Hennepin Avenue’s redesign is iffy for peds in some spots
Hennepin Avenue’s reopening is certainly a big deal. Our reporter Brian Gabrial talked with Rinata Restaurant and Troubadour Wine Bar about weathering two years of road construction. But here’s a tidbit about the construction that didn’t make it to our November print edition that I have been trying to chase down for a year:
When the southern half of Hennepin Avenue opened up last summer, a few people noticed a change to the design on the 2800 block of Hennepin Avenue.
What was supposed to be a sidewalk and a two-way bikeway separated by grass outside of Troubadour and KiKu Bistro, were actually built next to each other with grass closest to the street.
The original plan along the 2800 block of Hennepin Avenue shows seven feet of grass between the sidewalk and bike path. No updated plan is available on the city’s Hennepin Avenue project page.
The City of Minneapolis said this was “to create additional green space for stormwater treatment,” which Public Works Director Tim Sexton highlighted during the Hennepin Avenue reopening ceremony.
The snafu? Sidewalk patios, which were built into the original plan, can sometimes take up the sidewalk space, which pushes pedestrians into the bikeway, not the planned grass area.
“With the project now complete, all previously approved sidewalk cafés will need to reapply for a sidewalk café licenses,” Allen Henry, spokesperson with the City of Minneapolis said. “Because the street has been reconstructed, applicants will also be required to submit a new site plan as part of the approval process.”
Windom Science Fair
The Southwest Robotics Team judged roughly 60 science projects created by 3rd through 5th graders at Windom School on Dec. 3. There were no winners or prizes, just rows and rows of budding scientists with positive comments from their high school mentors.
“Don’t go online and Google ‘Best Science Fair Project,’” Southwest Ultraviolet Robotics Mentor Lynn Meyer said as she introduced me to the fair.
True to their own interests, Harper R. tested whether rocks and crystals make different noises, Mattias M. studied tornados after a fateful trip to the library with his dad, and Bennett tested whether his cat was a lefty or a righty. View photos on the Southwest Voices website.
Wedge welcomes new director
The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association hired Alexander Kurt Johnson as its new executive director, and one of the first things they mentioned in their introductory note was “thumbing through the brittle yellow pages of the long defunct Wedge Neighborhood Community newspaper,” wondering how a community asset “could drift so easily into history.”
Tucked away in the note, is Johnson’s vision of what best makes a community function: “Knowing your neighbor more deeply, and focusing your civic energy in a tight local geography, [is] paramount to realizing a future where everyone has the social support system they need to flourish, a world where neighbors help neighbors and neighborhood associations are the beating hearts of community rather than atrophying appendages of central bureaucracy.”
ICE USING LAKE STREET POST OFFICE
The Lake Street Post Office is being used as ICE staging grounds, and workers are not happy about it
In the bitter cold on Sunday, Dec. 14, post office workers protested their parking lots being used by ICE for its operations. USPS workers rallied outside the post office on 31st Street and then marched over a mile to the post office on Bloomington Avenue.
Workers are demanding the end of ICE using the parking lots for operations as it’s creating unsafe working conditions for letter carriers.
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