Believe it or not, a majority of Minneapolis residents think they're getting good value for money every April when they pay their property taxes. That's according to the Southwest Journal, which got a preview of the results of the city's latest annual survey of residents. According to a graph accompanying their story, 52 percent of Minneapolitans surveyed thought that property taxes should be increased to maintain or improve city services. That's sharply down from 63 percent when the city did its first survey in 2001. In the intervening time, the city has been saddled with massive cuts in …
Inspired by reader Andy Gifford's great find last week—photographic evidence of the humble beginnings of Curran's Restaurant—I went digging around the Minnesota Historical Society's photographic archives. The changes are striking. Want more local history and old photos? Check out the Linden Hills History Study Group website.
This Saturday, superstitious Americans and fans of folklore will sit rapt, waiting for a corpulent, beaver-like rodent to stick his head out of his burrow in upstate New York. So the tradition goes, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow and returns to his burrow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, we'll have an early spring. I, for one, am not sure I can take six more weeks of subzero temperatures. The Atlantic Monthly has put together a list of the eight cities with the crummiest winters, but Minneapolis is only a runner-up for "Snowiest." Truly, they haven't been out here…
Sunday, the National Weather Service issued a winter-weather advisory for Hennepin County. Freezing rain, snow and sleet pelted down on many a head throughout the Twin Cities, as the outskirts of the pleasantly-named Winter Storm Luna passed through the area. Weather service officials urged caution on the roads on Sunday morning, and with good reason. According to Lt. Eric Roeske, spokesperson for the Minnesota State Patrol, Minnesota saw 367 crashes and 48 injured people due to the storm, 299 spun-out cars, and 3 jacknifed tractor-trailers. So far, the City of Minneapolis has not declared a…
I think I can now demonstrate to my friends from Austin, TX why Minneapolis is the cooler city—no pun intended. In Austin, you can't instantly freeze near-boiling water (or coffee, or soup, etc., etc.) when it gets inhumanly cold out. The National Weather Service predicts wind chill values will stay below zero through Wednesday night. Conventional wisdom around here holds that this trick won't work well unless the temperature is really cold, in the minus 20's. Unfortunately, the temperature on Monday night in our part of Minneapolis was hovering in the negative single digits. Searching for a…
Skimming the list of Mayor RT Rybak's 2013 priorities (many thanks to the Star Tribune's Eric Roper for transcribing everything on that white board), I was struck at how little on the list seemed immediately relevant to much of Southwest Minneapolis. Among the 37-or-so main items on that list, only five seemed to bear specifically on this quarter of the city: Resourcing small businesses and community corridors Building a BRT station at Lake Street & 35-W Moving the streetcar project forward (Nicollet Ave to 48th Street is a prime candidate) Getting the city's voice heard in the MSP airport's …
Thursday morning's news that Surly Brewing would be getting over $500,000 to clean up pollution on the site of its future brewery is big stuff—and it highlights a pot of public money that's going to be critical in redeveloping many parts of Southwest Minneapolis. According to the Star Tribune, Surly won a grant from the Met Council that will cover around one fifth of the total cost to remediate its desired Prospect Park site. The project's total budget is around $20 million. The grant comes from the Council's Livable Communities project, one of several grant programs from the state, …
With temperatures this week slated to soar into the mid-30's, there are likely many Southwest Minneapolis children whose snow forts are likely to melt. That sad fate could be postponed, though, if they built their next creations out of an exotic-sounding, yet simple winter substance called Pykrete. Follow us on Facebook | Sign up for our free, daily newsletter An 86/14 mixture of water and wood pulp, the material melts much more slowly than traditional ice and snow, and is even stronger than concrete in certain respects. Its properties—and low cost—are so remarkable, it was even planned to be…
Friday night, trek on down to 43rd and Nicollet to Southwest Minneapolis' local hacker space for a big dose of fun. Leonardo's Basement is hosting their fifth annual Rube Goldgberg building competition from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. This year's theme, according to a post on the Kingfield Neighborhood Association's website, is "chemical causation." "This means that we will be really happy if your portion of the causation machine contains a simple or elaborate chemical reaction as part of its mechanical operation," the post says. For $15, you'll get to help create a giant homage to the late cartoonist…
Wednesday, a major car rental company announced it was buying the Zipcar car-sharing service. Zipcar serves dozens of metro areas across the country, including Minneapolis, where it competes with local nonprofit HOURCAR. But could this deal threaten HOURCAR with well-funded corporate competition? Analysts say the Avis Budget Group is trying to muscle in on what's turning out to be the next big thing in car rentals. "Avis, of course, thinks it’s worth $491 million to enter this market by buying the largest upstart rather than having to build such a business itself," writes Washington Post …
