Smart Growth News

Minnesota

Company Receives $205 Million for St. Paul's Light Rail Contract

The Walsh Construction Company recently received a $205 million contract for seven miles of light rail in St. Paul Minnesota. The light rail will eventually connect the St. Paul city center to downtown Minneapolis. The Central Corridor light rail is projected to open in 2014, with construction beginning this August.

Aside from rail construction, the massive contract will also include reconstructing streets where the track will run, building 14 rail stations, modifying two bridges, improving intersections and pedestrian crossings, building storm water infrastructure and demolishing a vacant Bremer Bank building. The contract also includes $10.4 million in ''betterment work,'' which includes planting additional trees along the rail line. Met Council Chair Peter Bell noted that ''while we haven't had any ceremony or ribbon-cutting, the fact is we are starting construction this summer on the largest and most important transit improvement project in state history.''   6/21/2020

Resource(s): http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2010/06/21/daily36.html

Mayors Launch Green CiTTS Program

The Green CiTTS program was launched on June 17, as mayors from around the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River area pledged to actively promote environmental sustainability. The Cities Transforming Towards Sustainability (CiTTS) project will take aim at four critical issues: protecting water resources and coastal areas, promoting low-carbon energy generation and consumption, adopting green land use and building design and encouraging green economic development. The program area includes Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Ontario and Quebec. Green CiTTS also plans to offer training, share best practices, enter research partnerships, and raise money for municipal projects.

Mayors from more than 70 cities have pledged to take part in the Green CiTTS program. ''Today we mayors have taken an important regionwide step forward,'' Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago said. Daley also stated that each year will have a different theme, and this year's theme is reducing and improving the quality of storm water runoff.

Starting with a $100,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation, the project hopes to to grow the budget by four to five times that amount.   6/17/2010

Resource(s): http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/

Weak Housing Growth Keeps Twin Cities Behind Many Other Metro Regions

Rather slow on a smart-growth path toward urban housing, Minneapolis and St. Paul have increased their shares of the region's residential building permits from 2 and 1 percent in the early 1990s to 7 and 4 percent between 2003 and 2008. Each slipped back by one percent each in 2008. This trend runs counter to urban housing gains in many other metro areas, detailed by the EPA Development, Community and Environment Division (DCED) in its Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions 2010 report.

''In about half the cities,'' its lead author John Thomas told Minnesota Public Radio reporter Dan Olson, ''the market share of the central cities and the older close-in suburbs have doubled, particularly in the last six or seven years.'' In this context, the reporter observes, an apartment building under construction near bus and rail in the heart of downtown Minneapolis seems ''a bit of an anomaly.''

The decades old habit of reaching outward continues, with the Metropolitan Council's statistics showing issuance of residential building permits for 142,986 units across the region between 2000 and 2008, including a mere 16,915 units in the Twin Cities. Two area experts attribute the Twin Cities housing sluggishness partly to land shortages and neighborhood opposition. Both cities avoided blight that left some others with big swatches of empty land over the past decades, said businessman Rick Packer, a former Coon Rapids city planner and Metropolitan Council member. ''Minneapolis and St. Paul are both pretty healthy cities,'' he explained, ''there wasn't a crying need for redevelopment and there wasn't a lot of vacant land that could accommodate it either.''

The University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs' State and Local Policy Program Director Lee Munnich, a two-term Minneapolis Councilman in 1974-78, pointed out that neighbors already fought new or higher density projects then. ''I was involved in this on the Minneapolis City Council,'' he said, recalling concerns ''about high rises around the lakes, and having a high rise next to you, and parking issues and things like that.''

Read the EPA housing trend report at www.epa.gov/smartgrowth.   3/29/2010

Resource(s): http://minnesota.publicradio.org/

Complete Streets Legislation to Remedy Design and Construction Rules of ''Autocentric World''

Attractive, safe and easy streets for all are regaining their economic, civic and environmental importance in Minnesota. A Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial expects a proposed Complete Streets bill to help accelerate the recent state ''shift from roads-only approach.''

Welcomed by Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) Commissioner Tom Sorel, the bill follows his department’s comprehensive Complete Streets Report on the benefits, cost and feasibility of a complete streets policy, applicable to construction, reconstruction and relocation of streets and roads. Requested by the Legislature in 2008, prepared by the Minneapolis-headquartered SRF Consulting Group, and submitted last December, the MnDOT report adopts complete streets definition from the Federal Complete Streets Act of 2009 (HR 1443/S 594) and focuses on the state’s six legislative requirements. They include ''safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders,'' along with bicycle and pedestrian ways in appropriate urbanized areas; paved shoulders on rural roads; safe pedestrian mobility, including for people with disabilities; utilization of the latest and best design standards; and consistency of local complete streets plans with community contexts.

The report calls complete streets ''inherent'' and complementary to Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS), lists their potential benefits and costs, and finds them feasible on state, regional and local levels. Citing the report’s conclusion that ''the benefits of Complete Streets offset the incremental costs,'' the Star Tribune editorial says it makes the related bill revenue-neutral. ''Adding an occasional bike lane or a sidewalk might cost more. But no longer having to build massive, freeway-style bridges on quiet, narrow streets would save money,'' the editorial explains. ''Safety and health are primary concerns,'' it points out. ''More than 500 people have been killed and 20,000 injured while walking or biking along Minnesota roads over the past decade. Roadway design should encourage, not punish, healthy lifestyles. And Minnesota communities should have the option of restoring a more human scale to daily life.''

See the MnDOT report and related news at www.dot.state.mn.us/planning/completestreets/legislation.html.   2/14/2010

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Twin Cities Collaborative Working to Ensure Equitable Redevelopment

With the 12-mile Hiawatha light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis south to the international airport and Mall of America in Bloomington reporting a five-year ridership record of 10.2 million last year, and with the planned 11-mile east-west University Avenue line between St. Paul and Minneapolis set for completion in 2014, the pro-transit Central Corridor Funders Collaborative stepped up its effort to ensure equitable and responsible redevelopment in the area.

According to Twin Cities Daily Planet online, Collaborative Director Jonathan Sage-Martinson told journalists on a bus tour that the corridor needs affordable housing, a strong economy and vital transit-oriented development along the line, on behalf of which his collaborative has already raised $5 million, invested more than $800,000 in research, consulting and planning, and moved to raise an additional $20 million within 10 years.

The powerful message came shortly after a group of some 30 members of Concerned Asian Business Owners along the prospective line filed a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) complaint against the Metropolitan Council for alleged neglect of minority interests in its federally-required environmental justice study, approved by the FTA in August. The study, according to the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development that analyzed it for the group, ignores “numerous expressions of concern that the project as designed would cause irreparable injury to racial minorities along the corridor,” especially through a permanent loss of 85 percent of on-street parking.

Five months ago, the area’s Preserve and Benefit Historic Rondo Committee, which includes the St. Paul chapter of the NAACAP, Aurora/St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corp. and the Community Stabilization Project, lodged a similar complaint against the Metropolitan Council, alleging the low-income residents and minority businesses along the line would be priced out rather than benefited by the expected economic development, an allegation Council President Peter Bell and a Star Tribune editorial strongly disputed. Central Corridor Funders Collaborative leaders and guests on the corridor tour were confident of the project’s potential and community inclusiveness. Calling it a “corridor of opportunity,” St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman stressed, “It is about making sure that the businesses that have been on this avenue for years continue to thrive. It is about making sure we create new opportunities for new businesses to open up and to also do well.”

And Oakland, California-based Center for Transit-Oriented Development Technical Director Sam Zimbabwe said, “As this light rail gets built, you’re going to see lots and lots of people from around the country wanting to come to see what you all have done here in the Twin Cities.”

Learn more about the collaborative at www.funderscollaborative.org.   10/25/2009

Resource(s): http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/ ; http://www.startribune.com/

DOE Invests in Cutting-Edge Wind Energy Research Facilities

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced new investments today in three university-led wind energy research facilities in Illinois, Maine, and Minnesota that will enhance the United States' leadership role in testing and producing the most advanced and efficient wind turbines in the world. The funding is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the research will focus on improving both land-based and offshore wind generation.

''Wind power has the potential to provide 20% of our electricity and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,'' said Secretary Chu. ''We need to position the United States as the clear leader in this industry, or watch these high-paying jobs go overseas. The investment we're making today will help ensure that America has both the talent and the technology we need to compete.''   10/15/2009

Resource(s): http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/progress_alerts.cfm/pa_id=250

''Learning Network'' to Help Neighbors of Light-Rail Line Maximize Benefits

With construction of a light-rail (LTR) line along University Avenue between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul slated for 2010, ten local and national foundations have recently helped establish the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative and Learning Network, seven of them already contributing a total of $5 million toward its $20-million fund and the others promising individual donations on their own, reports Minnesota Post writer Scott Russell, told by Network Coordinator Jonathan Sage-Martinson that the goal is to maximize light-rail benefits, ''particularly for those who are most vulnerable and who would not benefit if there was not some kind of proactive action.''

One of the top issues on the collaborative's agenda, he said, is exploration of transit-oriented development in various areas along the corridor.

Still working on specific proactive steps, which may include helping the corridor's small businesses to buy property as a shield against any rent hikes or ensuring enough inexpensive rental space for new entrepreneurs, the writer observes, the collaborative will pursue three basic strategies.

It will facilitate internal exchange of information on other light-rail systems and projects, while identifying specific Central Corridor issues; create broader community partnerships and generate ideas through working groups of public, nonprofit, business and other members focusing on affordable housing, small business economy and other priorities; and support all these activities through a Catalyst Fund, its first $5 million pledged and another $15 million expected over the next 10 years.

The seven current donors are the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the St. Paul-based F.R. Bigelow Foundation, the St. Paul Foundation, the St. Paul Travelers Foundation, the Miami-based Knight Foundation, and the New York-based Surdna Foundation.

The other three, now gathering data for their donations, are the Minneapolis-based Phillips Family Foundation, the St. Paul-based Otto Bremer Foundation, and the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Instrumental in bringing them all together, after his first conversation last year with Casey senior fellow and director of neighborhood development Roger Williams, McKnight program manager Dan Bartholomay said, ''Up until three months ago it was a concept. Now we are putting the pieces in place to make it functional.''

Both foundations, the writer adds, have been active in Living Cities and in the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. -- Minnesota Post   9/8/2008

Resource(s): www.minnpost.com

Updated Laws Make It Hard to Duplicate ''Model'' Minneapolis Mixed-Use Project

Launched in 2000, the 16-acre mixed-use Excelsior & Grand development in St. Louis Park, just four miles southwest of central Minneapolis, ''is held up as a model for how suburbs should reinvent themselves in a new century bedeviled by higher energy costs and greater environmental concerns,'' reports MinnPost writer Steve Berg, but its builder, Plymouth-based TOLD Development Co. principal Bob Cunningham doubts it would be possible now, because state lawmakers have restricted the use of tax increment financing (TIF) in recent years and banned eminent domain for private development in 2006.

The widely admired $180 million development, the writer notes, ''replaced a row of shabby malls with 644 housing units, 88,000 square feet of retail space, structured parking and the kind of lush public spaces seldom found in the Twin Cities market.''

St. Louis Park bought the 37 worn-out properties with no problems, but had the eminent domain constraints been in force then, a single holdout owner could have halted the project, the developer said at an Urban Land Institute seminar in Minneapolis.

A former St. Louis Park mayor, Hennepin County Commissioner Gail Dorfman, was a bit more optimistic about similar future projects, but she also disliked the legislative curbs, stressing, ''A vision without resources is a hallucination.''

An early smart-growth advocate, former Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale (1999-2003), urged seminar participants to hold onto and protect Excelsior & Grand design principles, pointing out that the region's new dedicated fund for light rail and other public transportation could spark similar mixed-use projects near transit stations.

Much of the knowledge gained at Excelsior & Grand, the writer observes, is now being used in construction of a 43-acre ''lifestyle center'' -- the West End, near the intersection of I-394 and Highway 100 -- which will feature offices and upscale retail. -- MinnPost   5/15/2008

Resource(s): www.minnpost.com/

Lawmaker Defends Vote in Favor of Minnesota Transit Bill

Stripped of his party position as the Assistant Republican Minority Whip for voting with Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) lawmakers to override Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's veto on the state's $6.6 billion transportation bill, GOP Representative Neil Peterson points out in the Twin Cities Star Tribune that he backed the bill, encouraged by its endorsement from ''the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota League of Cities, the Environmental Partnership and the president of the University of Minnesota,'' plus countless other organizations and constituents.

''I supported the transportation bill in spite of the pain that it personally causes me. It pains me to be at odds with the governor, a man I personally like. It pains me to hit a bump in my relations with some caucus members,'' he writes. ''But it pains me even more to consider the consequences of doing nothing again this year.''

Elaborating on five key reasons for his vote, Representative Peterson begins with his belief in less taxation.

''A gas tax is a user fee, plain and simple, and for 20 years it has not been increased. This additional user fee will cost each of us less than a cup of coffee each month,'' he writes, noting that without the bill's promise of a total of $165.8 million over 10 years for street repair and other improvements in his district of Bloomington, Edina and Hennepin County, their residents would eventually have to pay for these projects with higher property taxes, a solution he wants to avoid.

His other reasons include the ''slowing economy,'' which the bill will help by creating thousands of construction jobs; the recent legislative auditor's report about the disrepair of state roads and bridges; his personal experience as a solo business owner that increasing inflation means ''pay now or pay more later;'' and his belief in public transit.

With the Twin Cities expecting more than a million new residents in the next decade, the Republican representative calls transit necessary, even if he doesn't use it on a daily basis.

''However, as a user of the freeways, roads, and bridges, I need transit to exist and expand if I want to continue to drive without additional gridlock and wasted time,'' he stresses. ''We need public transit to exist for persons who are aging and no longer drive. We need mass transit for cleaner air. With this bill, I supported transportation and the environment of our future,'' he adds. ''With this bill I voted to represent what I believe to be in the best interest of my cities, my constituents and, ultimately, my conscience.'' -- Star Tribune   2/26/2008

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Lawmakers Override Transit Bill Veto in Minnesota

In a historic override of the first among Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's 37 vetoes since he took office in January 2003, state lawmakers upheld a $6.6 billion transportation improvement plan that includes an 8.5 cent state gas tax increase and allows the seven county boards in the Twin Cities metro area to raise sales taxes by a quarter cent solely for transit, with six Republicans joining the entire Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) caucus in the House to give it a 91-41 majority -- one vote more than the necessary two- thirds -- and two GOP Senators backing their DFL colleagues in an easy 47-20 vote.

From a governors' conference in Washington, D.C., ''clearly frustrated'' Governor Pawlenty, report Twin Cities Star Tribune writers Mike Kaszuba and Mark Brunswick, decried the upheld transportation bill as ''ridiculous in scope and in magnitude,'' describing himself as ''more than happy to say this is a DFL product and a DFL result.''

The next day, the six House Republicans who supported the bill were stripped of their minority leadership positions in committees, reports Mark Brunswick in a related article, calling it ''a swift and unusual recrimination explained as an effort to 'stitch together' a fractious House GOP caucus.''

With state Republican Party Chairman Ron Carey warning the six schismatics that they might not get party endorsement and help in reelection bids, House Minority Leader Marty Seifert decided against ''extreme'' caucus retaliation, saying at a news conference, ''We're not taking anyone's secretary. I'm not throwing their computers down the Capitol steps. I'm not severing their phone lines.''

On the other side, House DFL Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher promised to defend the dissident Republicans.

''It there gets to be a situation,'' she said, ''where minority members of the House are stripped of services to serve their constituents, I will not stand for that.''

So far, the writer notes, Republican Representatives Rod Hamilton, Kathy Tingelstad, Jim Abeler, Bud Heidegerken and Ron Erhardt lost their committee positions, and Representative Neil Peterson was removed as an assistant minority whip. -- Star Tribune   2/26/2008

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Affordable Housing Investments Pay Off as Minnesota Leads Country With Highest Rate of Homeownership

The state leads the country with a 76.3-percent homeownership rate thanks largely to its investment of $1.6 billion over two years in affordable housing, said Minnesota Housing Finance Agency Commissioner Timothy E. Marx, counting among the aid recipients the nonprofit Hope Community organization, which has been working on transformation of the Phillips area, just south of downtown Minneapolis, from a blighted and drug-ridden enclave 15 years ago into an increasingly stable neighborhood, by fostering mixed-income housing and economic development -- an effort that also made it more resistant to the recent wave of foreclosures rolling through other city sections.

In contrast to 309 foreclosures in the adjacent Powderhorn area, with slightly higher property values, the Phillips neighborhood's foreclosures were limited to 118, reports New York Times writer Lisa Chamberlain, quoting Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development Director Mike Christenson.

''Where there has been the most investment, including affordable rental housing built by Hope Community, there are the least foreclosures,'' he stressed, which also helps keep crime down.

Having bought some derelict Phillips houses from the city for as little as $1, and renovated, sold or rented them mostly to minority residents or immigrants, the writer reports, Hope Community is behind construction of 126 affordable units, a playground and a community center, with two more mixed-income projects under way.

One broke ground in October; the other will do so in early 2008.

Together, they will add 300 units, from market-rate condominiums to small-studio rentals for the formerly homeless.

''From the beginning, we approached neighborhood revitalization as more than creating affordable housing,'' said Hope Community Executive Director Mary Keefe, increasingly focused on the need to stabilize the neighborhood in the face of encroaching gentrification. ''We are not social workers or service providers -- we are catalysts.''

Still, affordable housing construction is difficult to finance and requires time, pointed out Cuningham Architects founder John W. Cuningham, whose firm helps Hope Community in designing its affordable projects.

''Every funding source puts them through flaming hoops,'' he observed. ''It's just excruciating. From the time we start designing to the time it's built, it takes five years or longer.'' -- New York Times   12/16/2007

Resource(s): www.nytimes.com/

Editorial: Smart Growth Can Help Minnesota Address Climate Change, Improve Quality of Life

Assembled by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty to help the state carry out an 80-percent greenhouse gas emission cut by 2050, with about 27 percent of the current emissions attributable to transportation, the broad-based Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Committee has been concentrating on the need ''to change the ways Minnesotans commute and travel,'' observes a Twin Cities Minnesota Daily editorial, stressing that while the committee ''is considering drastic measures such as fees to discourage driving, new policies should especially focus on smart urban development and mass transit.''

As the Metropolitan Council projects another million Twin Cities residents by 2030, the editorial notes, the region must have smarter transportation and development policies to preserve its environment and ease traffic.

Expecting the committee's recommendations to spark a series of state bills next spring, the editorial points out that the governor and lawmakers must lead the way to make sure the bills include ''real benchmarks and plans.''

Glad of Minnesota's advance to the renewable energy forefront, thanks to legislation passed at the previous session, the editorial says, ''Smart growth takes foresight, and we are now in the perfect position to not only address climate change, but also improve standards of living.'' -- Minnesota Daily   10/18/2007

Resource(s): www.mndaily.com/

Stearns County Will Create Varied ''Policy Zones'' in Updated Comprehensive Plan

Like most other topographically and economically diverse jurisdictions, Stearns County is facing several disparate challenges -- its eastern part booming, but west side towns struggle to survive -- which officials want to address in the 1998 comprehensive plan's almost completed update by dividing the county into nine zones, or ''policy areas,'' with different development standards and requirements, while trying such smart-growth ideas as conservation design and transfer of development rights.

