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Neighbors Question Lack of Input in Linden Corner Project

Neighbors want to have their say in the proposed five-story development in Linden Hills' Famous Dave's lot.

One of Mark Dwyer’s main selling points about his new proposed development at 43rd and Upton is that he’s a local developer with a local design team. He’s lived in Linden Hills for 18 years, and he has a great interest in the neighborhood, including serving as volunteer president of the Linden Hills Business Association.

However, some neighbors have questioned the lack of community input Dwyer has taken for his five-story Linden Corner development, and say the Linden Hills Neighborhood Council (LHiNC) hasn't reached out enough to the community.

Perceived Lack of Community Input
Dwyer said he has been trying to reach out to people, and wants to continue to have discussions, to avoid rumors and seek input. "There are a lot of fears out there," Dwyer said. "I get that—change is not easy, but my reaction is, let’s talk." 

"This is meant to be a local effort," he added.

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Maria Nelson heard about Dwyer’s plan to develop 43rd Street and Upton Avenue about a year ago, but didn’t take it too seriously until she attended a neighborhood board meeting a couple of weeks ago. “It just seemed like the developer had made a lot of inroads,” Nelson said. “He had made the right contacts on the LHiNC board and the zoning committee—he was going to plow ahead despite the rules of the zoning code.” 

Last week, Dwyer was scheduled to speak at a LHiNC Zoning Committee meeting about the project, which wasn't announced publicly, drawin the ire of some neighbors. “We organized very quickly to show up at this meeting,” Nelson said, who estimates 50 concerned neighbors were in attendance. “They were incredibly surprised. And the question I asked was, 'Why is this meeting happening?'”

Larry LaVercombe, chair of LHiNC’s Zoning Committee, said that omitting a public notification wasn’t an attempt to keep the public in the dark. “When I opened the meeting there were a couple of people who said, 'How come I just heard about this from my neighbor?'" LaVercombe said. "There’s not a conspiracy brain trying to make it so that nobody knows what’s going on.”

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“In the last five or six years, 98 percent of what we do is that people come in front of us about a garage or something like that," LaVercombe said. "It’s small potatoes—and now there’s this.”

According to Senior City Planner Hilary Dvorak, there has been no official project proposal submitted to Minneapolis, though the city has met with Dwyer to discuss it. Dwyer plans to file a formal application to the city for a conditional use permit in August, most likely. The Minneapolis Planning Commssion will make a decision after a public hearing and public comments are submitted.

The neighborhood council's zoning committee would also typically weigh in on the project. But LaVercombe said he feels the committee's role should be to facilitate dialogue, rather than taking a stand either way about the issue. “My little committee is not heading toward a vote," he said. "What’s more likely, members of my committee who have a particular interest will probably be visible in the dialogue going forward.” 

Michael Altmann, who lives on Linden Hills Boulevard, said he thinks the neighborhood council has “not gotten out in front of the game as a neighborhood organization.”

“It would be really wonderful for LHiNC to set the tone and provide the forum for this discussion,” he said. “They need to make sure a sizeable fraction of the people that live in Linden Hills know about it at least—that fits in their mission and would strengthen their organization, it would strengthen their role as community center."

"Right now, volunteers work tirelessly behind the scenes and no one knows who they are,” Altmann added. 

Altmann hopes that LHiNC can step up on these issues. “We can’t just grumble when things like this get brought up—that site has been there for years waiting for something to happen to it," he said. "We should think as a community [about] what we want to happen; Now we’re in reactive mode.”

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