Shortly before I left for Boston to enjoy some family time, the Star-Tribune ran a story outlining city officials' quest to get more higher-density housing built in Minneapolis. Several major projects underway illustrate a trend toward tightly packed, urban living that is playing out in cities across the United States, giving Minneapolis planners hope of recapturing population the city lost starting in the 1950s. More apartments and condominiums got the green light in Minneapolis this year than any in recent history -- about 2,800 in 22 new buildings so far. "If we're going to compete in …
Seeking another way to portray the way Americans live "unmediated by proxies like city boundaries, arterial roads, state lines, etc.," MIT grad student Brandon Martin-Anderson recently put together an interesting map portraying everyone in the United States as dots. The overall effect is a bit like a density heat map, and about as precise. Martin-Anderson used census block data, rather than pinning down individual addresses, so a few screwy things do show up—no one lives in the sand traps at the Minikahda Club, for example. In the aggregate, though the map offers an interesting and even …
First, thank you for your loyal readership this year. Happy holidays and safe travels to you all! Starting on Dec. 26, I will be taking some time off to spend the holidays with family, returning to the wheelhouse of Southwest Minneapolis Patch on New Year's Day. You may notice a little less news and information being passed along via Patch during this time, but the site has lots of tools to help you continue to share information with your neighbors while I’m gone. Announcements If you have news you’d like to share, log in and post it as an announcement using this link. Events If you have an …
Metro Transit and its drivers are often the grimmest of civil servants. Stoically, if not humorlessly, they put up with customers who are rude, rowdy, or just plain drunk. Drivers cut in front of them, or box them in and prevent their topped bus from pulling out into traffic. It's no surprise that they don't have a strong reputation for joviality. But every now and then, as in the YouTube video above, you meet a driver with a spring in their step. It's not clear which bus the videographer is riding, but it appears to be traveling northbound on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis (the CVS…
Last year, I stood with a small group of bicycle boosters and city hall denizens in a small and slightly overgrown garden at the intersection where Bryant Avenue South curves eastward to avoid the Hennepin-Lyndale interchange at the top of The Wedge and link up with the bicycle bridge across Lyndale Avenue South. A cold, wet wind swept south over the tangled mass of concrete and cars, but that didn't depress the crowd, who enthusiastically whooped at the official opening of the Bryant Avenue Bicycle Boulevard. As I wrote at the time, the Bicycle Boulevard improvements were meant to provide a…
When Southwest Minneapolis Patch launched in November of 2010, you and your workers may remember myself, or other local editors and freelancers wondering into your small business to create a listing of your business for our super-comprehensive directory, called Patch Places. Now, more than a year later, Patch Places is thriving. Each month, crazy-large numbers of people from all over the metro area visit our directory, and your business listings, to find out addresses, hours of operation, descriptions, and even contact information for hundreds of Southwest Minneapolis businesses. Patch users …
You may have gotten a bit of a surprise when you opened up Southwest Minneapolis Patch this morning. What happened to the familiar green-and-white?! No, you're not losing it! Patch looks different today. We did a quick visual nip-and-tuck to the homepage to make it even more user-friendly. And we've moved a couple pieces of furniture. For those keeping score: We tweaked some words in our navigation bar to save space (e.g., "Traffic & Gas" is now "Commute") We moved the weather icon next to the Patch branding so you can find it more quickly! We moved, well, YOU closer to the top! (Our "…
Got young kids and nothing planned on Saturday afternoon? Why not come down to Windom Spanish Immersion School for the Windom Neighborhood Organization's Tots Rock festival! Patch will be there from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
As many have probably heard, Barton Open's long-serving Principal Steve DeLapp is retiring at the end of this school year. But when we recap his tenure in a story later this month, we want to know what he means to you—did DeLapp change your life? Do you have funy stories about him? What's he like to interact with as a parent or a teacher? If you've run a school for 20 years, you're likely to leave a few lasting impressions here and there—and we want to hear them! Leave your memories in the comments section below. Make sure to use your full, real name and your relationship to Barton Open, …
"We’ve evolved to where dogs family members," said Southwest Minneapolis resident Beth Rutledge. "When people are checking out (doggie) daycares, boarding facilities, and trainers, it’s like they're dropping off their kid." She should know. Rutledge is one of the people behind a new-ish online hub for the dog-loving community in Mineapolis called Sidewalk Dog. Patch wants to know what you think, though. We're doing a story on the rise of dog-friendly businesses in Southwest Minneapolis, and we want to know which ones best exemplify this trend. Salons, restaurants and coffee shops, even used …