''Nobody thinks Stearns County from north to south and from east to west should be managed the same way,'' said County Environmental Services Director Don Adams. ''This one-size-fits-all isn't cutting it.''

The proposed zones, reports St. Cloud Times writer Kristi Marohn, include the (Mississippi) River corridor north, I-94 corridor, Agricultural limited growth area, Avon Hills natural resource area, St. Cloud metro area, Southwest area, Highway 23 corridor, Lakes natural/recreation area, and River corridor south.

The writer lists some examples of the zone-oriented policies.

The conservation design, with cluster housing and open space preservation, strongly advocated by internationally known planner Randall Arendt at a St. John's University conference in June, would be promoted in the Avon Hills natural resource area.

Transfer of development rights would help the county save prime farmland for production while offering farmers additional income and developers the opportunity to build more densely on residential tracts, which would limit sprawl and keep construction in service areas.

Farm-related industry would be allowed in the depressed Southwest area, new homes in the Lakes natural/recreational area would need vegetative buffers along lake shores, and development between cities along the I-94 corridor would be discouraged to protect local character.

With approval of the updates by the County Board possible this year, Director Adams said that although ''most plans sit up on the shelf,'' he expects this one to become a day-to-day reference manual for staff and officials, guiding their decisions at ''every single meeting.'' -- St. Cloud Times   10/8/2007

Resource(s): www.sctimes.com/

St. Paul Bond Fund Would Raise $25 Million for ''Smart'' Capital Reinvestment

Building upon his predecessor Randy Kelly's 5,000-unit housing expansion plan and continuing the 2005-2006 Residential Street Vitality Program, with its enhanced sidewalk restoration, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman won the City Council's approval for his own Invest Saint Paul initiative to raise $25 million in bonds for ''smart'' capital reinvestment, mainly in four neighborhoods ''challenged by economic and social downturn.''

Paid off from a half-cent special city sales tax, reports Twin Cities Star Tribune writer Myron P. Medcalf, the bonds will also let the city pursue rehabilitation or purchase and demolition of blighted properties, form public-private partnerships for children and other community advancements, and offer mortgage assistance to same of the most pressed homeowners to help them avert foreclosures.

The more than 1,100 foreclosures from January through July increased the number of vacant buildings to 1,200 citywide, and the mayor's Invest Saint Paul initiative earmarks $4.5 million for home rehabilitation and mortgage assistance, leveraging private dollars.

''All capital investments will bring additional financing streams and most will include external partners,'' says a city press release, with Invest Saint Paul Director Stacey Millett expecting the strong revitalization effort in selected areas to involve local residents and attract new businesses.

The four target neighborhoods -- Dayton's Bluff, Lower East Side, Frogtown and North End -- along with a few smaller focus areas, the writer notes, were chosen because of their concentration of vacant properties, nuisance crimes and economic needs. See the initiative fact sheet at www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/docs/ISPFactSheet.pdf . -- Star Tribune   8/8/2007

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

High Energy Costs Lead Intercultural Association to Build New ''Green'' Headquarters

''In the fall of 2005 we were hearing that natural gas prices were going to triple. We didn't want to be held hostage by energy costs,'' said the Rochester-based Intercultural Mutual Assistance Association (IMAA) Development Director Kristy Arend about her idea of building a new IMAA headquarters as completely ''green'' according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, a task entrusted to and performed by Yaggy Colby designers and AE Benike Construction.

While the new headquarters' $1.6 million price is slightly higher than it would be otherwise, its operation will be less expensive, notes Rochester Post-Bulletin freelance writer Karen Rorie, quoting Benike Construction Vice President Aaron Benike.

''Some things cost more on the front, but you save money over time,'' he pointed out. ''The sooner you start trying to build environmentally friendly, the less impact there is on cost.''

Leasing the building from the company for now, IMAA will hold an open house this fall, to show green solution advantages and launch a fundraising campaign for its purchase.

The building, the writer reports, features a geo-thermal system with ground water for heating and cooling, and extensive insulation and low-e window glazing to minimize heat accumulation and loss.

The large exterior windows allow sufficient natural light and can be open for fresh air, while interior wall and door windows disperse the light inside, cutting electricity use.

The landscaped area around the building includes two rainwater retention ponds, which drain slowly, reducing street flooding after storms.

Located on a bus line and near hiking trails, the building allows easy accessibility without the car, offering bike racks and a shower for those who bike to work.

In addition, the builders used materials manufactured within a 500-mile radius, recycled whenever possible -- all items and solutions oriented toward long-term savings on operational and energy costs.

Director Arend said, ''I haven't even turned on the overhead light in my office yet.'' -- Post-Bulletin   7/14/2007

Resource(s): www.postbulletin.com/

Editorial Urges Support for Working Group to Guide Minnesota's Growth in Coming Decades

Urging bipartisan support for legislation to create a broad-based Sustainable Growth Working Group, which would set sensible guidelines for Minnesota's growth and public investments in decades ahead, a Twin Cities Star Tribune editorial tells readers that no state can afford to continue ''policies that encourage the kind of wasteful, willy-nilly growth'' of the postwar (1945-2001) era and exemplifies the wastefulness with current incentives for ''new schools on 40-acre sites at the edge of town.''

To put the issue in its fiscal, economic, social and environmental context, the editorial poses several simple questions.

''Do state or local officials consider the full cost of that practice?'' it asks. ''What about all the added driving, gasoline consumption, carbon emissions and time pressures on family life? What about new roads and sewers required to serve not only the school but the slew of houses that that will spring up around it? What about the cost of abandoning old downtown sites and the impact on old neighborhoods? What about kids whose health and exercise habits had benefited by walking to school but who now must be driven? Does it always make sense to discard the old and break new ground?''

With a dozen states shunning the practice of ignoring wider costs and ''pursuing a sustainable-spending model'' -- Massachusetts and Utah under Republican governors, and Arizona and Maryland under Democrats, the editorial expects Minnesota to follow their lead.

Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's ''impressive initiative on renewable fuels should be a first step toward both parties embracing more rational, more intentional spending on growth in Minnesota,'' the editorial concludes. ''The future belongs to those places best able to escape old thinking by finding smarter ways to invest in truly sustainable development.'' -- Star Tribune   4/19/2007

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Editorial: Plan for Eight-Level Parking Ramp Underscores Cultural Transportation Crisis

Glad of the steady expansion of Mayo Clinic's downtown Rochester campus, currently employing more than 30,000 people, the Rochester Post-Bulletin doesn't dispute the clinic's need for a new eight-level parking ramp downtown, but considers it ''another indication that our city -- and our nation, for that matter -- are speeding headlong toward a crisis where personal transportation is concerned,'' instead of focusing more on transit and smart growth.

Since 1960, the number of vehicles in this country has increased from 74 million to 243 million, exceeding the number of licensed drivers each year since the mid-1970s, the daily says, surprised neither about the lack of employee parking in many cities nor about the growing public alarm over snarled traffic, pockmarked roads, shaky bridges and an ever-thinner ozone layer.

''We've evolved into a culture that boldly proclaims its transportation independence by driving pretty much everywhere,'' the daily observes. ''We drive to and from work. We drive to school. We drive to the park so we can walk our dogs. We drive eight blocks to get a malt or a cup of gourmet coffee. All the while, we're clogging the roads, spewing carbon monoxide into the air, and growing second and third chins brought about by lack of exercise.''

Finding reason for optimism in recent Rochester bus and carpool ridership increases, the daily calls for more local, state and federal steps to put high-speed rail ''on the fast track,'' to promote mixed-use development and to expand and improve bus and rail systems, while making them more accessible and affordable.

''We can't keep building parking ramps, adding a fifth and sixth lane to highways, and subjecting our precious environment to more polluting abuse forever,'' the daily concludes. ''We need to start paying attention to what faces us down the road.'' -- Post-Bulletin   4/13/2007

Resource(s): www.postbulletin.com/

Half-Cent Twin Cities Sales Tax Increase Proposed to Accelerate Work on Region's Transit Projects

Encouraged by decisive voter approval of a 2006 constitutional amendment to invest 40 percent of vehicle sales taxes in transit, a measure expected to provide $100 million a year for the 30-mile Northstar commuter rail line from Minneapolis to Big Lake and for Twin Cities' Central Corridor light rail, state Democratic lawmakers seek a seven-county Metro area vote on a half-cent sales tax increase, which would raise $226 million in 2009 and $243 million annually by 2011, all of it or at least half dedicated to transit.

The money, reports Star Tribune writer Laurie Blake, would allow metro officials to accelerate work on the Southwest Corridor light rail between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie, and the Red Rock and the Rush Line commuter rail from St. Paul to Hastings and Hinckley, respectively. Otherwise, these three projects would have to wait until after 2014.

''The need is so great,'' pointed out Representative Frank Hornstein, ''and without some kind of dedicated fund, in this case the sales tax, it's going to be difficult to meet all the transit needs.''

Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty opposes new taxes, and a sales-tax increase for transit in particular, noted his spokesman Brian McClung, because it's not a transportation user tax and because such an increase in some areas only would complicate and perhaps make the tax system unfair.

Senator Dan Larson, whose bill would split the new sales tax revenue between transit and roads, hopes the governor will reconsider his stance.

Pointing out that being stuck in congestion would cost Metro residents more in los time and money than the half-cent higher sales tax, he stressed, ''I don't take lightly people having to pay taxes, but public infrastructure isn't free.'' -- Star Tribune   3/11/2007

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

North Woods Tracts at Risk as Industry Landholder Says Holdings Are More Valuable for Development Than Logging

Those ''dismayed by the real estate bonanza that has so radically transformed Minnesota's north woods over the past decade'' can't expect it to end soon, writes Minneapolis City Pages staff, startled by a little-noted Potlatch Corporation plan to sell some 120,000 acres in northern Minnesota as much more valuable for development than for logging and recreational public use.

Nature Conservancy assistant state director Tom Landweher is concerned about the size of the projected sale, saying, ''There are roughly a million acres of forest land owned by industrial companies like Potlatch (in Minnesota), so this represents about 10 percent of that.''

He predicts that the sale will include many of the tracts closest to public land because they can ensure the highest profit.

''Who wouldn't want their ten acres adjacent to a state forests?'' asks City Pages staff rhetorically, noting that development in the middle of public lands usually, and unfortunately, degrades their quality.

With some of the company's tracts likely to cost $2,000 per acre or more, director Landweher doubts the state or a nonprofit group like the conservancy can afford to save many of them, especially since some local governments would object, eager to keep as much land as possible on the tax rolls.

''It used to be the only type of land people bought in northern Minnesota was waterfront,'' he observes. ''Now people are satisfied with 10 acres in the middle of nowhere. It's one of the big cultural changes in the last 15 years.'' -- City Pages   1/15/2007

Resource(s): http://citypages.com/

Land Use and Effect on Minnesota's Waterways Focus of State River Summit

Although the more than 200 attendees of the Minnesota River Summit in New Ulm focused mostly on the river's hydrology and the need to protect it both from rural pollutants and sprawl-borne runoff, they also voiced concerns about growing water use for ethanol production and about the industry's potential impact on the environment.

Most were outspoken in support for biofuels, reports Willmar West Central Tribune writer Tom Cherveny, but didn't want ''to see corn planted on marginal and conservation lands'' as they seek ways to reduce the flow of nutrients to the river and minimize the ''flash,'' or fast changes in water level due to drainage.

Pointing out that the expansion of impervious surfaces and storm sewer systems is also harming the river, many summit participants called for measures to save the river bluffs from residential encroachment.

In this context, many complained about the increased ''disconnect'' between what people say and what they do, with polls showing massive support for the river cleanup, but individual practices and willingness to pay for it lagging behind. -- West Central Tribune   1/12/2007

Resource(s): www.wctrib.com/

Upcoming Public Planning Sessions Could Help Determine Route of Light-Rail Line from Eden Prairie to Minneapolis

Discussed in southwest Hennepin County since the 1980s, a light-rail line from Eden Prairie through Minnetonka, Hopkins and St. Louis Park some 15 miles to downtown Minneapolis won't be built before 2014, yet detailed planning is under way, with Eden Prairie Mayor Nancy Tyra-Lukens saying her city is pretty developed and, in contrast to some that seek transit-oriented development, is awaiting ''development-oriented transit.''

Late next month, reports Minneapolis-St.Paul StarTribune writer Jenna Ross, the Southwest Transitway's Policy Advisory Committee will vote on the preferred light-rail route, choosing from the three recently recommended by the Technical Advisory Committee while considering community input on route variants and their prospective local effects.

Eden Prairie officials would like the line to avoid residential neighborhoods and go through the city's 1,000-acre ''golden triangle'' business park, a route also favored in Minnetonka, since it would pass by its Opus Northwest headquarters. The problem is, observes county engineering and transit planning manager Joe Gladke, that the business area route would be more expensive.

Meantime in Hopkins, where either route would follow the same corridor, officials are studying how station locations would affect traffic and local businesses, and in St. Louis Park they would prefer the line to run through Uptown Minneapolis as more convenient for local residents.

Encouraging residents to increase their involvement in the decision-making process, the writer notes officials invite them to another three local planning sessions in the coming weeks. -- StarTribune   10/10/2006

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

St. Louis Park's High-Density Town Center Measures Successes, Looks for Improvements

Helped by substantial public investment to demonstrate life without the usual ''acres of asphalt,'' St. Louis Park's $150-million high-density Excelsior & Grand town center, built three years ago on 15 acres some four miles southwest of central Minneapolis, has won several design awards, and city leaders from across the region frequently tour the pedestrian-friendly center to take its smart-growth lessons home, but it ''still has a few bugs to work out,'' reports Twin Cities Star Tribune writer David Peterson, while the increased developer interest in adjacent blocks makes residents worry about the prospects of too much density and traffic congestion.

''It was just this 'burb' -- and now it's a 'burb with a heart.' For us, it's fabulous and we go there all the time,'' says local real estate broker Tom Stutzman. ''But now that I see five stories leading to 10 stories, in the eyes of developers anyway, I have some regrets.''

Some, the writer notes, wish the center's new Trader Joe's had more parking, unused to nearby ramps or unaware they are free; and many trees along sidewalks are dying, hurt perhaps by sidewalk deicing chemicals, while those doing well block costly merchant signs.

''It's urban density meets suburban expectations,'' comments TOLD Development Co. asset manager Garry Wilson, he and other company officials calling their project's residential segment already ''stellar,'' with all 335 apartments occupied, only 12 of the 210 condos still available and more under construction.

New condo owner Geri Schiavino, who cut her car use in half in the past two months, says ''I take the bus, and when friends come over, we walk to coffee shops or dinner. Everything's right here.''

The project's consultant, Minnetonka Councilman Terry Schneider, agrees that the town center isn't perfect, but points out that compared to what the area was 10 or 15 years earlier ''the difference is huge,'' adding, ''The city took big risks and has achieved major goals.''

Former Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale stresses the town center's importance also as a model. ''We felt that if we could get just one of these built,'' he says, ''we could change the whole development pattern in this region.'' -- Star Tribune   7/8/2006

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Culling the Cul-de-Sacs: Planners Allowing Fewer Dead-Ends Due to Road Maintenance Costs, Traffic Backlogs

Cul-de-sacs, ''icons of suburban life,'' are still favored by a quarter to a half of home buyers, often ready to pay more for such location, a preference attested to by at least two polls, but in Oregon, anticipating smart-growth ideas three decades ago, reports Twin Cities Star Tribune writer Darlene Prois, 90 percent of municipalities have ordinances that limit new cul-de-sacs, and the trend is growing in Minnesota and nationwide due to concerns over subdivision entrance traffic backlogs, road maintenance costs, neighborhood insularity.

City councils in St. Cloud, Northfield and other communities usually deny cul-de-sacs unless physically necessary. ''All things being equal, we try to minimize them when we can,'' says Blaine community development director Bryan Schafer. ''But the market likes them, and people like living on them. Developers like them because they can get more for them. It's a balance.''

But Builders Association of the Twin Cities vice-president Michael Noonan accuses planners of ''a philosophical mind-set that's out of step with the market'' and lauds cul-de-sacs' neighborliness. A resident of one himself, he says, ''It's private, we feel comfortable with our kids playing in both the front and back yards, and we have strong relationships with our neighbors. It's a wonderful environment.''

On the other side, St. Cloud planning director Matt Glaesman rejects developer complaints about ''taking away a more marketable property,'' asking, ''Does that impact outweigh the public costs?''

And in Minnesota, these may be ruinous just for snow removal, with Public Works Department maintenance supervisor Joe Imholte stressing, ''We can plow one-and-one-half to two miles further down the road in the same time (it takes) to clean a cul-de-sac.''

Though the Metropolitan Council leaves the choice to localities, it prefers interconnected neighborhoods with ''multiple routes to a place'' and believes in the social advantages of minimizing cul-de-sacs. ''You may get to know the neighbors in your cul-de-sac,'' points out council planning analyst John Kari, ''but you don't get to know your broader neighborhood.'' -- Star Tribune   7/5/2006

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Commuting Cost Database Could Help Home Buyers Find True Cost of Living in Suburbs

Increasingly troubled by record gas prices, people who bought bigger or cheaper houses in the outer-ring suburbs despite long commutes to Twin Cities' jobs are having second thoughts about choices they made, with a Brookings Institution-commissioned regional study finding large disparities in household transportation costs, including the need for more cars, note Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune writers David Peterson and Laurie Blake, reporting that some organizations try to make prospective buyers aware of related commuting costs and that the area ''may become ground zero in a national movement to help homeowners understand the true cost of home ownership.''

The industry also sees the market change. ''The old maxim, 'Drive till we can afford it,' may be softening,'' admits Builders Association of the Twin Cities Vice President Michael Noonan. ''The rising cost of gas is adding a dimension that people didn't used to consider as carefully as they do today.''

According to the regional study, a typical family in the central Twin Cities neighborhoods of Seward and Longfellow spends $446 a month on transportation, but that cost goes up to $715 in Fridley just six miles north, and to $941 in Farmington about 25 miles south. Concerned that now ''people are flying blind,'' Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology President Scott Bernstein got help from Brookings and the local McKnight Foundation to create a location-related commuting cost database, with Minneapolis officials expecting to work with real estate agents to attach those numbers to home sale prices.

''It's as important a cost factor as the mortgage payments,'' points out city economic development director Mike Christensen. ''Yet we believe people don't really price it out.'' -- Star Tribune   4/30/2006

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Minneapolis' Hiawatha Light Rail Line Proves to Be Powerful Catalyst for Commercial and Residential Development

Built in just four years, the 12-mile Hiawatha Light Rail Transit (LRT) line from downtown Minneapolis south to the Mall of America has fully justified its $715.3 million cost in the first year of full operation, with 78 million passengers in 2005 exceeding projections by 58 percent and some 5,400 new housing units in the corridor completed or under construction, plus another 7,000 expected within the next two years -- a total of about 80 percent higher than initially projected for 2020.

''We know that some of this growth would've happened without LRT, but the line has without a doubt been a powerful catalyst for both commercial and residential development,'' said Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell. ''LRT supports the growth by offering people an easy connection between where they live, work and shop. And every car we keep off the region's roads helps to ease traffic congestion.'' The line brought in numerous retail stores, restaurants and coffee shops, along with several corporate headquarters; spurred small business revenues; and boosted nearby property values by 83 percent, or 22 percent higher than in the city as a whole.

