administration said the district has at least 600 classrooms no longer needed as its enrollment slides. Thursday's vote will close W. Harry Davis Academy, North Star, Lincoln, Jordan Park, and the previously targeted Shingle Creek, all on the North Side, and Tuttle in southeast Minneapolis. . . . |
2007 - Blowback: Xcel bills confusing; 20,376 Minnesota customers who signed up for Xcel Energy's Windsource program got a mixed message in their latest bills
"Blowback: Xcel bills confusing: 20,376 Minnesota customers who signed up for Xcel Energy's Windsource program got a mixed message in their latest bills." By Mike Meyers, Star Tribune, March 20, 2007 excerpts - When does a price cut look like a price increase? When it's on an Xcel Energy bill. Xcel has sent letters to 20,376 Minnesota customers who signed up for its Windsource program, trying to explain changes in bills that went out in February and this month that have provoked confusion and anger. "It seems like people have been asking a lot of simple questions and not really getting any satisfactory answers," said Elizabeth Dickenson, a St. Paul resident and Windsource participant for more than two years. . . . . . . . The changes may amount to only pennies, but some neighborhood groups that have promoted the Windsource program say they've had to make an outsized investment of time simply to figure out whether the cost of participating in the wind plan is going up or down. "It seems like a poor business practice on the part of Xcel," said Justin Eibenholzl, environmental coordinator for the Southeast Como Improvement Association. "They didn't have answers to our questions at the outset." |
2006 - Let there be light: U and neighborhood effort results in new pedestrian lighting by Twin Cities campus
"Let there be light: U and neighborhood effort results in new pedestrian lighting by Twin Cities campus," by Pauline Oo, UMNews, December 6, 2006 excerpts - Spooky, dark, unsafe, scary... Before September 2005, these adjectives regularly escaped the lips of Marcy-Holmes and Southeast Como residents when 15th Avenue S.E. crept into conversation. Today, faces beam as brightly as the new pedestrian lighting along that street--north of the University of Minnesota's East Bank and the Mississippi River--and the residents can't say enough about the added glow to their neighborhood. . . . . . . "This is an example of citizens and government working together," says Zerby. "It would never have happened without everybody doing what they did--the students, the University, the Southeast Como and Marcy Holmes neighborhoods, the Southeast Como Improvement Association, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, and many property owners who agreed to sign the petitions." . . . |
2006 - The Short Life and Sudden Death of Germain Vigeant
"The Short Life and Sudden Death of Germain Vigeant: The big-hearted college student was legally drunk when she died in a Minneapolis grain silo. But family and friends say her story is much more than a cautionary tale of high-risk drinking on campus." by Gayle Golden, Mpls St. Paul Magazine, October 2006 excerpt - Since it was shut down three years ago, the Bunge grain elevator has towered over southeast Minneapolis’s Como neighborhood with an almost gothic foreboding—a destination for taggers, vandals, urban adventurers, and young partyers who would explore the blighted relic of the agricultural industry, sending empty bottles of Rolling Rock crashing from its heights. It was a place eyed with annoyance and apprehension by many who live in the neighborhood’s modest homes and apartments. Germain Vigeant (pronounced vy-jent) had always looked at the massive towers with curiosity. The twenty-year-old University of Minnesota student, who lived in a rented house three blocks away, loved the wild graffiti, the forbidden allure of broken windows and rusted pipes, and the prospect of telling stories after scaling the metal staircases to the top. As she stood near the towers at 3 a.m. on an unseasonably warm night last January, she looked once more at the white silos and wondered. She was flush from a night of partying with friends. She was standing next to a boy she liked—a boy who liked her. The boy knew the towers. He could get her to the top in no time, he said. And so the two of them walked toward them, slid open an unlatched door, and began to climb. Fifteen minutes later, Germain lay dead at the bottom of one of the silos . . . . |
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