''Before the advent of light rail, the Hiawatha corridor in south Minneapolis had been stagnant for some time, dominated by vacant or underutilized industrial land,'' observed Longfellow Community Council executive director Katie Hatt. ''Now we're seeing creative development proposals that will increase the diversity of housing types in the neighborhoods and connect services and jobs to housing.''

Others are equally upbeat. ''The Hiawatha is a wonderful, wonderful thing for downtown,'' exclaimed Old Chicago general manager Jim Burroughs, pointing that restaurant patrons ''don't have to fight traffic, they don't have to pay $25 or $30 to park, and they don't have to worry about driving home.''

And Maxfield Research senior analyst Matt Mullins stressed that major ''public investments like the Hiawatha create opportunities for community building,'' increase private property values and ''help curb sprawl.''

Expecting similar transit-oriented development (TOD) nationwide to double by 2025, he added: ''Aging baby boomers, immigrants and younger adults prefer denser, more urban environments with convenient access to goods and services. They prefer to use public transit and other alternatives, rather than depending on automobiles.'' -- Metropolitan Council   3/6/2006

Resource(s): www.metrocouncil.org/

Regional Cooperation Key to Minneapolis Mayor Rybak's Successes

Having made affordable housing the top goal of his strategy to ''close the gap'' between haves and have-nots at the onset of his first term in 2002, Minneapolis Democratic Mayor R.T. Rybak, a Smart Growth and regionalism advocate easily reelected last November, has gradually focused the city on further residential and job expansion, telling the California-based Planning Report, ''We've created close to 3,000 affordable housing units in Minneapolis since I became mayor and placed abut 10,000 hard-to-employ people in jobs.''

His next priority, he told the magazine in an extensive interview, is to ''put Minneapolis once again in the forefront of great urban planning'' and regional cooperation, in a place the city held from the 1960s through the 1980s, its ''pioneering tax-base sharing strategies called the Fiscal Disparities Act'' having helped compensate communities with low property tax revenue.

Disappointed that a strong regionalist, Independent Governor Jesse Ventura, was replaced three years ago by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, a suburban politician who had ''very little understanding or appreciation'' of urban challenges, didn't get many city votes, and ''ripped the soul out of much of the regional structure,'' Mayor Rybak helped form a regional coalition of 52 mayors with a focus on affordable housing and transportation planning. This shows, he believes, ''that while the state government of Minnesota is moving in the wrong direction on regional planning,'' local governments understand and are acting to meet affordable housing and transit needs.

Crediting his fellow mayors with great progress on inclusionary zoning and other measures, he said they saw them as assets. ''Instead of saying, 'Here, take your affordable housing' like you tell your kid to take his medicine, we talked about the need to have a balanced economy and housing for the workforce,'' he observed, noting however that ''ultimately it is about a society opening its arms wider,'' and that along with other mayors, he has ''found great partners in progressive faith communities who help push some of these suburban communities to open their arms.''

Similar cooperation is necessary for transit expansion, he continued, calling Minneapolis's first light-rail line ''a colossal success,'' promising to help new St. Paul Democratic Mayor Chris Coleman lobby for a light rail extension to his city, and emphasizing the mayoral coalition's readiness to seek a regional sales tax to fund transit.

''I imagine that as the governor gets into a reelection battle and sees that the gridlock on the road has become a more political issue,'' Mayor Rybak said, ''he will turn around just as so many mayors already have.'' -- The Planning Report   3/6/2006

Resource(s): www.planningreport.com/

Redevelopment Coming in All Shapes and Sizes as Minneapolis Works on Infill Projects, Brownfield Cleanup

Step by step, Minneapolis is diversifying and expanding redevelopment, with Lund Fund Holdings advancing plans for an almost full-block retail project in the downtown Harmon Place Historic District, once an automotive production and sale hub, and the Master Development Group expecting to buy a nearly two-acre, recently cleaned-up brownfield in the North Washington Jobs Park and Warehouse District area for a ''funky collection'' of creative companies, including advertising agencies, performing arts groups and architectural studios.

Anchored by its grocery store, already under construction, reports Minneapolis Downtown Journal writer Jeremy Stratton, the Lund project will include two renovated buildings, with a pharmacy and several small stores, and a new yet architecturally similar infill between them, with a restaurant and a ''pocket park'' on part of the nearby parking lot.

While it negotiates the Warehouse District's brownfield purchase, the Master group, reports Downtown Journal writer Sarah McKenzie, is also planning a mixed-use conversion of a six-story, mostly vacant commercial building a little farther north near the Mississippi River.

The building's current tenant, Penco Graphic Supply Inc., will remain on the ground floor, while the second, third and fourth floors will be renovated for offices and studios, and the two top floors for 24 live-work lofts, starting at $165,000. -- Downtown Journal   1/9/2006

Resource(s): www.skywaynews.net/

Final Segment of Twin Cities' Hiawatha Light-Rail Line Opens Ahead of Schedule

As the Metropolitan Council and Metro Transit promised, the four-mile final segment of the 12-mile Hiawatha light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis, the international airport and Mall of America opened on budget and ahead of schedule December 4, an organizational feat Minnesota Lieutenant Governor and Transportation Secretary Carol Molnau praised at a Bloomington Central station ceremony as ''a nice holiday present'' for air travelers, shoppers and all residents.

Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell called the $715 million line the product of a quarter-century of dreams, debates and plans, stressing, ''Ridership is nearly 100 percent higher than what we anticipated and projected.''

This light-rail popularity, further confirmed by crowds of excited passengers during the full line's inauguration weekend, reports Star Tribune writer Laurie Blake, prompted its key longtime advocate, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, to note that perhaps new Minnesota educational requirements should include a ''geography grad standard for people who think this is the train to nowhere.'' -- Star Tribune   12/1/2005

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Ramsey Readies for Twin Cities Growth With 350-Acre Town Center Project

Once mostly rural and recently a fast-growing Twin Cities bedroom community, Ramsey -- about 20 miles north -- is ready for more newcomers with its smart growth vision, embodied in the 350-acre pedestrian-friendly Town Center project under construction, one of the Metropolitan Council's designated ''opportunity sites'' and the winner of the 2005 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Award for Regional and Urban Design.

''About three or four years ago, we knew growth was going to occur, and we started slowly,'' said Mayor Thomas Gamec. ''We thought about what employees we need, what police and fire, of all the services we'd need to handle the growth.''

Consequently, reports Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Jason Amundsen, Ramsey Town Center will be the city's focal point, ''a hub for transit and community life,'' offering perhaps 3,000 varied housing units -- a third of the city stock -- about 400,000 square feet of retail, and a first batch of offices, restaurants and parks.

Town Center will be linked with downtown Minneapolis initially by bus transit and later by the new Northstar commuter rail along the I-10 corridor. In the construction first-phase, the city will get its new 68,000-square-foot Municipal Center -- with city hall offices, administration and the police department -- and several stores and a restaurant.

The center, said BKV Group architect Ted Redmond, will feature ''a blend of traditional and contemporary components, face the main street and the new South Park, and sit ''on a fabric of green space,'' while internal design flexibility will allow its vertical expansion in the future. -- Star Tribune   9/16/2005

Resource(s): http://prnewswire.com/ ; www.startribune.com/

Sauk Centre Smart Growth Group Seeks Traffic Impact Study, Plans Education Campaign in Advance of Possible Wal-Mart Supercenter

The possibility of a 161,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to the small Sauk Centre community, some 100 miles northwest of Twin Cities, has its specially formed Citizens for Smart Growth up in arms, with the group urging the City Council to require a traffic impact study for any retail store over 50,000 square feet and readying an educational campaign about Wal-Mart's economic impact, especially on Main Street businesses and their employees.

The group's statement, reports Sauk Centre Herald writer Bryan Zollman, cites studies showing that Wal-Mart is ''a money drain'' on the local economy, leaving in the community just 15 cents of each dollar taken by the company's stores.

Writing in the Herald on the group's behalf, Christine Brinkman clearly sees the risks and adds other troubling predictions and questions. Wal-Mart will bring in 150 ''part-time poverty wage jobs,'' she writes, but traffic ''will increase on Highway 71 by thousands of cars per day, adding to congestion, road repairs and city costs;'' local businesses ''unable to compete will close their doors'' and ''will let go their six, 10 or 20 employees;'' downtown property values and taxes ''from those businesses and empty buildings will decrease,'' additional services will cost additional money and ''residential taxes will go up.''

Noting that Wal-Mart owners ''made a $10 billion profit last year,'' she asks, ''Without our businessmen and women, who will support your Lion's Pancake breakfast, Sinclair Lewis Days, Graduation Lock-In Party, Punkin's n Monkeys, church benefits, golf outings, hospital fund drives? Who will volunteer?''

Summing it all up, she cautions readers: ''Rather than the selection, service and unique products currently offered in Sauk Centre, we will have Wal-Mart product and service, low value, poor quality and no customer service.'' She does not expect everyone ''to hate and refuse to shop in Wal-Mart,'' but she stresses, ''Cities our size cannot sustain this kind of crippling competition and keep the small town qualities we have come to enjoy.'' -- Sauk Centre Herald   6/7/2005

Resource(s): www.saukherald.com/

Metropolitan Council Awards $325,000 for Affordable Housing Initiatives in Twin Cities Region

Under its Livable Communities program, the Twin Cities region's Metropolitan Council awarded $325,000 in grants to the Two Rivers Community Land Trust and the Community Land Trust for their separate affordable-housing initiatives in the metro's eastern and western areas, bringing this year's total of such funding, in partnership with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) and the Family Housing Fund, to more than $5.4 million.

''These housing grants show just how much you can accomplish when you're working together as partners and using the power of creative thinking,'' said Council Chairman Peter Bell.

Both trusts will use the grants to acquire, rehabilitate and sell a total of 12 homes to families with 60 to 80 percent of the metro area's median income, or $46,600 to $61,600 for a family of four. The trusts will own the parcels, selling only the homes at prices reflecting their higher appraised values due to rehabilitation.

Evaluating requests for affordable housing grants, said Chairman Bell, officials also consider ''opportunities to invest in and preserve existing housing, increase home ownership among under-served populations, leverage additional resources and enlist community support.''   5/25/2005

Resource(s): http://metrocouncil.org/index.htm

Boom in Multifamily Housing Is Good News for Twin Cities

Lofts, condos and apartments are ''popping up like flowers in spring'' throughout the seven-county Twin Cities region, and once developers begin to clear any urban site for new construction, half of the planned units are usually gone within a month, reports the Metropolitan Council in its recent on-line Directions newsletter, counting a total of 19,932 residential permits in 2004, with multifamily permits 3.5 points up to 32.6 percent since the previous year and more than doubled since 1994.

The number excludes townhouses, which the U.S. Department of Commerce counts as multifamily housing, but which in a separate council count stood at 20 percent of the total in 2003.

Calling the popularity of multifamily housing great news, Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell said, ''It means the region is redeveloping in areas that already have great transportation options, sewer infrastructure and services nearby. That translates into reduced travel times, lower costs for sewer infrastructure, preservation of open space and slower growth on the region's edges.''

The Twin Cities led the region in multifamily housing, making it 85 percent of their 3,414 new units in 2004. Experts expect the trend to continue. ''I don't see an end to the demand for condominium-style living,'' said St. Paul Association of Realtors President James Reiter. ''This is an option that allows people who have been homeowners for 25 or 30 years to be released from all the work that comes with home ownership. And there are some pretty good deals out there for younger people who can't afford to buy a single-family home in this market.'' -- Directions   4/12/2005

Resource(s): www.metrocouncil.org/

City of Ramsey Sets Sites on Smart Growth: New Mixed-Use Town Center Could Be Ready in 2011

Expecting its population of 20,000 to triple by 2015 and lifestyle changes to boost market demand for smart growth, Ramsey -- some 20 miles northwest of central Minneapolis -- is embarking on construction of the 322-acre, mixed-use and high-density Town Center, which will offer 2,300 varied housing units in the $190,000-$500,00 price range, 700,000 square feet of retail, 460,000 square feet of offices and 26 acres of plazas, parks, trails and open space, along with a transit center likely to serve the Northstar Commuter Rail in the future.

Slated for completion in six to eight years, reports Star Tribune writer Sarah Mc Cann, the Town Center will have a 30-acre core with City Hall, the police station, restaurants, a movie theater, a Winter Garden and possibly a performing arts hub.

In addition to the PACT charter school, which began classes last fall, the new urban neighborhood will also provide residents with medical service, community and fitness centers, and an ice arena.

Ramsey Town Center LLC designers plan gardens and gazebos throughout all public spaces, with community parks, playgrounds and playing fields mixed into neighborhoods and storm water managed through a series of streams, ponds and fountains.

Projected to pour $3.5 million in annual taxes into Ramsey's general fund and reach a total value of $1.1 billion, the development is made possible by the city's contribution of $32 million for infrastructure, public facilities and regional improvements, with Anoka County promising $4.2 million for roads.

Since 2002, the writer reports, the Metropolitan Council has awarded the Ramsey Town Center three Livable Community Demonstration grants, totaling more than $3.3 million, and local officials count on additional support from the state and other sources. -- Star Tribune   3/16/2005

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Developers Use Tax-Increment Financing to Meet High Demand for Downtown Housing in Minneapolis Suburb of St. Louis Park

In another sign of growing demand for varied housing in the Twin Cities metro area, developers are building or planning a total of about 1,500 condos, town houses and other flats in the suburb of St. Louis Park, some four miles southeast of downtown Minneapolis, banking on young professionals ready to exchange rentals for owned units and on empty nesters eager to live near urban attractions.

After downtown Minneapolis, with more than 6,000 condos in the pipeline, reports Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal writer Sarah McKenzie, St. Louis Park is the second most sought-after location by residential builders and their customers.

''It's a hot market,'' confirms St. Louis Park Mayor Jeff Jacobs, crediting its success both to proximity of big city amenities, and to the local redevelopment push, evidenced by the mixed-use Excelsior & Grand project.

Spurred by a $3 million Metropolitan Council grant and $27 million in local tax-increment financing (TIF), the redevelopment will pay off handsomely, says St. Louis Park City Manager Tom Harmening, estimating that the property's original value of less than $15 million will eventually reach at least $150 million.

Since TIF deals frequently draw criticism in other Twin Cities areas, the writer notes, Mayor Jacobs stresses that city officials scrutinize each project to make sure it absolutely needs public financing and that neighborhood leaders involved in the process generally support a TIF use.

Master Development Group vice president and director Charlie Nestor, who in a move to convert an old city school into condos secured $400,000 in Hennepin County remediation funds for asbestos removal from the building, calls St. Louis Park officials ''very proactive'' in keeping their city vital. But, he adds, they also are ''reticent'' about pledging taxpayers dollars for a project until the need is well documented. -- Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal   3/11/2005

Resource(s): http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/

Minneapolis Reports Strong Demand for Service on 6-Month-Old Hiawatha Light-Rail Line

In the first six months of the 12-mile Hiawatha light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis south to Forth Snelling, the international airport, Bloomington and Mall of America -- its eight-mile and four-mile segments opened in late June and early December, respectively -- Metro Transit recorded 2.9 million boardings, 106 percent more than projected before construction.

Strong demand for service to the latter three destinations, combined with two days of free rides to celebrate the line completion, brought December boardings to a monthly record of 600,300 -- an average of 19,200 per weekday, just 100 fewer than projected for mid-2005.

''Our ridership target, set before construction began, was to reach 19,300 rides per weekday by the middle of 2005,'' said Metro Transit General Manager Brian Lamb. ''In our first month of extended service we already are approaching that goal.''

According to the Metropolitan Council Directions Newsletter, the ridership figure reflects ''a sampling of at least 25 percent of trips,'' with boardings counted at each station regardless of how customers reached the platform. This, the newsletter specifies, included customers using park-and-ride lots, transferring from buses and walking up or being dropped off at rail stations. -- Directions   1/31/2005

Resource(s): www.metrocouncil.org/

National Real Estate Survey Reports That Strong Market Preference Is Driving Industry Toward Smart Growth

Although Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's administration purged ''the term 'smart growth' from metropolitan planning documents, the concept has gone quickly mainstream,'' observes a Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial, quoting National Association of Realtors official Joe Molinaro, who said, ''More and more, smart growth is about real estate market preferences and less and less about government regulations. Market preference, not government policy, is driving the industry toward smart growth.''

That's a clear conclusion of the association's recent national random survey, which found 86 percent of respondents preferring development in existing communities, not in the countryside, and 50 percent favoring transit over new roads, which won only 18-percent support. Also, prospective buyers of new homes in the next few years, by a 61-to-39-percent margin, lean toward mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented neighborhoods certain to reduce their car dependency.

''In the coming years,'' the editorial says, ''higher gasoline prices, difficult foreign entanglements and health concerns are likely to further drive the housing market and government transportation policy toward smart growth -- even if that's not what you want to call it.'' -- Star Tribune   11/2/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Strong Ridership Expected for New Hiawatha Light-Rail Extensions

Opened in late June, the 8-mile and 12-station initial section of the $713-million Hiawatha light-rail line attracted 96 percent more passengers than projected in the first three months, recording almost 1.4 million rides between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling, and officials expect equally strong ridership for its 4-mile and 5-station end section, running further south to the airport, Bloomington and Mall of America, especially since it will open a month ahead of schedule, just in time for the busy holiday travel and shopping season.

Metro Transit General Manager Brian Lamb invites the public to the grand opening on Saturday, December 4, after which free rail and bus rides will likely be extended to the next day.

According to Metropolitan Council Directions newsletter, the section's opening will also usher in restructured bus service, with buses slated to be at stations about the same time as trains.

''Integrating bus and rail,'' the newsletter says, ''is designed to improve the reliability, speed and convenience of transit service to work, shopping and other destinations.'' It notes that 18 of 24 light-rail cars have already arrived and the rest is on the way. -- Metropolitan Council   10/7/2004

Resource(s): www.metrocouncil.org/index.htm

St. Paul Neighborhood Asks for Mixed-Use and Gets a Supermarket

In a rare reversal of the ''not-in-my-backyard,'' NIMBY protest habit that stifles many projects as too dense or otherwise bad for local residents, two St. Paul neighborhood groups wished the City Council had agreed with them on a much more intensive and extensive redevelopment at the blighted southwest corner of the Lexington Parkway-University Avenue intersection, especially since its own document calls for denser ''transit-oriented development'' in the avenue's corridor.

The City Council, reports Pioneer Press writer Robert Ingrassia, voted 6-1 against appeals from the Lexington-Hamline Community Council and the University United group, both of which wanted it to rescind a zoning panel approval for Wellington Management's plan for the 8-acre corner site.

In the first step in the multi-phase plan, the Aldi discount grocery chain will replace a former shopping center with its one-story 15,000-square-foot store. The Aldi project, said Wellington Management president Steve Wellington, will help finance further-phase development, including restaurants and buildings with street-level commercial space and housing atop.

Despite ward Councilwoman Debbie Montgomery's confidence in the plan, neighborhood activists insisted that officials should have requested more details about further development before allowing the first phase, with the Lexington-Hamline representative saying, the Aldi project is ''not mixed use and it's not pedestrian friendly.'' -- Pioneer Press   10/7/2004

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

Smart Growth Policies Pay Dividends in Twin Cities

Having put Twin Cities on a ''smart-growth'' track in the late 1990s during the administration of Governor Jesse Ventura, previous Metropolitan Council chairman Ted Mondale and other officials often criticized by developers arguing that ''the market should be left to take care of itself'' now feel vindicated by the market, with many home buyers turning from high-maintenance suburban lots and long commutes to centrally located condos or multi-family housing near new light-rail and other transit lines, and with mixed-use development becoming increasingly popular.

''Smart growth bears fruit in Twin Cities,'' attests Finance and Commerce real estate writer Burt Gilyard, citing Mondale, now CEO of Nazca Inc. information technology and services company, who says ''(t)he market is taking over,'' because ''we shifted our policies somewhat ... didn't build a new airport down in Hastings ... put the Livable Communities Act in place ... (and) built the light-rail lines.''

His predecessor as Met Council chairman, Citistates Group president Curt Johnson, concurs. ''The critics of the council in the mid-to-late '90s were saying that the council was trying to create acts of social engineering,'' he tells the writer. ''It's more accurate to say that the council was forecasting the trends that are now evident in the market.''

These trends, he adds, reflect simple demographic realities such as the appearance of an aging and increasingly large ''baby-boomers'' group, with changed lifestyle preferences.

Still, distinguished University of Minnesota real estate chairman George Karvel cautions that many people will always opt for a big house, and adds, ''We won't know for 20 or 30 years whether the promise for development along light rail will be fulfilled or not.'' But he also observes, ''All growth has followed transportation; that's why the first cities that were founded were founded on river ways.'' -- Finance and Commerce   9/2/2004

Resource(s): www.finance-commerce.com/

Parking, Not Ridership, Emerges as Main Issue for Hiawatha Light Rail Line

Opened June 26, the eight-mile Hiawatha light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling continues to draw about twice as many riders as projected, but the lack of nearby parking space forces many of them to park on quiet narrow streets, especially around the 38th, 46th and 50th street stations, which antagonizes their residents, who often find their parking places taken up, worry about ever more commuter cars, emergency vehicle access and the coming winter, and staple curbside trees with signs reading, ''DON'T LIVE HERE? DON'T PARK HERE!!!!!!!''

Returning with three kids after a Twins game to his minivan parked on 29th Avenue S, just a short distance from the 38th Street station, Andover resident Steve Loahr ignored the signs, telling Star Tribune writer Chao Xiong that Metro Transit officials should think in advance about providing riders with sufficient parking space.

Officials respond, reports writer Laurie Blake, that they needed some eight weeks to see what daily parking patterns would emerge, and their mid-July license-plate survey found that most light-rail riders who park on residential streets live within two miles of the 38th, 46th and 50th street stations.

''They are not suburbanites coming way in from the hinterlands,'' says City Councilman Gary Schiff, ''they are neighbors.''

When the second part of Hiawatha light rail opens in December, the entire line will have 2,000-2,500 parking spaces, about half of the number offered by similar lines in other cities. The writer attributes the shortage to the city's ''quality of life'' decision against establishing park-and-ride lots in south Minneapolis, to its budget decision to save $10 million by ruling out a deck over the 550-space parking lot at Fort Snelling, and to a 20-year earlier decision to save land near transit stations for better use.

With a staff report on the light-rail parking space due by the month's end, city director of traffic and parking services Jon Wertjes expects council members and residents to start working on solutions soon after. -- Star Tribune   8/15/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Minneapolis' Hiawatha Light-Rail Line Debuts with 93,000 Fare-Paying Passengers

With some 93,000 fare-paying passengers during its first week, the eight-mile Hiawatha light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling, just northeast of the international airport, exceeded Metro Transit projections by almost 70 percent, meeting Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell's initial criteria for success.

But both the chairman and Metro Transit acting general manager Mark Fuhrmann remain cautious, reports Star Tribune writer Laurie Blake, quoting the former as saying, ''At this time next year, we'll know if we have a successful system,'' and the latter as explaining, ''It is premature to project long-term ridership trends from the first seven days of operations.''

Well-known light-rail opponent Randal O'Toole is less hesitant. Calling the official projections of 55,400 average weekly rides through the end of the year ''amazingly low,'' he says, ''It really doesn't do much good to have 93,000 rail riders if you have 93,000 fewer bus riders,'' a remark unwarranted by a bus service sampling in the first three days of the light rail. One way or another, he mentions the line's $715 million cost and doesn't expect the light rail ''will carry enough people to justify it.''

On the other hand, Transit for Livable Communities program director Barb Thoman comments, ''These strong ridership numbers show just how overdue this region is for transit improvements.''

Minnesota Twins operations vice president Matt Hoy is equally happy about the light-rail station in front of the Metrodome, where his baseball team played three home games with the Chicago White Sox that week. ''I see it being nothing but a benefit to us,'' he says, ''and to the fans coming down here.'' -- Star Tribune   7/7/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Minneapolis Residents Crowd Trains on New Hiawatha Light-Rail Line

About 95,000 Minneapolis residents enjoyed free rides on the new Hiawatha light rail over the last weekend in June, and once the downtown-airport line officially opened the next day, hundreds of commuters left their cars at home or switched from buses, crowding the trains especially during morning, lunch and evening hours.

Many walked to the stations and all queried by Star Tribune reporters found the light-rail rides much faster, cheaper and ''less stressful'' than their usual car or bus trips, notes the daily's writer Laurie Blake, summarizing their reactions as ''So far, so good.''

While drivers at some intersections ''seethed'' that coming trains trigger red lights for seven or more minutes, a situation city traffic operation engineer John Hotvet expects to remedy ''in the near future,'' the writer observes, light-rail passengers were upbeat.

''The light rail rocks!'' exclaimed city resident Irita Downs. ''I got to work in less than half of the time I usually do. One less car to crowd the downtown area.'' Heading for jury duty, resident Sergio Mojica, echoed the sentiment, saying, ''It's a beautiful thing. It's one of the greatest things that ever happened to this city.''

Downtown law firm employee Michael Blaes stressed, ''I'll be saving about $160 a month in parking fees. I'm going to put that money to good use.'' Ditto Brooklyn Park resident Jan Hubbard, coming home from the airport, ''I'm not going to miss taking a taxi downtown for $40, when now I can do it for 50 cents.'' -- Star Tribune   6/29/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Twin Cities Could See Return of Streetcars on Midtown Greenway

Having opposed an earlier Metropolitan Council idea to run buses on the Midtown Greenway -- a paved ''rails-to-trails'' pedestrian, jogging and biking route soon to be extended from three to five miles -- the Midtown Greenway Coalition wants to bring back Twin Cities streetcars along the route as the best link between the incoming eastside Hiawatha light-rail line and a proposed southwest one, with City Council member Gary Schiff backing the move because of ''a strong route, key destinations and significant population densities.''

With 13 of 16 neighborhoods needed for support of the $53 million proposal already aboard, Pioneer Press writer Gita Sitaramiah quotes Greenway Coalition streetcar committee chairman John DeWitt, who says early-1900s vintage streetcars on tracks over grass would fit the Greenway better than buses, and Seward Neighborhood Group activist Bernie Waibel, who cites a highly successful revival of streetcars in Portland, Oregon, and in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Other supporters point out that Greenway streetcars could spark pedestrian-friendly development in the corridor and eventually be replaced by light rail. -- Pioneer Press   4/6/2004

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

Editorial: Twin Cities' Transit a Victim of Inflexible Funding

Agreeing with David Strom of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota that the Twin Cities' transportation system is broken, Transit for Livable Communities program director Barb Thoman writes in The Star Tribune that contrary to his claims, the region's ''transportation problems -- congestion, lack of choices, high costs and environmental damage -- are a direct result of our outdated and inflexible funding system, a system that starves public transit.''

Strom's comparison of transit and road investment is ''simplistic and wrong,'' director Thoman points out, explaining that Twin Cities transit takes $300 million a year in capital and operational costs, but roads and subsidized parking require some $1.6 billion annually, not counting another $1.3 billion in related air pollution, gas consumption and global warming costs.

Even this doesn't tell the whole story, the writer notes, since the $300 million transit cost, in contrast to $1.6 billion for roads, includes vehicles and personnel salaries, while the collective costs of residents' car ownership, insurance and maintenance ''are about $10 billion annually, or about $9,200 per person.''

What's more, a new EPA study found that the Detroit, Pittsburgh and Buffalo areas, which had little population growth but spent billions of dollars on new roads between 1982 and 2000, experienced substantial congestion increases, with ''Detroit's delay per person quadrupled.'' And that, the writer stresses, is ''not an experiment any reasonable person should want to replicate in our region.'' -- The Star Tribune   3/18/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Active Living Study Will Compare Neighborhood Design and Resident Lifestyles to Track Health and Obesity Issues

As part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (New Jersey) $12.5 million Active Living Research project, the University of Minnesota is launching a first-of-a-kind comparative study of neighborhood design and resident lifestyle, with School of Public Health assistant professor Kathryn Schmitz saying local surroundings may account for 75 percent of a person's reason to be outdoors and walk rather than keeping inside or depend on a car.

Knowing whether ''trees are more important (to walkers) than street lights'' or short blocks than separation from cars, she notes, can help urban designers counter the ''very expensive'' problems of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases that plague the nation.

Researchers, reports Pioneer Press writer Karl J. Karlson, are starting with letters to randomly selected residents in 36 St. Paul and I-35W neighborhoods, almost all in Ramsey County, seeking 720 volunteers for one week this summer, who will get $75 for wearing a pager-size activity monitor and keeping an activity log.

The chosen neighborhoods, says College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture professor Ann Forsyth, represent a range of housing density, street pattern and amenities, with their large and detailed geographic information database already available.

The comparative analysis is likely to be completed next year. -- Pioneer Press   3/9/2004

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/

Editorial Rebuts Pro-Auto Taxpayer League Argument; Calls for More Transit to Relieve Congestion

The Twin Cities need more, not less, transit to reap greater road congestion relief benefits, stated a Minneapolis Star editorial, reversing a ''simplistic'' Taxpayers League argument that transit is meaningless for the area since a bus strike caused no catastrophic traffic snarls; blasting its call for use of transit money to build roads and help the poor buy cars; and citing a new EPA report that found better ''transportation and environmental performance'' among cities more reliant on transit and compact development and less on freeways than among those more dependent on cars.

Before the strike, the editorial pointed out on the strike's sixth day, metro area commuters took 260,000 transit rides a day, yet the so far ''normal'' road congestion is no sign of transit irrelevance, but ''a tribute to the ingenuity of Minnesotans to cope temporarily with a bad situation,'' with many bus passengers now riding with friends, walking or staying home, and many drivers staggering their trips to prevent gridlock.

''Adding more freeway lanes alone won't solve congestion,'' the editorial said. ''It didn't work for Los Angeles, Atlanta or Houston. It won't work here.''

A recent University of Minnesota study shows, the editorial observed, that the metro area would need a 71 percent road capacity increase to secure free traffic flow by 2020, which would mean expansion of its 1,608-mile network by another 1,150 miles of lanes at a cost of $20 billion, and eventually amount to ''more driving, more congestion and more pollution.''

Noting that a million more people will live in the region by 2025, the editorial again quoted from the EPA report: ''Some contend that the amount of roadway per person should have an impact on transportation performance, yet our data suggest no clear relationship.'' -- Minneapolis Star   3/9/2004

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Minneapolis-St. Paul Rides Bumpy Political Road to Smart Growth Achievement Award

The selection of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Council as the recipient of the EPA National Smart Growth Achievement Award in the Overall Excellence category contains ''layers of irony ... too deep to fully explore,'' observes a Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial, noting only that EPA Republican Administrator Michael Leavitt lauded the council for the 1996 Livable Communities program ''spearheaded'' by Democratic lawmakers and ''routinely ridiculed'' by conservative Republicans, and that Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's administration ''has banished 'smart growth' from its lexicon,'' while new Met Council Chairman Peter Bell ''acknowledged his dislike for the term,'' but ''to his credit, praised its principles.'' Thanks to the Livable Communities grants of over $100 million within eight years, which leveraged some $3.3 billion in private and other public investment, the editorial stresses, local communities built or rehabilitated 7,260 housing units occupied by owners and 1,911 rentals, created or retained 11,400 jobs, and reclaimed 94 acres of urban land. The editorial concludes, ''It's admirable that the Bush administration recognizes that the Livable Communities program is living up to its name. Call it 'smart growth' or not, the concept is, well, still pretty smart.'' -- Star-Tribune   11/28/2003

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Columnist Critical of Minneapolis' City-to-Airport Light-Rail Line

Blasting New Urbanists ''who do not like cars'' for forcing upon the public the Hiawatha light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis and the airport -- a project which ''might run upward of a billion dollars,'' but ''doesn't accomplish anything,'' because it was always intended as ''merely the first puzzle piece in a long process of behavioral change'' -- Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray writes that light rail would have made sense only for linking Minneapolis and St. Paul. Still, he is certain the Hiawatha line could be made useful by building a 40,000-seat outdoor ballpark in the middle of its lightly developed corridor. He teases his readers, ''You could be downtown on a fine summer evening, eating outdoors, with a couple of Twins tickets in your pocket. You pay your bill and walk a block or two or three to the baseball special stop. Get on board and get delivered to the ballpark. Same on the other end, where evil suburban people could park their Hummers out by the big mall.'' -- Pioneer Press   11/19/2003

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

New Long-Term Growth Management Plan Due in January for Twin Cities Region

Passed late last year by the Met Council under chairman Ted Mondale, the 107-page Blueprint 2030 for management of the seven-county area's growth from 2.7 to almost 3.7 million people within three decades, will be replaced in January with the 45-page 2030 Regional Development Framework drafted under chairman Peter Bell, appointed by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, the new name signaling greater flexibility in pursuit of many of the same key goals, says a member of both councils, Mary Hill Smith, while Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy program director Jim Erkel calls it ''de-Mondale-ization.'' Star Tribune writer David Peterson quotes him as saying that if council members are going to turn it ''into nothing more than a service bureau, they've lost their way.'' Noting that even market forces advance a key council goal of strengthening the metro core while discouraging sprawl, as shown by a new state demographer report that finds the highest home value increases in central cities and inner suburbs like New Brighton, director Erkel says, ''People are figuring out they'd rather spend less time on the road than live on the urban edge and fight that commute, knowing it's just going to get worse.'' New Brighton Mayor Steve Larson agrees that ''people are fed up with all that driving.'' In response to concerns about the council's attitude toward light rail, commuter rail and high-speed busways, Councilwoman Smith, herself a strong transit advocate, says members realize that with another million people expected in the region, there is no way ''you can put down enough cement lanes to meet that need'' and reality requires something else, which must however be ''cost-effective.'' Former chairman Mondale is unconcerned about ''de-Mondale-ization,'' the writer adds, referring to the ''Managing Metropolitan Growth: Reflection on the Twin Cities Experience'' report by Mondale and William Fulton, published last month by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. They write that the Pawlenty administration ''has defended much of the Met Council's work against attack, and has openly opposed two bills that would limit the Met Council's authority on land use matters'' and that chairman Bell stressed in a recent speech that policy changes will be ''evolutionary, not revolutionary.'' See http://www.brook.edu/es/urban/publications/200309_fulton.htm -- Star Tribune   10/16/2003

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Revised Twin Cities Growth Plan Shifts Focus to Water Supply Protection, Efficient Road Use

Since Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty thought that the previous Met Council had grown ''too big for its britches,'' reports Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried, his council focused its 2030 Regional Development Framework -- slated for a series of public hearings next month and adoption in January -- ''more narrowly on the agency's legislatively mandated planning for transportation, wastewater collection and treatment, airports and parks and open space.'' What hasn't changed, she writes, is the agency move ''away from envisioning growth in concentric circles to encouraging it along transportation corridors,'' and plans to absorb 30 percent of new growth ''through (urban) redevelopment.'' What has changed is a stronger emphasis on water supply protection and on efficient road use to reduce congestion, a transportation strategy less related to previously central land use policy. The main change, the writer finds, affects permanent preservation of rural areas, with the council seeking to prevent land subdivision into large lots that would make efficient development difficult in the future, but stressing that ''communities must determine how best to use this land.'' This also reflects the new council's readiness to give municipalities more autonomy and local control, with its public affairs director Steve Dornfield saying the framework doesn't want to look ''awfully prescriptive.'' -- Pioneer Press   10/15/2003

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

Housing Forum Speakers Offer Differing Views on Smart Growth's Current Direction

Inner city well-being depends on high density, agreed two urban planning experts at the University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs' monthly housing forum, but they differed on the current direction of smart growth. The nonprofit Great Cities Alliance's founder, architect-author Steve Belmont, argued that bringing back the middle class to cities should be the first priority; that efforts to build low-cost, low-density city housing result in new pockets of poverty and crime; and that smart growth pushes a ''suburb-centric agenda'' appropriate only ''once the land at the core reaches a state of optimal utilization.'' Seeing the ''grossly underutilized'' land ''at the heart of the metropolis'' at the root of its transportation crisis, he blamed the Metropolitan Council's suburb-focused smart growth agenda on Ted Mondale and his ''ideological and political compatibility'' with core city political leaders who ''resist meaningful change.'' In response, reports Minnesota Daily campus writer Luke Engan, the director of Public Affairs Urban and Regional Planning Program at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Edward Goetz, stressed that the focus on urban density shouldn't preclude transit-oriented development in the suburbs and that smart growth advocates ''believe that there are real costs to sprawl.'' They include, he said, ''costs to the environment, costs to people in terms of time and money spent in commuting and costs to governments for creating infrastructure to stretch over the miles that are necessary to cover growth.'' -- Minnesota Daily   9/29/2003

Resource(s): http://mndaily.com/

Editorial Finds Fault with Minnesota's Distribution of Gas Tax Funds

If the common assumption that ''drivers pay the cost of roads'' were true, Minnesota would have to increase its 20-cent gasoline tax by 39 cents just to cover the current road-related expenses and by 42 cents more to lessen congestion through new roads, which would push gas prices to above $2.60 a gallon, calculates research engineer Erik Hare in his St. Paul Star-Tribune guest piece, pointing out that gasoline taxes, vehicle sales taxes and registration fees ''pay only 62 percent of the costs of roads'' and that ''general taxpayers 'subsidize' the rest, no matter how much or little they drive.'' He traces the problem ''back to Model T days,'' the 1920 state Constitution change that established a gasoline tax and a vehicle registration fee to pave rural ''muddy roads'' and help fund county and city road projects, and the 1956 formula of state gas tax revenue distribution, which sends 62 percent to the state, 29 percent to counties and 9 percent to cities. Under this ''antiquated'' and ''unfair'' arrangement, he writes, urban residents who usually drive less, bear ''disproportionate'' road costs, while ''a heavy reliance on property taxes leaves the entire road system vulnerable to other budget constraints.'' Giving an example of St. Paul -- where only 24 percent of road costs is paid by ''driver-generated taxes and fees'' and the rest is ''a subsidy from general revenues and property assessments, with the scenario repeated in new suburbs -- the writer stresses that cities should get a larger transportation money share. And in response to ''misleading rhetoric'' about the fully paid-for-by-users cars and roads as a better choice than ''heavily subsidized'' transit, he writes, ''(I)f you add up all the money spent in Minnesota on transportation, then subtract the money contributed directly by users -- at the gas pump, through registration fees, through sales taxes on new vehicles or at the transit fare box -- you'll find a leftover subsidy of $1.3 billion from general taxpayers. Of that total, 89 percent went to roads.'' -- Star-Tribune   9/7/2003

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Transit Budget Cuts Hit Twin Cities: Highway Expansion Gets Funding, But Light Rail in Jeopardy

Minnesota lawmakers resolved to borrow some $900 million for highway expansion and safety over the next four years, that is to ''buy a lot of asphalt,'' while cutting funds for the Department of Transportation (MnDOT), local governments and transit, which has already affected the Twin Cities Metro area bus service and will increasingly delay street repair, road maintenance and snow removal, but especially commuter train and light rail projects, with Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin expressing the prevalent local reaction: ''It was a disastrous session for transit.'' Hit by the cuts, reports Pioneer Press writer Toni Coleman, Metro officials had to increase express bus and door-to-door paratransit fares, planning service reductions on 40 routes, many of them in September. Deprived of seed money for the proposed St. Cloud-Minneapolis Northstar commuter line, slated to start in 2007, planners are revising ridership and capital cost estimates, while St. Cloud Democrats, and also suburban developers preparing sites along its route, are deliberating how to help the project happen. The north-south Hiawatha Avenue light-rail line in Minneapolis, the writer continues, will open next April, but lawmakers agreed to cover only half of the operating costs in excess of fares, with Hennepin County having to pay the other half from property tax revenue, which will reduce its $19.2 million reserve for other rail projects by $6.7 million within two years. They also refused the promised $2 million for planning the east-west St. Paul-Minneapolis Central Corridor light-rail line, putting the onus on Ramsey and Hennepin counties, which are using $573,000 in property tax money just to keep the plans for the $840 million line afloat. ''The next step,'' says Ramsey County Commissioner Sue Haigh, ''will be for the rail authorities to determine if they want to make an additional commitment in the absence of the state's investment.'' And Hennepin Commissioner McLaughlin adds, ''Some people are trying to create a poison pill for future rail projects, because what locality is going to pay for a share of the capital cost and run the risk of the state running back on its commitment of operating costs?'' -- Pioneer Press   8/4/2003

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

Census Numbers Show Marked Growth for Twin Cities Suburbs

Fed mostly by commuters from the Twin Cities, the small town of St. Michael, some 25 miles northwest, saw its population grow by more than 11 percent to 11,615 between July 2001 and July 2002, with six other metro area cities within daily driving distance seeing smaller but still marked increases and state demographer Tom Gillaspy expecting the sprawl trend to continue. St. Michael Administrator Bob Derus says commuters settle in his city because of its easy access from I-94, small-town feel and nearness to the northern woods. According to new U.S. Census estimates, the Twin Cities population decreased slightly, due mainly to a drop of about one percent in Minneapolis -- to 379,513 -- but the state demographer says his department and the seven-county Metropolitan Council are checking whether that number is accurate. Explaining that the Census Bureau's computer model used a greater number of housing units slated for demolition in Minneapolis than the city actually demolished, he promises to release the revised estimate soon. -- Brainerd Dispatch   7/10/2003

Resource(s): www.brainerddispatch.com/

Gov. Pawlenty Initiates ''Green'' Dialogue for Minnesota

Rated poorly by conservationists in his years as a legislator, Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty is now ''greening'' his record, by keeping House Republicans from relaxing wetland protection rules for road construction, favoring new all-terrain vehicle restrictions for state land, promoting renewable energy, backing the creation of the 32,000-acre Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, speaking to environmental and smart-growth advocacy groups, and just outlining a broad fiscal initiative to clean up the state's lakes, rivers and wetlands, all threatened by overdevelopment, flooding, poor sewage practices and polluted runoff. The state must protect its ''greatest natural resource'' and not let it ''slip further down the slope of silt, sewage and sludge,'' the governor told the Minnesota Environmental Initiative advocacy group funded by farming and energy interests, reports Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Conrad deFiebre, noting that Pollution Control Commissioner Sheryl Corrigan thinks the 20-year water cleanup cost can reach $3 billion. With his new ''Clean Water Cabinet'' led by his deputy chief of staff and Environmental Quality Board chairman Bob Schroeder, the governor promised to send lawmakers proposals to take advantage of new federal funds and put 100,000 farmland acres into the Conservation Resource Enhancement Program and to create a ''long-term funding mechanism'' for water improvements. He also promised targeted demonstration projects to reduce sewage runoff into the Mississippi and to increase its public access, improve the Brainerd area's lake quality, control northwestern flooding and clean up southeastern streams and wells contaminated by rural, septic tank and sewer system runoff. Working with ''local governments and private partners'' rather than ''imposing'' new regulations, the governor wants to make the urban Mississippi and southeastern rivers swimmable within 10 years and to cut cropland erosion by 2 million tons a year, for a 30-percent reduction in sediment dumping into streams. With the governor announcing ''the time for action is now,'' the writer adds, the Senate DFL (Democratic) caucus referred in a statement to Republican cuts in appropriations for wastewater system upgrades and stream protection, saying, ''Actually, the time for action was two months ago,'' but due to the governor's budget proposal, ''we've lost an opportunity to make real progress.'' -- Star Tribune   6/25/2003

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Metropolitan Council to Earmark Up to $3 Million for Outer Suburb Community Development

In a major policy shift to placate ''an increasingly suburban and Republican-dominated'' Minnesota legislature,'' the Metropolitan Council -- newly reassembled by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty -- will direct 30 percent of $9 million in annual grants, which usually leverage much larger private and other investments, to developing suburbs on the fringe of the seven-county region, with council community development director Caren Dewar saying that's where 33 percent of residents live and noting some legislators' concerns ''that the central cities and first-ring suburbs are getting more than their share.'' Over the years, Minneapolis has won about 30 percent of those grants, reports St. Paul Star Tribune writer David Peterson, quoting Reliance for Metropolitan Stability head Russ Adams, who said that's where at least 30 percent of the needs are, while new fringe communities don't need ''a helping hand'' and should compete for grants ''on the merits of their projects.'' Council member Peggy Leppik, who represents part of Minneapolis, also thought it unfair to designate a given grant portion to certain areas before looking into the merits of their projects. But council members from outer areas, including Mary Hill Smith of Wayzata and Natalie Steffen of Ramsey, found the previous distribution pattern unfair. Stressing that she has voted ''for all these projects in Minneapolis'' and that she knows the value of upgrading older centers, Steffen said there is also a value in helping newly developing suburbs to ''do it right the first time around.'' -- Star Tribune   4/24/2003

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

New Twin Cities Metropolitan Council Chairman Pledges to Balance Regional, Local Interests

Former Metropolitan Council members and chairman Ted Mondale have ''done a wonderful job,'' said new chairman Peter Bell -- appointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty in January -- telling the business-based Sensible Land Use Coalition it shouldn't count on any big policy changes and pledging to work with communities to balance regional and local interests, complete the Hiawatha Light Rail Transit line on time and on budget, and uphold key goals of the Blueprint 2030 plan for the seven-county metro area, which will have another 930,000 residents by then. Approved by the previous Met Council last year, notes Twin Cities Finance and Commerce writer Brian Johnson, Blueprint 2030 is expected to save the metro more than $3 billion through ''smart growth'' strategies for more transit and housing options, higher densities and greater investment in urban cores. The new Met Council chairman promised to review the blueprint, but reasserted its aim to locate 30 percent of new housing units on reclaimed sites, pointing out that infill and redevelopment projects in urban cores and first-ring suburbs already account for 26 percent of new area housing. Addressing builder concerns over the blueprint's so-called ''flawed precepts,'' the council's chairman said it represents a ''broad array'' of views, which doesn't preclude calls for changes, but dismissed claims that its decision against expanding the Metropolitan Urban Services Area has driven up land costs. He also expressed the hope of finding ''some middle ground'' with Lake Elmo over its opposition to the planned service extension and its prospective share of regional growth. -- Finance and Commerce   3/27/2003

Resource(s): www.finance-commerce.com/

Lake Elmo Hopes to Negotiate Sewer Extension Issue With New Metro Council

Lake Elmo Hopes to Negotiate Sewer Extension Issue With New Metro Council ''Although it may infringe upon a city's right to determine how it will grow, the MPLA (Metropolitan Land Planning Act) authorizes the Metropolitan Council to require uniform growth in the metropolitan area,'' wrote state administrative law judge George Beck in an official opinion on Lake Elmo's arguments against the council's authority to make the city accept metro sewer extension and the ensuing growth -- a first such challenge in its 36 years of managing growth in the seven-county area. Lake Elmo Mayor Lee Hunt expressed his hope that instead of going to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the city can settle the issue with the new Met Council, expecting it to be ''a lot more reasonable concerning cities' planning for their own futures.'' With most of its members recently replaced by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, reports Star Tribune writer David Peterson, the council signaled its leaning toward more local growth decisions and Mayor Hunt is encouraged by new chairman Peter Bell's reported willingness to review the 2030 regional plan approved last year. Chairman Bell also favors negotiations with Lake Elmo, report Pioneer Press writers Mara H. Gottfried and Mary Divine. But noting that the judge reaffirmed the council's regional role, the chairman asked who would play it otherwise and ''what would that mean for growth planning?'' He pointed out that Lake Elmo's resistance to sewer extension may push too much growth into nearby Woodbury, whose mayor, Bill Hargis, said the city doesn't want to tell Lake Elmo officials ''how to do it, but they need to do some of their part on housing.'' The writers add that state Republican Representative Eric Lipman, author of a bill to repeal the Metropolitan Land Planning Act, intends to bring the Lake Elmo issue before a commission overseeing the Met Council. -- Star Tribune ; Pioneer Press   3/14/2003

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/ ; www.startribune.com/

Lake Elmo Looks at Rezoning to Keep Out Metro Sewer Service

In advance of a January administrative hearing on Lake Elmo's appeal against the Metropolitan Council's move to make the city accept sewer lines proposed for the area north of I-94, city officials are dusting off a never-enacted provision of the 1990 comprehensive plan, which would let them stem growth by rezoning the area from general business to limited business use. The change, reports Pioneer Press writer Mary Divine, would reduce the number of permitted uses from more than one hundred, including auto-body shops, marine dealerships and lumberyards, to fewer than ten, including office parks, support businesses and upscale restaurants. The city, says Mayor Lee Hunt, doesn't want ''fast-food restaurants and heavy-duty strip malls.'' But Met Council officials point out that Lake Elmo's unwillingness to accept its fair share of growth increases pressure on already-strained nearby cities and townships. Business and property owners along the I-94 stretch fear that the zoning change would limit their prospects for expansion and halve their land values. -- Pioneer Press   12/10/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

Minneapolis Approves ''Density Bonus'' for Multifamily Housing Developers

Under a ''density bonus'' approved by the Minneapolis City Council in a 9-to-2 vote, multifamily housing developers of at least five units who make a fifth of them affordable will be able to build 20 percent more units than the code permits -- a zoning change spearheaded by Council Member Gary Schiff as ''a powerful new tool to put affordable housing in neighborhoods that have no affordable housing, without spending a dime of public money,'' but opposed by Council Members Robert Lilligren and Natalie Johnson Lee as likely to concentrate higher densities in already overcrowded poor neighborhoods while sparing wealthier areas. Heritage Neighborhood Home Owners Association co-founder Al Kelly voiced similar concerns, especially over the graffiti, litter and crime ''that come with increased density,'' pointing out that for most urban core residents, ''their home is their biggest investment and often their retirement.'' Councilman Schiff thought opponents have ''specific, complicated problems'' in their neighborhoods, but shouldn't fear the bonus density because the market for multifamily housing isn't there anyway. He argued that developers will use the bonus downtown, in the future Hiawatha Avenue light-rail corridor and other areas letting them mix affordable housing with upscale condos. Pioneer Press writer Judith Yates Gorger notes that in contrast to Minneapolis' citywide zoning change, a similar density bonus considered in St. Paul would only apply to three districts hurt by decline in industrial use. -- Pioneer Press, Star Tribune   11/23/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/ ; www.startribune.com/

Government Vouchers Offered as Solution to Affordable Housing

The solution to the affordable housing crunch lies in closing the gap between low incomes and high rents with government vouchers rather than in building more subsidized units or reducing local regulations, contended Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis vice president Ron Feldman, telling a media forum ''If people need food, we give them food stamps,'' not complain about ''a food crisis'' -- an argument disputed by Minnesota Housing Agency Commissioner Kit Hadley, who said it can't explain ''why the rental housing production dropped off by two-thirds in the metro area in the 1990s during a time when we had increasing vouchers,'' adding, ''You can't use a voucher on housing that doesn't exist.'' Citing U.S. General Accounting Office data from his analysis of the 13-county metro area's housing, Feldman called vouchers cheaper, with total per-unit costs for housing production programs 32 to 59 percent higher in the first year and 12 to 27 percent higher over 30 years. Noting that 65 percent of area renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent were below the poverty line in 1998 -- $17,000 for a family of four that year -- and that 36 percent of renters paid too much for housing in 2000, Feldman said the federal government could boost its rental voucher program by diverting funds from housing production subsidies. Based on 1998 data, reports Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried, he calculated the cost of vouchers for all area households spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent at about $370 million. -- Pioneer Press   11/22/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/

Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council and Minnesota's Governor-Elect Differ on Growth Strategies

With the Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council under Democrat Ted Mondale pushing for development along transit corridors, affordable housing and a Blueprint 2030 focused on light rail, and the Republican Governor-elect Tim Pawlenty favoring new roads, proposing greater local control and telling radio listeners that the council has grown ''too big for its britches,'' Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried sees a risk for the region's planning and ability to accommodate another million residents within 30 years. As the governor-elect told her ''I don't like big government organizations that are unelected,'' the writer finds him looking into the possibility of hiring executive directors to run such regional services as wastewater treatment, bringing the council under the legislative commission on metropolitan affairs or reconstituting it as an elected body. The governor-elect, the writer continues, agrees with the council on the need to redevelop older neighborhoods and sees ''some merit'' in mixed-use development along transit corridors, but objects to an obsessive pursuit of the goal, which ''excludes other needs.'' Egan Mayor Pat Awada -- Minnesota Auditor-elect -- thinks there will be a council ''very different'' from the one ''that has tried to push their philosophy down everyone's throat.'' On the other hand, former Democratic council chairman Curt Johnson wouldn't be surprised if the incoming governor pulls the council back wherever it may be overreaching, but his impression is that ''he doesn't act in haste and he won't do anything knee-jerk with the council.'' Chairman Mondale remains optimistic. ''Every governor in the country would die to have a tool like the Metropolitan Council,'' he says. ''Smart growth, the idea that cities need to take charge and build the way they'd like, is not a novel idea.'' -- Pioneer Press   11/17/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/

600,000 Twin Cities Residents Asked to Comment on Regional Growth Plan Via Returnable Brochure

''Transportation shapes development,'' asserts Met Council Chairman Ted Mondale as the agency targets 600,000 Twin Cities area residents with a returnable brochure to get final public input on its Blueprint 2030 regional growth plan, whose three scenarios reflect the council's new policy of replacing sprawl-type urbanization in expanding concentric circles with development along transportation corridors. Most area officials and experts applaud the policy, while seeking further clarification and offering their own advice, reports Pioneer Press writer Mara H. Gottfried. According to a report by five nonprofit groups and state Democratic Senator Myron Orfield, the blueprint will require $8.5 billion, mostly for transportation by 2010, and Met Council will need at least half of the money by 2008 to make its 30-year growth-corridor goals ''realistic.'' The report states the council should use its funds as leverage for local adoption of these goals and ensure during its reviews of city comprehensive plans that they adhere to the blueprint. Also, still concerned about the potential for sprawl, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly thinks the council should fully utilize present infrastructure and promote infill. With an October 27 deadline for public input and unofficial voting on the blueprint's three scenarios, Council Chairman Mondale will announce the results during his State of the Region address three days later, saying for now, ''The public is really driving the process.'' -- Pioneer Press   10/17/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

''Embrace Open Space'' Campaign Launched in Twin Cities Area

''Every day in Minnesota, an area the size of the Mall of America is paved over. Without public engagement, the trend will only accelerate,'' said McKnight Foundation President Rip Rapson, launching a yearlong ''Embrace Open Space'' campaign, a joint effort with ten other groups and agencies to educate residents of the seven-county Twin Cities metro area about threats to its forests, wetlands, farmlands and urban greenways and to involve them in decisions about these assets, crucial for the region's well-being as it prepares to accommodate another half million people within two decades. Identifying ten Twin Cities open space ''treasures,'' or environmentally unique and irreplaceable land and wetland stretches, the campaign partners will use advertising, direct communication, grassroots action and other outreach means. The McKnight Foundation's partners include 1000 Friends of Minnesota, the Design Center for the American Urban Landscape at the University of Minnesota, Friends of the Mississippi River, Great River Greening, the Metropolitan Council, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Minnesota Land Trust, Sierra Club North Star Chapter and Trust for Public Land. ''Open spaces are very bit as much a part of the Twin Cities' infrastructure as roads and sewers,'' the foundation president stressed in a press release. ''We hope that protecting open spaces becomes a community priority, one that is seen as an enhancement of economic development, not a barrier.'' See details at www.embraceopenspace.org   10/15/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/ ; www.startribune.com

Lake Elmo's November Election Pivotal for Growth Issues

The November election in Lake Elmo -- St. Paul's eastern suburb, population 7,000 -- is shaping up as a referendum on its clash with the Met Council regional planning agency over their respective rights to determine the city's future, with the council setting a precedent last month by ordering it to plan for 200 houses serviced by a sewer system by 2010 and for another 1,300 by 2020, and to abandon the idea of cutting traffic on its Highway 5, used mostly by through drivers. But Lake Elmo, reports Star Tribune writer Mike Kaszuba, wants to remain rural, with large home lots, septic tanks and little development along I-94 at its southern edge. Those opposing the Met Council order dismiss the agency's assurance that the city would still remain 85 percent rural, arguing that once it accepts the regional growth targets, it will soon be overrun by fast food restaurants, shopping centers and frontage roads. Passions are high, the writer reports, quoting one of the five candidates for the two open city council seats, Charlie Schneider, who praises the city as ''an oasis in the middle of a hectic world,'' and another, incumbent Steve DeLapp, who doesn't want Lake Elmo to became like adjacent Woodbury, whose officials ''divide up the land amongst the developers, and whatever they do, they do.'' One of their rivals, longtime resident Roy Rossow hates Lake Elmo open spaces, saying, ''I've been looking at cornfields and bean fields all my life. I'm for growth.'' A mayoral candidate, Mark Deziel, wants the city to stand fast against the Met Council, but he also takes some local constituents to task. Too many residents have ''kind of an elitist ecological sense,'' he said. ''If they were really concerned about the ecology, they'd make a law where nobody could live in a house over $250,000.'' -- Star Tribune   10/8/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Minnesota DOT Collects Comments on 20-Year Transit Plan

In a series of eight town meetings statewide, the Minnesota Department of Transportation is gathering comments on ''Moving Minnesota 2003: Moving people and freight to 2023,'' its first plan that looks beyond roads to all travel modes and proposes performance measures for evaluating progress toward each long-range goal. The department set out ten priorities, reports Pioneer Press writer Toni Coleman. It seeks input on how to preserve road, transit and airport infrastructure; promote land-use decisions that ensure future mobility; improve system management; secure commuter and freight options; speed up travel between major cities; ease their congestion; improve department efficiency; inform and involve residents in transportation planning; and preserve the environment and community values. Responding to Taxpayers League of Minnesota legislative director David Strom's concern that the plan doesn't include much on expanding transportation system capacity, department official Mich Webster said that's one of the issues depending on public feedback. Once the feedback is included, the plan will go to the new state legislature in January, with Transportation Secretary Elwyn Tinklenberg confident it will pass as ''reflecting the wants of Minnesotans ... not just whims of a particular administration, but the desires of the people using the system.'' The public can also access the plan and leave comments online at www.dot.state.mn.us/information/plans/20yearplan/plan.html -- Pioneer Press   8/21/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

Twin City Advocacy Groups Hope Lawsuit Will Bring More Affordable Housing to Area

In a bold move to expand affordable housing and advance social equity in the seven-county Twin Cities region, three area nonprofit advocacy groups charged in a suit against the Metropolitan Council and the city of Egan that the council departed from the state's 1976 Land-Use Planning Act (LUPA) by having set insufficient municipal low-income housing shares and by undercutting them further through lax enforcement, and that the city dodged the act by having opted out of the council's federally-subsidized affordability incentives program and consequently violated the state human-rights law that guarantees equal opportunities for minorities and welfare recipients. Plaintiffs, the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability, the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition on Affordable Housing and the Community Stabilization Project, asked Ramsey County District Court to make the defendants comply fully with LUPA, force the council to remedy the situation by denying grants to cities found in noncompliance and bar Egan from any other development of land fit for affordable housing until it obeys the law. Alliance for Metropolitan Stability executive director Russ Adams, who expects the suit to usher in thousands of affordable units over the long term, told Star Tribune writer Steve Brandt that the council's own numbers show that units built under its incentive program fill only a tenth of the regions's estimated affordable housing needs. With the council successfully implementing LUPA to expand affordable housing until the early 1980s, Interfaith Coalition director Joy Sorensen Navarre identified the effort's abandonment -- called in a recent University of Minnesota study ''a missed opportunity of huge proportions'' -- as largely responsible for filling up the metro area's residential land without affordable housing. Met Council chairman Ted Mondale -- a state senator in the early 1990s who sponsored both the council's incentives program and a LUPA amendment giving long-range city plans primacy over zoning laws -- responded that both the council and the plaintiffs make affordable housing a priority, but differ on tactics. The council has pursued the goal by working with markets and area mayors, he said, while the plaintiffs ''want us to approach this in a confrontational manner.'' Although limited by political reality, he pointed out, the council has leveraged an additional $334 million through its incentives and linked regional transportation outlays with local housing performance. Egan officials also voiced self-confidence. But stressing their accomplishments and a 1998 state audit that found Egan in the lead among new suburbs, with 37 percent of its units built that year selling for below $140,000 or renting for under $736 a month, longtime City Administrator Tom Hedges forgot to mention that by 2001 the council put the city at the bottom of the regional ranks for affordable housing stock, tools and plans. Egan Mayor Pat Awada said the plaintiffs want cities ''to get involved in the private market'' and ''tell people what to sell their houses for,'' which would amount to taking down ''the American flag.'' Sure that Egan met the council's expectations, she sees the suit as a political ploy against her campaign for state auditor and anticipates its quick dismissal. -- Star Tribune   8/17/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com

FHA Asks Minnesota to Boost Use of Carpool Lanes

Prompted by a Federal Highway Administration (FHA) request to boost the use of the two high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in the Minneapolis area, the Minnesota Department of Transportation promised to respond soon with a broad plan, while noting its current efforts to extend the I-35W lane downtown, tap the revenue from the three I-394 garages for lane improvements and complete the installation of pavement traffic detectors on area ramps next month, to minimize highway entrance bottlenecks. Star Tribune writer Laurie Blake reminds readers that a consultant study released by the department in February found the two HOV lanes operating at about half of their potential. According to the study, opening the lanes to all drivers would speed up trips and cut gas consumption and tailpipe emissions, but also make 13 to 25 percent of carpoolers and bus riders return to driving alone once they lost the time advantage offered by HOV-only lanes. State Transportation Secretary Elwyn Tinklenberg said at the time that HOV lanes are important to long-term goals of wider transit use. Having sent the secretary a letter urging a debate on HOV lanes before the legislature convenes in January, FHA Minnesota division director Al Steger said he would like to see the lanes full of high occupancy vehicles or otherwise ''use the excess capacity but in a way that would not reduce the incentive for carpooling.'' -- Star Tribune   8/11/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Writer Questions Practicality of New Rail Projects in Twin Cities

Embarrassed by the ''spectacle of the last Legislature debating the Northstar commuter rail line and a second LRT (light rail) line while Metro Transit is raising fares and cutting service -- thus neutralizing hundreds of million of dollars in investment,'' Citizen League president Lyle Wray asks in a Pioneer Press guest column whether the Twin Cities' almost $700 million Hiawatha LRT line under construction and the $800 million second line under consideration are really justified by ''smart growth'' and ''transit oriented development'' principles for reducing congestion and building ''more compact and efficient communities'' or just reflect an ''I want one, too'' mentality. He isn't sure. He writes that transit passengers want frequent service, short wait times, few transfers or none and comfortable rides, but that the Hiawatha light rail will subject many more current bus riders to transfers and take longer than express buses to reach the Mall of America and the airport. Regarding the proposed University Avenue light rail between both core cities, he writes that congestion isn't the issue, because traffic in this old-time grid corridor ''moves along quite well,'' but he doubts that the line could spur more redevelopment than an upgraded or rapid bus service. He notes that bus passengers will account for 80 to 90 percent of transit users for the foreseeable future and concludes: ''Rather than simply trying to satisfy our 'rail envy' in the University corridor, we need to start with the kind of developments we want to support, with what public transit readers really need and with the lowest-cost, yet effective, solutions that get the job done.'' -- Pioneer Press   7/15/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

Lake Elmo Officials Edging Away from Twin Cities Regional Growth Plan

Having long resisted developers, now really determined to cash in on old land purchases along Interstate 94 east of the Twin Cities, Lake Elmo officials are no less resolved to keep their north side of the of the six-lane highway free of the shopping centers allowed south of it by nearby Woodbury, although they may exasperate the Metropolitan Council, which has previously questioned the city's stance and could enforce its compliance with the agency's regional growth blueprint. The city's comprehensive plan slated for a likely Met Council vote in September, reports Star Tribune writer Mike Kaszuba, omits the council's recommendations to provide sewer access for 1,500 households by 2020 and to set aside 8,188 acres for future urban growth. It also disregards the council's rural-residential density guideline of one home per 10 acres and proposes four homes per 10 acres. Area corporate landowners accuse Lake Elmo officials of fostering an ''anti-growth climate;'' Councilwoman Susan Dunn suspects landowners of ''envisioning wall-to-wall development from the Minneapolis core cities to the St. Croix River;'' and some at the Met Council float a proposal to ''recapture previous regional investments'' from the city. Under this first-ever proposal, the writer notes, the council would assess Lake Elmo for the cost of the roads, sewer and parks built with regional aid, but still underutilized because of the city's policy. Lake Elmo planning commission chairman Tom Armstrong says he is satisfied with the city's current land use along the highway and unconcerned about a possible loss of the council's grants and other aid. City planner Chuck Dillerud thinks the problem is exacerbated by corporate land speculators and growth-bent suburbs like Woodbury. The council's director of planning and growth management, Eli Cooper, can't imagine the matter ''would have to go to court.'' Both sides ''are walking gingerly,'' the writer observes, adding that at Lake Elmo's invitation, the Met Council is scheduling a bus tour of the city, while their planning staffs are trying to reach a compromise. -- Star Tribune   7/7/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Twin Cities United Way Addresses ''Issue of Our Time'' with Affordable Housing Program

With the average Twin Cities two-bedroom apartment rent of $904 requiring an annual income of $32,500 -- which is higher than the earnings of over a third of the state's households -- the Greater Twin Cities United Way launched a five-year, $11 million United Way Housing Connections program, to combine its own and other resources and provide at least 1,000 low-income families in the metro area with 850 affordable units and related social services, an effort hailed by Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak as addressing ''the issue of our time.'' United Way officials announced the program at the mixed-rate East Village complex developed by the nonprofit Central Community Housing Trust in Minneapolis' Elliot Park neighborhood, reports Star Tribune writer Robert Franklin, quoting the mayoral description of the year-old, 180-unit, $29.5 million development as ''the poster child for how to do affordable housing right.'' United Way President Lauren Segal said the program seeks to expand ''supportive'' housing, with easy access to transportation and social services; to help nonprofit residential developers pay some of their operational costs; and to enlist at least 50 business leaders to help their own and other employees with such tested offers as forgivable housing loans and company-owned apartments at reduced rents. -- Star Tribune   6/24/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Census Shows Longer Commute Time for Minnesotans

Struck by 2000 census data showing Minnesotans' home-work commute time has increased to nearly 22 minutes, which means ''25 hours more windshield time per year'' for an average worker, Pioneer Press columnist Edward Lotterman calculates that with an income range from the minimum wage of $5.35 per hour to the extrapolated median household income of $15.70 per hour, this ''excess commuting time'' costs the average worker from $187 to $393, or the state from $267 million to $780 million a year. The columnist cautions against ascribing the longer commute time to deteriorated and congested roads alone, noting that many Minnesotans ''value low-density housing and some element of 'country living','' others enjoy moderate driving and still others ''balance driving costs -- in both cash and time -- with housing costs.'' The more they must pay for housing near jobs, he observes, the farther they are willing to drive to pay less for it. ''Any public policies such as zoning or building codes that unduly limit construction of new housing in inner cities and first-ring suburbs,'' he writes, ''inevitably motivate people to drive farther.'' Pointing also to other costs of inadequate roads and public transit, such as car wear, increased fuel consumption and air pollution, and business losses by companies and areas, the columnist adds: ''Investments in infrastructure last a long time. Ignoring maintenance or operating costs, a $500 million saving to society in reduced commuting time would amortize an expenditure of $5 billion to $6 billion over a 20-year period at the interest rates paid on state bonds.'' -- Pioneer Press   6/6/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

Affordable Housing Units Yet to Be Built in Minneapolis Riverside Housing Development

Great views, history and urban appeal are drawing a mix of residents to a former mile-and-a-half stretch of wasteland along the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, currently only a rich mix of residents who can pay from $300,000 to $3 million for new condos and townhouses, with the 20 percent of affordable housing units the city requires from each area developer yet to come. ''Old money, former suburban empty nesters, young professionals and a 20-something lottery winner live in the Minneapolis riverfront neighborhood,'' reports Pioneer Press writer Judith Yates Borger, finding that private investors have spent $900 million to build 2,600 units so far -- while hundreds more are planned -- but some affordable housing activists call the area ''the land of the rich and subsidized.'' The writer doesn't think it's ''really true,'' even though the city, the Park Board and the federal government have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for land acquisition and cleanup, because the required affordable units mean homes priced at $120,000 and two-bedroom apartment rents at $800 a month. She notes that in a 221-apartment riverside project across from downtown, approved last month by the City Council, rents in 40 percent of the units will be reduced over 30 years for people making up to 60 percent of the Twin Cities metro area median income. In addition to $3 million in federal tax credits for the project, the city will put about $35,000 into each affordable unit. Calling the riverfront development ''still a work in progress,'' the writer adds that council members saw a recent Xcel Energy promise to stop burning coal at its power plant on the river as a future opportunity to use the coal storage site for more riverside housing. -- Pioneer Press   5/29/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/

5,000 Affordable Housing Units Planned City-Wide for St. Paul

Strongly supported by St. Paul business and community leaders, Mayor Randy Kelly announced a $1 billion plan to provide low-income residents with at least 5,000 affordable housing units within four years, while achieving better geographical distribution by transposing the 20 percent affordable-unit goal from each project to the whole city. The mayor said the plan, in the works since he took office in January, will entice developers by cutting ''the red tape'' and simplifying procedures, to let them ''push projects through the city'' in 12 instead the usual 24 months, while a new housing and property management department will help preserve old houses and rehabilitate abandoned buildings. St. Paul Chamber of Commerce official Don Maietta expressed readiness to advance the city's goals, stressing that the housing shortage is ''in large part, a business issue.'' Developer Steve Wellington pointed out that the ''housing market is quite strong, and the mayor is providing lots of encouragement to developers who want to build in the city.'' Housing advocates also lauded the plan, although a consultant from the Community Stabilization Project, Jolene Mason, said the group would like to see more than 500 of the 5,000 projected units affordable for ''people earning less than 30 percent of the median income.'' Pioneer Press writer Murali Balaji reports that the $1 billion affordable housing fund will include $60 million from the city and its Housing Redevelopment Authority; $50 million from the federal government, nonprofit groups and public agencies; $90 million in tax increment financing revenue; $150 million in housing bonds and tax credits; and $650 million in private investment.   4/4/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

Minneapolis Mayor Pledges to Be Leader for Affordable Housing

''Disturbed that there is no coordinated state agenda on housing,'' Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak delivered his first State of the City speech in a new People Serving People homeless shelter, focusing on the need to ensure greater affordability of homes and rents and promising ''to be a leader on that at the Capitol.'' Quoting the Wilder Foundation as putting the number of metro area homeless at about 5,000 -- with 41 percent of them workers and 44 percent children -- the mayor pointed out that the ''only vacancies are in luxury apartments'' and that the city cannot fund affordable housing expansion alone. Pioneer Press writer Judith Yates Borger notes that the city is sponsoring a second ''housing summit'' on April 7, to form a broad coalition for affordable housing.   4/3/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/

Debate on Twin Cities HOV Restrictions to Continue

Although a study by Massachusetts-based Cambridge Systematics Inc. for the Minnesota Department of Transportation found that opening the underused and often violated Twin Cities car-pool (HOV) lanes on interstate highways 35W and 394 would speed up trips, save gas and cut tailpipe emissions, researchers cautioned against opening the lanes to all traffic because it would turn the area back toward reliance on future road expansion instead of transit alternatives. Pioneer Press writer Toni Coleman reports that State Republican Senator Dick Day, who pushed for the study, feels vindicated and promises to pursue the subject until the lanes are open to the general public and the state realizes their full value. But Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg points out that the lanes greatly benefit suburban bus riders and instead suggests shortening the restriction periods, allowing commercial vehicles or introducing tolls for solo commuters during rush hours. Star Tribune writer Laurie Blake quotes him as saying that the current traffic crisis reflects years of inadequate investment in both roads and transit. With the need for long-term funding, he considers an HOV lane opening ''a stopgap, short-time response,'' which wouldn't fix anything. He also sees such a move as a federal issue since the federal government provided millions for construction of car-pool lanes and could ask for reimbursement if they were open to general traffic. Given that, the commissioner says, ''we are going to request that the federal government give us some guidance how we should proceed with these lanes.''   2/26/2002

Resource(s): www.twincities.com/ ; www.startribune.com/

Gov. Ventura Promotes Wind Energy, Ethanol in Minnesota

Minnesota should not only increase the share of its wind-generated electricity from two percent last year to ten percent in the near future, but also produce more ethanol, said Governor Jesse Ventura, telling attendees at a regional summit on sustainable energy and agriculture in St. Paul, ''You can either put your money in the pockets of OPEC states or in the pockets of Minnesota farmers and rural communities. Which would you prefer?'' Noting that the governor seeks a ten-percent cut in incentive payments to the state's 13 subsidized ethanol plants, Star Tribune writer Mark Brunswick quotes state Commerce Commissioner Jim Bernstein, who linked the proposed cut to $1.95 billion state budget shortfall that requires ''painful choices for everyone,'' but pointed out that increased market demands make ethanol producers less reliant on big government subsidies. The Associated Press reports that Minnesota - - ranked ninth for wind energy potential nationwide -- has about 450 wind turbines along the Buffalo Ridge near Lake Beneton, with total capacity of almost 300 megawatts, sufficient to power more than 100,000 households. Commissioner Bernstein said the state could produce ten percent of its electricity from wind by 2010.   2/5/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/; www.pioneerpress.com/

Minnesota Housing Agency Recommends Flexible Rules for Affordable Housing Developers

Having done an inclusionary housing law study requested last year by the legislature, the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) reported back that although affordable housing for the lowest- income households is only possible with traditional public subsidies, lawmakers should facilitate it by requiring greater local flexibility in allowing developers to mix unit types and prices, and to save on costs with higher project densities, smaller floor sizes and narrower streets. The mixed-housing proposal, reports Star Tribune writer Steve Brandt, ''would shift the legal burden of proof for such proposals from the developer to the city,'' which would have to present ''valid health or safety reasons'' for denying the required zoning. Applicable to counties with more than 30,000 residents and municipalities without inclusionary housing laws, the proposal would link the threshold for qualifying mixed-housing projects with ownership type. At least 20 percent of mixed rental-ownership projects would have to be rental units, not necessarily low-priced. At least 20 percent of units in all-rental projects would have to be for renters in the lower quarter of state or area income, or 40 percent for those earning at most 60 percent of the median income. At least 20 percent of units in all-ownership projects would have to be priced lower than the median price of homes in a given county or municipality. Noting that officials, developers and housing advocates on the MHFA's study committee were divided on further recommendations, the writer quotes Alliance for Metropolitan Stability executive director Russ Adams, who said the agency is trying to pass something ''feasible politically,'' a proposal resembling legislation approved last year by Senate, but blocked in the House. The writer adds that according to the public policy director for the Builders Association of Twin Cities, Tom McElvee, higher project densities can help expand affordable housing, but the region really needs more buildable land to cut lot prices, which can make up a quarter of single-family house costs.   2/5/2002

Resource(s): www.startribune.com/

Forecast for Twin Cities: Faster Growth Than Expected

At the beginning of the Metropolitan Council's year-long process of drafting a new blueprint for the Twin Cities' future, council demographer Michael Munson presented members a forecast of much faster growth in the seven-county area than previously projected, with population likely to increase by 930,000 to about 3.6 million, which would require 75,000 more new housing units than are currently planned. The new forecast, reports Star Tribune writer David Peterson, is based on the 2000 census, which found Minnesota and the Metro region exceeding earlier population projections, partly due to a rising birth-versus-death ratio. Noting that some suburbs try to fight traffic congestion by curbing housing projects, the writer points out that the prospect of nearly a million more people in the Metro region raises the questions of where they ''are going to live and what will happen to the accelerating cost of buying a home.'' He quotes a spokesman for Twin Cities homebuilders, Rick Packer, who says, ''This should make peoples' eyes widen. We have a housing shortage, and it's going to get worse.'' The writer adds that in its new growth-management blueprint, the Met Council is expected to propose such housing and traffic congestion solutions as ''much greater densities along transit corridors'' served by light rail, commuter rail and express- line buses.   1/17/2002

Resource(s): www3.startribune.com/

Columnist Says Rail Transit Has No Place in Twin Cities

Rail transit ''doesn't have a place here (in the Twin Cities). It cannot. It will not,'' proclaims Pioneer Press Columnist Joe Soucheray who likes ''big, fast cars, wide streets and cheap gas,'' though it is fine in London, with streets ''so impossibly narrow that the little British cars are parked halfway on the sidewalk.'' The difference is, writes the columnist after his family holiday in London where he loved ''the tube,'' that the city's underground ''was necessary to accommodate a pre-existing condition of urban density,'' while the Hiawatha light-rail construction in Minneapolis ''is an example of elitists forcing on Minnesotans an urban density that does not exist.'' The elitists do so, he asserts, ''because we are governed, in many cases, by behaviorists who believe that we should not drive automobiles or live in houses in suburbs. But we do. That is our unique pre-existing condition.'' He thinks that Governor Jesse Ventura should ''cut our losses and stop this ridiculous billion-dollar scam known as the Hiawatha Line.''   1/6/2002

Resource(s): www.pioneerpress.com/

Twin City Smart Growth Programs Receive $10.1 Million in Grants

Proud of strides in affordable housing and in a Smart Growth site program -- which involves communities in improving their livability -- Metropolitan Council chairman Ted Mondale released $10.1 million in 48 grants for mixed-income housing, transit-oriented development and water quality projects. In his annual State of the Region speech, Mondale pledged 2002 efforts to complete ''a bold agenda of policy changes and new housing developments, focused on integrating housing, transportation, development and environmental protection to support livable communities;'' to finish the Natural Resources Inventory and set a protection strategy for resource integration ''with the growth we want to support;'' and to advance work on Blueprint 2030, a regional action plan, with both short- term and long-range strategies for ''enhancing economic growth, building communities and strengthening environmental protection.'' Governor Jesse Ventura called next year's challenges daunting for the council and the state -- due to reduced revenues, lost jobs and dampened spirits -- but noting the ''legendary resolve'' of Minnesotans, said he is confident ''we can join together to achieve more livable communities.'' Pioneer Planet writer Mara H. Gottfried adds that the Metropolitan Council is conducting a week- long public discussion of regional issues between Mondale, Minneapolis Mayor-elect R.T. Rybak, St.Paul Mayor-elect Randy Kelly and others at its web site www.metrocouncil.org   12/13/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com/

St. Paul Redevelopment Project On Fast Track; ''National Model for Urban Village''

Buoyed by high public interest and a site cleanup completed ahead of time, St. Paul officials and the Dallas-based Centex Corp. will speed up the $170-million, 21-acre Upper Landing riverfront urban village project, the city's largest brownfield redevelopment, by starting construction in May and finishing by 2004 instead of late 2005. They also are seeking the removal of the site from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's ''superfund'' list. Mayor Norm Coleman, who cited the project as a private-public partnership success story at the recent National Conference of Mayors, says, ''It's one of the great miracles in the city. You take a scrap yard on a polluted site and you turn it into a national model for an urban village.'' The village, reports PioneerPlanet writer Murali Balaji, will have 23,000 square feet of commercial space and 600 varied-income rental and condominium units. The first 100 units, including 40 for low-income families, will be built with the help of a long-time affordable housing developer, CommonBond Communities, which secured funds from the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. To alleviate concerns about the project's susceptibility to seasonal rising of the Mississippi River, developers compacted the soil and covered it with another layer, which will place all structures at least six feet above the highest 100-year flood level.   11/29/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

Success of Minnesota Streetscape Project Has Moorhead Mayor Looking Ahead

Proud of the imminent completion of Moorhead's downtown streetscaping project based on tax increment financing (TIF), within its $1.6 million budget and close to the target date, Mayor Morris Lanning envisages similar improvements along Main Avenue down to the Red River, reconstruction of a bridge and conversion of Third Street into a riverside parkway. All these refinements, reports Fargo Forum writer Nathan Bowe, together with a planned state-funded $2.2 million landscaping project along the main line of the Santa Fe Burlington Northern tracks, are expected to help the city attract private investment and redevelop several downtown sites without destroying the area's historic character.   11/26/2001

Resource(s): www.in-forum.com

Minnesota Township Succeeds at Balancing Development, Conservation

The quaint, pastoral 3,800-resident New Scandia Township surrounding the state's oldest Swedish settlement, about 20 miles northeast of the Twin Cities, draws most of its 100 new residents a year "because it operates outside the metro-area 'smart growth' rules aimed at stemming urban sprawl, and houses can still be built on five-acre and 10-acre lots," reports Pioneer Press writer Debra O'Connor. But she also points out that the township planning commission is equally friendly to conservation projects that combine small and big lots, while preserving ample open space. The township, which includes much of William O'Brien State Park, with hiking and cross-country ski trails, has sufficient businesses, 40 senior housing units, a community center capable of hosting events for 350 people, several public tennis courts and many youth recreation facilities. Its board chairman Dennis Seefeldt says residents are "willing to invest in things for kids." Two-year resident Diane Thom says she is "in love with the town" and feels "like saying hello and smiling" to all neighbors who always say "If you ever need anything, give me a call."   11/26/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerpress.com

"Transit Villages" Considered in Twin Cities Suburbs

As the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority expands its network of "heated, comfortable and even a bit stylish" bus stations in some Twin Cities suburbs, adding more parking spaces and enticing nearby residents with free passes, planners and developers are coming together to advance the idea of a "transit village" -- a compact complex of shops, restaurants, small businesses and apartments, "where a passenger could pick up dry cleaning or a takeout dinner before walking, biking or driving home," reports Star Tribune writer Dan Wascoe, Jr. He quotes Metropolitan Council community development director Caren Dewar who says planning clusters of bus stations, stores and housing requires "a lot more collaboration, cooperation and partnership" than do conventional projects, but expects the trend to grow as frustrated commuters seek alternatives to road congestion. Describing the beginnings and prospects of transit villages nears bus stations in Eden Prairie, Burnsville, Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, the writer also quotes the authority's transit director Beverley Miller, who points out that streetcar lines guided much of Minneapolis and St. Paul development in the early 1900s. She says that when her father, a former railroad man, heard her plans for clustering stores and housing near transit stations, he responded, "That is where we began."   11/13/2001

Resource(s): www.startribune.com

In a push against the grain of ...

In a push against the grain of "NIMBY protectionism" and the popular belief that "everyone wants a fully finished 3- or 4-bedroom home on a big lot," the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund has critically reviewed builder methods in 80 counties outside the Twin Cities region, defined common-sense steps to "trim housing costs" and improve community outlook, and formed partnerships so far with 34 counties to make homeownership affordable to "families making as little as $22,000 a year," reports Washington Post Writers Group member Neal Pierce in a syndicated column, "Marrying Smart Growth, Housing Affordability." The fund advises four steps. First, plan as many homes as possible in areas adjacent to local street grids, where infrastructure and service extension costs less and new neighborhoods can share shopping, schools, parks and other amenities with nearby communities. Second, select less expensive basic home plans, possibly with an unfinished attic or basement for future family growth. Third, favor small lots that impose lower street and utility costs than those from a half-acre up and may let builders orient houses toward a local park, creating a sense of space and closeness to nature. Fourth, plot narrow streets with sidewalks to attract pedestrians and discourage fast through traffic, and opt for homes with front porches and back-alley garages to foster friendliness and sense of community. "The net results," the columnist writes, are "model examples of New Urbanism and smart growth, without mentioning the terms." He quotes the fund's president, Warren Hanson, who says, "We've gone for the essential principles and avoided the rhetoric. If we'd talked smart growth, we would have offended city council members and developers who'd feel they're accused of having done dumb growth up to now." The fund's guide, "Building Better Neighborhoods -- Creating Affordable Homes and Livable Communities," is available on its web site www.gmhf.com   10/1/2001

Resource(s): www.gmhf.com

Convinced that Minnesota's severe traffic jams are ...

Convinced that Minnesota's severe traffic jams are hurting its economy, the president of the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and Governor Jesse Ventura's representative on the Major Transportation Projects Commission, David Jennings -- a former House Republican Speaker instrumental in passing an almost billion dollar tax cut in 1986 -- is now looking for ways to raise $500 million more a year and reach a partisan consensus on better and faster construction of roads, bridges and rail lines, to avert even worse congestion. Envisaging a streamlined construction process, reports Pioneer Press writer Bill Salisbury, he also wants new provisions for acquiring right of way, running environmental assessments and overcoming local obstacles. The commission, created by lawmakers last year to review the state's multi-million dollar transportation projects, eliminate inessential ones and prioritize others, is expected to make its first recommendations to the governor and the legislature by September 30. Acknowledging the controversial character of his restructuring and funding proposals, with lawmakers reluctant to vote for a major tax-for-transportation increase ahead of the 2002 election, Jennings says the issue should be put on the election's agenda, to "at least provoke a debate" and "move the ball" forward. 07.18.2001   7/26/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

Minnesota's affordable housing crisis, exacerbated by the ...

Minnesota's affordable housing crisis, exacerbated by the need to rehabilitate or replace almost 224,000 units in the state and by escalating rental costs in the Twin Cities, "warrants action by voters," says a Pioneer Pilot editorial, pointing out that too many suburban lawmakers "want banks, retailing, nursing homes, small industries, child care services and schools in their communities," but they "don't want to make it easy for too many of the employees in those fields to live where they work." The editorial warns that such "slow-acting" remedies as a reduction of "the onerous property taxes on rental housing" are not enough and urges further legislative modifications of "burdensome building code requirements and restrictive zoning practices." It also welcomes the state's one-time injection of $25 million into its current $80-million affordable housing fund, but regrets that instead of passing an inclusionary housing initiative, lawmakers asked for a study of such zoning and housing in other states. 07.18.2001   7/26/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

Now our biggest environmental problems come from ...

"Now our biggest environmental problems come from our own actions, our own choices, rather than pollution produced by big business," Governor Jesse Ventura told students at the College of St. Catherine, coming to their Earth Day event in a state-leased SUV with one of the worst EPA fuel-efficiency rates, the Lincoln Navigator. The governor said personal and business choices people make affect the environment in many ways: lawn, garden and farm chemicals end up in rivers and lakes, demand for electricity requires more fossil fuels for power plants and increased car and truck use worsens air pollution. Urging the audience to use transit, carpools and bicycles once a week, the governor pledged to do his part "by supporting public transit" in the state budget. He was seconded by his commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Karen Studders, who said, "the environmental problems of the 21st century involve us, not them -- individuals, not corporations. This time, there aren't any big bad guys to hold responsible. This time, we ourselves have to be responsible." She said only 15 percent of water pollution and 40 percent of air pollution come from fixed industrial "point sources;" the rest comes from hard to regulate "non-point sources," including vehicles and agricultural runoff. 04.24.2001   4/26/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

In an editorial defense of the Metropolitan ...

In an editorial defense of the Metropolitan Council from lawmakers who see its growth management efforts as too timid or too aggressive, the PioneerPlanet asks them to recognize the obvious -- that the Twin Cities metro area has spilled far beyond its seven-county boundary created more than three decades ago and that the council must now work with adjacent jurisdictions "to promote prudent development." Noting that the U.S. Census Bureau defines the Twin Cities metro area as 13 counties, including four in western Wisconsin, and that the outside area's 56-percent growth almost doubled the metro's in 1970-1996, the daily supports a bill that "would empower the council to offer nonvoting representation" to 11 counties beyond the metro boundary. The daily says the bill, sponsored by Republican Representative Dan McElroy and Democratic Senator Ann Rest, would facilitate greater regional communication and cooperation "to make the most effective use of costly roads, bridges and sewers, to preserve valuable open space and agricultural land, and to encourage much-needed reinvestment in urban core." 03.11.2001   3/19/2001

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

I think we all agree that 'smart ...

I think we all agree that 'smart growth' is better for the Minnesota economy, better for the people and better for the environment, said Governor Jesse Ventura at the Growing Smart in Minnesota II conference in St. Paul, backing guest panelist, Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening. Governor Ventura told the audience of 500 that he remained committed to smart growth principles, including open space conservation, more transit choices and increased funding for affordable housing. He called Maryland's 1997 smart growth legislation, extensively outlined by Governor Glendening, a good target for Minnesota, but didn't promise a similar legislative push. Instead, he expressed his hope for statewide expansion of the Metropolitan Council's current smart growth program. The program offers six area communities planning and other assistance for redevelopment or for transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly projects. Later, the conference's sponsor, 100 Friends of Minnesota, announced the winners of its first annual Smart Growth Design Awards in four development categories: new suburban, suburban redevelopment, urban residential and mixed-use residential. The winners are the Stillwater community's Liberty on the Lake; the Gable and Crown Ridge in Minnetonka; RiverStation in Minneapolis; and Milda's Corner in Minneapolis and River City Centre in Shakopee.   12/7/2000

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

Announcing Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening and ...

Announcing Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening and his planning department secretary Harriet Tregoning as speakers at the Growing Smart in Minnesota II conference in St. Paul, the director of 1000 Friends of Minnesota, Lee Ronning, said Maryland's multifaceted Smart Growth program could help Minnesota make some tough decisions on how we grow. The November 30 conference, with Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale and Urban Land Institute President Rick Rosan in attendance, is focusing on land preservation, urban redevelopment, affordable housing, transportation and other urgent growth issues. Its main events, planned by 1000 Friends of Minnesota, include release of the group's study of the state tax code impact on development and the presentation of its first Smart Growth Design Awards. For more information call 651-312-1000.   11/29/2000

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

Scenic America, a national organization created in ...

Scenic America, a national organization created in 1978 with a mission to preserve natural beauty and distinctive community character, released its 2000 Last Chance Landscapes report, listing the ten that are most threatened by billboards, new roads and other symptoms of sprawl. This year's list of the last chance landscapes includes Oakmont (Verdugo Mountains), Glendale, California; Ravalli County, Montana; the entire state of Colorado; Upper Mississippi Blufflands Region of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois; State Highway 131 between Ontario and Rockton, Wisconsin; Erin Township, Wisconsin; Springfield, Illnois; Poplar Point, Anacostia, Washington, D. C.; Cook Creek and Tributaries, Springfield Township, Pennsylvania; and the Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke Ranges, Massachusetts. Scenic America President Meg Maguire said these ten landscapes typify problems present in many other areas. Yet, for every problem, she stressed, there is a solution which other communities have adopted, showing once again that change is inevitable, but ugliness is not.   11/28/2000

Resource(s): www.scenic.org

Washington County's smart growth referendum on a ...

Washington County's smart growth referendum on a property tax increase to fund green space purchases is a heavy-handed response to a manufactured crisis, claims a PioneerPlanet guest columnist, former managing editor of The Minnesota Sentinel, John P. Augustine. He writes that almost all members of the county's Farm Bureau oppose the referendum, but its supporters received state tax dollars to publish a biased handbook full of praise for purchase-of-development rights and other 'tools' for permanently locking in land-use patterns, while officials and eco-extremists get to meet at taxpayer-subsidized conferences to discuss how to best implement their 'smart growth' plans. He feels that farmers shouldn't be asked to make an irresponsible choice of taking a set payment to permanently forfeit development rights, the value of which will change over time. Then he ends, As for the wealthy powerbrokers who move out to rural areas to escape the consequences of urban conditions they helped create, ant then invoke 'rural character preservation' to prevent ordinary Minnesotans from escaping the same conditions, what comes around ought to go around. A few days earlier The PioneerPlanet endorsed the county's green space referendum stressing that development right purchases can help strike the complicated balance that growth requires.   11/6/2000

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

A Washington County referendum on raising $13 ...

A Washington County referendum on raising $13 million in new property taxes over nine years for green space preservation gets editorial support from the St. Paul PioneerPlanet as reflecting pragmatic new thinking about how to balance property rights with environmental and aesthetic concerns. Calling preservation a high priority for many residents, though strategies that deny landowners all opportunity to benefit from rising property values feed understandable resentment, the editorial says the county board hopes to spread the preservation costs across the whole population that benefits from it, by funding a voluntary development right purchase program. Prudent purchases of development rights, the editorial adds, can help strike the complicated balance that growth requires.   10/31/2000

Resource(s): www.pioneerplanet.com

St. Paul starts downtown redevelopment years later ...

St. Paul starts downtown redevelopment years later than Minneapolis and other cities nationwide, but with great hopes for its first urban village, the North Quadrant, which would include up to 1,000 housing units and a park. Half of the 38 units in the first four-story brick condo building, all in the $109,000- $349,000 price range, have been reserved by empty-nesters and young professionals, notes PioneerPlanet Editorial Page Editor Ronald D. Clark in an opinion entitled Back to the city. Quoting St.Paul's director of planning and economic development, Brian Sweeney, who calls new housing the capstone of downtown revival, the editor writes that the city's late response to market demand gave it time to devise a redevelopment plan complete with design standards, geared to an urban environment of quality and distinction. Planning for two other urban villages on the downtown fringe is well under way.   9/12/2000

A healthy downtown is the heart of ...

A healthy downtown is the heart of a city, writes Rosemount Mayor Cathy Busho in a PioneerPlanet column, defending the city's $3 million, long-sought downtown streetscape project against those who think it too expensive or unnecessary. Among the project's main benefits, the mayor lists better traffic flow and safety, new infrastructure, less drainage problems, improved esthetics and links between the historic core and the new commercial area nearby. Many Metro communities, which lack a central focus and have only strip shopping centers and malls, she writes, are now spending millions of dollars to create downtown community gathering places. Mentioning Maple Grove as one of them, the mayor concludes that downtown renewal requires a comprehensive approach to planning and redevelopment and that investment must be made ... to preserve Rosemount's rich heritage.   9/5/2000

With recent Washington County polls finding open ...

With recent Washington County polls finding open space preservation a top local environmental goal, its backers hope a successful November 7 referendum on purchase of development rights (PDR) will let the county protect up to 13,000 acres in an 82,000-acre green corridor and set a precedent for anti-sprawl efforts in other counties. Voter approval of an annual .018 property tax increase for nine years would enable the county to fund a PDR program with $13 million in bonds and preserve some of the rural character that attracts newcomers, says the campaign's leader, John Baird, a former Minnesota Land Trust board member. County planner Jane Harper points out that the growing development pressure in the county makes it very difficult for landowners who don't want to develop to live on the land and keep it in its natural state. They could do that by cashing in on their development rights, she adds. The executive director of 1000 Friends of Minnesota, Lee Ronning, notes that rising prices and diminishing land availability call for a PDR program now, because the longer we wait, the more it's going to cost us. The Washington County Farm Bureau and some landowners are organizing against the proposed program as unfair to their interests. The bureau's president, Joyce Welander, says it almost looks like we will be paying more in property taxes to buy our own land back for the conservation easements or PDR.   8/4/2000

After their 11-month housing moratorium, Lakeville ...

After their 11-month housing moratorium, Lakeville officials expect the upcoming deluge of developer proposals to reflect a switch from big-lot, big-price homes to higher-density, less expensive projects concentrated in the city's undeveloped central area. Targeting the 800-acre area in the city's long-term growth plan, officials are offering developers maximum zoning flexibility to mix there about 2,400 single-family homes and townhouses, with plenty of public open spaces and with easy access to nearby retail, business and community facilities. City Administrator Bob Erickson says we're going to have our own new urbanism, stressing the need to make home-ownership affordable for teachers, police officers, retail and restaurant workers, and other service personnel. Developer Terry Matula of D. R. Horton Custom Homes says his company is selling large new homes north of the central area for more than $300,000 and condo-style homes nearby for $125,000. He thinks cottage homes in the central area will be going for around $250,000 and condo-style townhouses for about $135,000.   7/21/2000

In a trend worrying smart growth and ...

In a trend worrying smart growth and conservation advocates, Twin Cities metro farmers are selling out to developers at a rate that cost the seven-county area 943 farms and nearly 90,000 acres in 1987-97. PioneerPlanet writer Doug Peters reports that some are selling to retire, others to clear debt or buy equipment, another to buy cheaper farms further out, with many simply unable to resist the sky-high prices offered by developers. The state is unable to counter these prices with its farmland and open space protection tax incentives under Green Acres ands the Metropolitan Agricultural Preserves programs. Some experts aren't concerned over disappearing farms. According to University of Minnesota economist Steve Taff, since total metro area farming loss wouldn't make a dent in the regional food market, politicians and the public must decide what to protect and at what price. The chairman of the Metropolitan Council's rural issues committee, Marc Hugunin, says that to balance rural preservation and metropolitan growth, officials must protect the land with the best chance of remaining agricultural and steer development to areas where soil, zoning or owners' preferences make farming unlikely over the long term.   7/7/2000

With almost 40 percent population growth in ...

With almost 40 percent population growth in the last decade and with five-to-ten-acre lots spewing across the countryside, Chisago County officials are eager to revise their sprawl zoning and to manage growth before it's too late to save the area's character and agriculture. The problem, says commissioner Tom Delaney, is how to balance the need to protect every inch of farmland with farmers' rights to sell small pieces of land to stay in business. Last year, the county barred development of small plots without standard planning, requiring it for any site under 20 acres. But in the seven-county metropolitan area and in fast-growing rural counties on its fringe, agricultural zoning usually allows minimum 40-acre lots. Even that, according to Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale, is a little weak for preserving agriculture. Praised by Mondale for creating a task force on purchase and transfer of development rights, Chisago officials would also like to limit landowners' profits from selling for development and encourage voluntary preservation of scenic or environmentally fragile land designated for a green corridor.   6/22/2000

A PioneerPlanet opinion regrets Governor Jesse Ventura's ...

A PioneerPlanet opinion regrets Governor Jesse Ventura's proposal to cap auto licence registration fees at $99 within two years as dreadful public policy, contrary to his Smart Growth policies, which are intended to slow the rate of urban sprawl, promote greater dependence on mass transit and reduce the demand for more highways. The daily says the proposal would give huge tax breaks to luxury car and SUV's owners, with the owner of a $50,000 Lexus eventually paying the same $99 tax as the owner of a $12,000 Chevy Cavalier. It would, the daily continues, entice more people to buy big, gas-guzzling, polluting vehicles; make it easier for households to own second or third vehicles, thereby increasing road congestion and undercutting mass transit; and shrink the state's funds for highway and transit needs. Rather than encouraging Minnesotans to buy more and larger vehicles, the daily concludes, the governor should be creating incentives for people to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles, make fewer solo car trips and place greater reliance on mass transit.   5/17/2000

Chairman of the Ramsey County Board and ...

Chairman of the Ramsey County Board and Hiawatha Corridor Management Committee member Rafael E. Ortega hopes to dissuade PioneerPlanet Editorial Page Editor Steven Dornfeld from his passionate fight against the Hiawatha light rail transit line and issues a call for a truce on the rail proposal. Pointing out that Minnesota has not done a very good job planning for urban growth or making sure metro-area residents can get around, Ortega writes that light rail can keep the Twin Cities from becoming a sprawling, congested and poorly planned community. In combination with an effective bus system, well-planned roads and thoughtful land-use planning, light rail works exceptionally well as a transit mode and as a development tool, beneficial to the quality of life. Admitting a certain risk in light rail investment, he stresses that very few returns are realized without risk and that the Twin Cities are more likely putting themselves at risk by not making this investment.   4/26/2000

Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Allen Garber ...

Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Allen Garber is preparing Greenways, a program of close cooperation with local governments, developers and residents to provide decisionmakers with scientific data on planned projects and to preserve "a statewide network of natural areas, wildlife habitat and other open space hubs interconnected by land and water corridors." The concept is soundly criticized by lawmakers and by PioneerPlanet's Outdoors Editor Chris Niskanen. Saying that the department is already underfunded, overburdened and barely effective, they see the Greenways program as premature, redundant and too vague. The editor, who has interviewed ten department employees without getting any specifics about the program, writes that one of them called Greenways "a specific operional strategy to implement broad principles that are laid out under ecosystem-based management." The editor calls it "gobbledygook."   2/3/2000

Following Governor Jesse Ventura's statement that "the ...

Following Governor Jesse Ventura's statement that "the days of a highway-only transportation program are over," his administration proposed to increase road and mass transit funds by more than $2 billion this decade. Pioneer Planet Associate Editorial Page Editor Steven Dornfeld says the proposal "was assembled behind the scenes by Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg and Metro Council Chairman Ted Mondale," who want to channel "more state resources into mass transit as a means of reducing highway congestion and shaping regional growth." But the editor is skeptical about the governor's push for rails. He writes that for the cost of the planned light rail line in the Hiawatha Avenue corridor, and a commuter rail line from downtown Minneapolis to St. Cloud, "the state could afford to provide a Lexus to each of the anticipated riders." He urges lawmakers to ensure that some of the new transit dollars are spent for regular bus service improvements and for the experiment with "one or two exclusive busways." In contrast, the editor fully supports the Metro Council decision to build and operate up to 300 affordable housing units for low-income families throughout the area. Noting that the council will tap 73 million federal dollars from "the settlement of a lawsuit alleging that public housing was concentrated in minority-dominated or low-income areas," the editor hails the decision as "a bold effort" to provide affordable housing in the suburbs, "where much of the region's job growth is taking place."   1/19/2000

The nation's biggest shopping center, the 4.7 ...

The nation's biggest shopping center, the 4.7-million- square-foot Mall of America in Bloomington, south of Minneapolis, may more than double its size this decade, with another 5.7 million square feet of commercial space developed mostly on its parking lot. According to preliminary environmental-impact documents the city received from the mall owners, the billion-dollar expansion is to include several hotels, wellness and performing-arts centers, retail shops, offices and a mix of condominium and apartment units. Seen as the most ambitious project in Twin Cities history, the construction could spur the area's economy, especially its tourist sector. In 1999, Mall of America drew about 43 million visitors. Given the project's scope, Bloomington senior planner Bob Hawbaker expects the environmental impact review and approval process to take about a year.   1/5/2000

With the Twin Cities' growing demand for ...

With the Twin Cities' growing demand for "high-quality urban housing offering the best of everything," local GMT Corp. will start an 18-story condominium tower in St. Paul's Lowertown area next September. It will be the first downtown project without city subsidies. GMT Corp. President Henry Zaidan is confident of his Sibley House project success, because an "increasing number of empty-nesters, as well as younger professionals, are abandoning the suburbs for the convenience and ease of living in downtown St. Paul." Each floor of the tower will have two to four units, which can be customized to the buyer's preferences. All units will include private balconies, 9-foot ceilings, luxury kitchens and baths, and large open rooms, most of them facing the Mississippi River. The tower, designed by Wolfgramm and Gleeson Architects of St. Paul, will also have a ground-level space for two upscale retail stores.   12/8/1999

Toward the end of his trade-and tourism-promoting ...

Toward the end of his trade-and tourism-promoting visit in Japan, Governor Jesse Ventura and his entourage took the Tokyo-Osaka 200-mph "bullet train," enjoying the smooth, silent 300-mile, two-hour ride over welded rails. State transportation commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg said he doesn't know when, but such a train "is going to be a significant part of our transportation system in the future." Earlier, both the governor and the commissioner said that a tour of a downtown Tokyo traffic management facility confirmed their beliefs that the Twin Cities metropolitan area needs a light-rail system.   11/22/1999

Describing Governor Jesse Ventura as "a strong ...

Describing Governor Jesse Ventura as "a strong advocate of 'smart growth'", Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale said the governor gave the council several new tools to combat urban sprawl. The most immediate impact, the chairman said, will have screening of all construction fund requests for compliance with smart growth policies before the governor "considers including them in the $400-million bonding bill he will submit to the 2000 Legislature." Describing Governor Jesse Ventura as "a strong advocate of 'smart growth'", Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale said the governor gave the council several new tools to combat urban sprawl. The most immediate impact, the chairman said, will have screening of all construction fund requests for compliance with smart growth policies before the governor "considers including them in the $400-million bonding bill he will submit to the 2000 Legislature."   11/22/1999

In an opinion piece titled "Waste, shmaste ...

In an opinion piece titled "Waste, shmaste," the St. Paul PioneerPlanet hits state transportation officials for their defiant attitude while releasing a cost/benefit analysis of a proposed 12-mile light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America. The analysis, ordered by the 1999 Legislature, shows that the line "would produce 42 cents in tangible benefits for every $1 in costs." In contrast, the newspaper says, economic studies of highway and bridge projects have shown up to $7 in benefits for each $1 spent. "Apparently," it continues, "in the administration of Reform Party Gov. Jesse Ventura, money is no object when it comes to rail transit." The governor may get his wish to ride a train by 2002, the newspaper concludes, "but the cost of the ticket will be enormously expensive," with taxpayers having to "pick up the tab."   11/9/1999

As "governing America in peace and prosperity ...

As "governing America in peace and prosperity seems like child's play ... Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan and others," writes conservative Washington Post columnist George Will from St. Paul, "have come out to play, using the Reform Party as their sandbox." Meantime, Governor Jesse Ventura is campaigning for a state constitutional amendment to establish a unicameral legislature, which for the columnist is "not a good idea," but better than most of Buchanan's and one more "than Trump has revealed." In this context, the columnist offers a thought obviously applicable to a recent surge of grass-roots direct- growth-control measures, especially in California. He writes, "the nation's Founders built constitutional distance between the government and the governed because the essence of deliberative democracy is representation. The people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide."   11/9/1999

To make Twin Cities bus commuting more ...

To make Twin Cities bus commuting more attractive, Metro Transit has launched a pilot "fleet diversification program," with two Greyhound-style fast motor coaches, equipped with reclining seats, footrests, reading lights, air vents and storage bins. Both coaches are running between Minneapolis and Wayzata. They will be tested on other express routes next year. Metro Transit will also buy about 25 smaller buses to service neighborhood feeder routes.   11/3/1999

Launching his "Big Plan" at a time ...

Launching his "Big Plan" at a time of limited state resources, Governor Jesse Ventura promised careful scrutiny of funding requests to keep next year's construction bill at $400 million, while checking sprawl through combined housing and transportation planning. He also restated his willingness to push for a statewide high-speed voice, data and video network; for light rail as a part of the state's transit system; for better cooperation between state agencies; and for managing growth and conserving open space in the metro area through community incentives instead of state directives. According to Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale, the state will use "smart growth" criteria to ensure funding for projects in line with its urban, transportation and environmental goals.   10/18/1999

Woodbury residents, whose number has almost doubled ...

Woodbury residents, whose number has almost doubled to 39,000 in 1998, elected growth-control backers to two open City Council seats last November, counting on more stringent provisions in the updated comprehensive plan due for public review by the end of October. Officials say expectations of a no-growth plan would be unrealistic, but residents should like what city planners have drafted for the next 20 years. They target farmland in the city's eastern and southern sections for residential and mixed use, but designate areas elsewhere either as rural estates or as an urban reserve untouchable until 2020. The city will increase its open spaces to a total of 500 acres, linked by "green corridors." In the next two months, residents will be telling planners whether they prefer the city to grow at a pace of 600 or 1,000 housing units annually for the next five years. The final plan must be sent to the Metropolitan Council by the end of the year.   10/6/1999

The cost of a six-year improvement project ...

The cost of a six-year improvement project for Highway 61, southeast of St. Paul, may exceed $120 million, including the roughly two million dollar share the state expects from the small city of Newport. With population under 5,000 and a budget of $1.9 million, the city could not afford to pay that amount. Councilwoman Pauline Schottmuller says this "regional project ... is not really of great benefit to Newport" and shouldn't cost it one penny. Newport Business Association President Mary North says the project will cost the city in "lost business, economic impact and disruption to the community" during the construction. She notes that Norwest Bank has already closed its branch, and Knox Lumber intends to close store in September. But City Administrator Larry Bodahl is optimistic, both that the state will revise its cost estimates for Newport, and that the city will remain attractive for business.   8/10/1999

Sprawl control won't work,Ó asserts a guest ...

ÒSprawl control won't work,Ó asserts a guest columnist, Minneapolis attorney Jonathan F. Mack, in the Twin Cities' Pioneer Press. Describing himself as a habitual pedestrian and bus rider, with a scowl for recreational vehicles and Òa nostalgic soft spot for the aesthetic of the metropolis,Ó he gives this reason for his opposition to most anti-sprawl efforts: ÒRestricting development in outlying suburbs, however achieved, means higher demand for limited supply and thus higher housing prices in existing suburbs and the cities. Period.Ó He says that once Portland, Ore. Òinstituted schemes to end sprawl, it went from having one of the lowest average home prices in the nation to one of the highest in less than a decade.Ó   7/27/1999

Updated cost projections for the Minneapolis light-rail ...

Updated cost projections for the Minneapolis light-rail system rose from $446 million to $548 million, allowing for inflation and a $31 million contingency fund. The increase may force state transportation officials to cut the number of planned stations from 18 to 14, and seek other savings, but it won't deprive the project of its federal funding share, expected now to be $274 million. Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg and Metropolitan Council Chairman Ted Mondale have apprised federal officials of the state budgetary situation and received confirmation of their support. Experts agree that upward cost adjustments are normal for these planning stages.   7/27/1999

In a continuing op-ed page debate on ...

In a continuing op-ed page debate on smart growth, the Pioneer Press presented the contrary views of John Carlisle from the National Center For Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and David Bollier, a consultant and author from Massachusetts, whose five books include "How Smart Growth Can Stop Sprawl." Carlisle calls the administration's Livability Agenda "profoundly anti-suburban" and bound to increase road congestion and pollution. He thinks it will also mount pressures to live "in more crowded, urban-like neighborhoods" and to use mass transit instead of the cars people prefer for convenience and a sense of freedom. Bollier says that sprawl has doubled vehicle travel, negated fuel efficiency and emission improvements, contributed to global warming and habitat destruction, undercut a sense of community and aggravated racial polarization in metro regions. He sees the success of anti-sprawl initiatives in the 1998 elections and the leading role of the Bank of America, the Chicago Commercial Club and the Atlanta Chambers of Commerce in the fight against sprawl as signs of recognition that smart growth is "more environmentally benign, fiscally responsible and socially equitable."   7/12/1999

The Twin Cities' Pioneer Press says the ...

The Twin Cities' Pioneer Press says the Metro Council needs more power and resources to manage the region's growth. Since 1967, when Governor Harold LaVander predicted to the first council that its main challenge for decades would be "controlling urban sprawl," the challenge has increased, while the council's powers to enforce its policies for the seven-county metro area and stop growth from "leapfrogging" to adjacent counties has remained limited. Noting Governor Jesse Ventura's clear commitment to "smart growth strategies," the daily says the time has come to expand the council's jurisdiction over other fast-growing counties, to increase its funds for transit, affordable housing and environmental cleanup, and to ensure "that future development on the suburban fringe pays the full cost of new infrastructure."   7/12/1999

Ready Òto take a tough roadÓ against ...

Ready Òto take a tough roadÓ against sprawl, Governor Jesse Ventura endorsed Smart Growth principles and pledged to incorporate them into legislation, including incentives for local land-use and transportation planning. He wants to follow the $60 million recently won from lawmakers for the Twin Cities' first light-rail line with further transit investments and with property tax changes to discourage sprawl and spur redevelopment. Greeted by a standing ovation at a Minneapolis conference on Growing Smart in Minnesota, Governor Ventura said Òdevelopers should not always call the shotsÓ in the local and regional decision-making process. He warned that failure to act against sprawl would burden businesses and taxpayers with heavy costs for new infrastructure, and would ÒbankruptÓ the state. His Metropolitan Council new chairman, Ted Mondale, outlined the council's more aggressive role in managing growth in the seven-county area. The council will channel mass transit investments and other incentives to communities like Apple Valley or Lakeville Òthat have chosen the way they want to growÓ as opposed to those Òthat let development just happen.Ó The Minneapolis conference was organized by the 1000 Friends of Minnesota and its 25 public and private partners in the Minnesota Smart Growth Network.   6/14/1999

Legislative negotiators sent a compromise $3.2 billion ...

Legislative negotiators sent a compromise $3.2 billion transportation bill for final House and Senate approval. The two-year bill excludes a transit mobility fund proposed by Governor Jesse Ventura, and shifts his $60 million request for a Minneapolis light-rail line to different legislation. It also gives the Governor the requested $7.4 million for Metro Transit bus service expansion in the next fiscal year, but reduces this amount to $3.7 million in fiscal 2001.   5/20/1999

1000 Friends of Minnesota and its 20 ...

1000 Friends of Minnesota and its 20 partners in a new Smart Growth Network are holding a "Growing Smart in Minnesota" conference June 11 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, to review the nation's smart growth programs and identify their best lessons for this state. Four special sessions will examine sprawl's social disparities, its real costs, smart growth tools, and the links between transportation and land use. Governor Jesse Ventura sees Smart Growth as a top priority for his administration.   5/14/1999

Minneapolis-St.Paul: Metro Transit reports that its passenger ...

Minneapolis-St.Paul: Metro Transit reports that its passenger count grew by 6.4 percent, to 66 million in 1998. The regional Minnesota Valley Transit Authority, which runs bus services for the Twin Cities six southern suburbs and Mall of America, reports an even bigger gain of 10.6 percent, with a total of 1,485,000 passengers. Since Governor Ventura's budget boosts transit funds from $98.7 million to $113 million, officials expect further transit use increases.   3/1/1999

Minneapolis-St.Paul: The Metropolitan Council's new chairman, Ted ...

Minneapolis-St.Paul: The Metropolitan Council's new chairman, Ted Mondale, sees rail transit and busways as crucial for fighting the Twin Cities' seven-county area traffic congestion and for stimulating high-density development. By offering local governments help with transit upgrades, Mondale hopes for their cooperation in curbing sprawl and spurring affordable housing. Such steps are needed to accommodate the 330,000-household growth projected for the area in the next 20 years.   2/1/1999

As municipalities across the Twin Cities metro ...

As municipalities across the Twin Cities metro area update their comprehensive growth plans for the next five years, an editor of Minneapolis-St.Paul CityBusiness calls on all builders and property owners to get involved quickly in the process or risk costly mistakes. Pointing out that community task forces have for months readied their ideas for land-use designation updates, he urges still unconcerned developers to join the debate and "balance the scales." Under a 1995 legislative mandate, the municipal plans' updates are due by the end of the year.   12/1/1998

Minneapolis/St. Paul City Business editor James ...

Minneapolis/St. Paul City Business editor James Dean welcomes the surge of cooperation that after 20 years of study and debate, promises to give Minnesota its first light- rail line. Noting that the line linking downtown Minneapolis, the airport and later the Mall of America will improve the area's transit, traffic flow and employment opportunities, the editor warns that "overselling" these benefits could undermine public support for any future light rail expansion.   8/1/1998

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