Grand Avenue in Saint Paul.

It was gentrified well over forty years ago – before the term really existed.

It’s been one of Saint Paul’s most durable commercial corridors since as long as I’ve lived here, and then some.

And it’s been having trouble lately.

Well, parts of it have. We’re told that some parts are doing quite well, all in all. Which, lets be honest, doesn’t surprise me; the parts of Grand that work, work well.

But it’s on the verge of becoming a “Berg’s Law” – whenever there’s a social or economic problem, look for a Public Employee Union.

Bingo:

“The problem isn’t the avenue, it’s that group,” [Golden Fig Fine Foods’s Laurie] Crowell said, referring to the out-of-state pension fund that owns some of the corridor’s largest retail spaces.

The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, known as STRS Ohio and based out of Columbus, has invested some of its teacher pension funds in real estate, including four buildings along Grand Avenue that it has owned since 2006…Salut, Pottery Barn, Lululemon, J. Crew, J.W. Hulme and Anthropologie, which closed late 2022, were all in buildings owned by STRS Ohio.

When looking for a storefront for Evergreen Collective, Hall said she was interested in the building where J.W. Hulme used to be, but said the rent would have been twice as high as her current location.

The vacancies along Grand Avenue are “not a sign that the avenue isn’t working,” Crowell said. “It is a sign that [STRS Ohio] isn’t working with the avenue.”

Of course, it’s not just businesses in STRS-owned buildings that are having trouble. And STRS pleads innocence, or at least competence.

Like most stories re Twin Cities business, there are two sides to the story.

It’s just that there really didn’t used to be a downside on Grand.

The Strib ran this story:

Fact-Check: Governors Flanagan and Klink tell us that Minnesota’s…er, “One Minnesota’s” economy has never been better.

And Brandonomics, we are constantly told, is breaking records.

So, clearly, the myth is busted.

Among the many laws that went into effect on Monday, Governor Klink was proud to announce this:

For starters: 68? Sweet Jesus, what is this, “Cool Hand Luke” sweat fetish pr0n?

Beyond that?

Mandatory temperatures (outside the obvious safety habitability rules, which already exist) combined with rent control = less housing.

Or does nobody study economics anymore?

…by this point that nobody who supports absurdly high minimum wages at a policy-making level can possibly actually believe that it’s about helping working people, can you?

I was reliably informed that the DFL’s spending spree was going to “reduce poverty by 30%”, and that “Bidenomics” was a new golden age.

And yet…:

Apparently the (checks scorecard) Mainstream Media are now spreading Russian disinformation.

SCENE. Mitch BERG is leaving a small cafe. Avery LIBRELLE is walking in. BERG is too tired to care and doesn’t try to evade or escape the encounter.

LIBRELLE: Mer…

BERG: Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery.

LIBRELLE: In “One MInnesota! (TM) “, we are all prospering in a future where we boldly stride forward together.

BERG: Can I have some blue cheese dressing for that word salad?

LIBRELLE: You just hate progress.

BERG: Nah. I hate decay and decline. Here’s an example. The entire Grand Palace center, which used to be the heart of a vibrant neighborhood back before “vibrant” meant “graffiti and panhandlers”, is empty with demise of the Pottery barn.

LIBRELLE: And you’re blaming the DFL?

BERG: Who else has defined the business climate in Saint Paul?

LIBRELLE: The wider state economy, duh.

BERG: Which, according to Governors Flanagan and Klinki, is…

LIBRELLE: Going gangbusters for One MInnesota! (TM)

BERG: So Saint Paul’s main commercial strip is languishing because the state’s economy is…too good?

LIBRELLE: Yes. It’s the GOP’s fault.

BERG: A party that has no power in Saint Paul is responsible for a business climate that isn’t really failing…?

LIBRELLE: Yes. That’s why.

BERG: Huh. Maybe if Saint Paul were to identify as a prosperous city, that’ll help.

LIBRELLE: Oh! The city does identify as a prosperous city! And if. you disagree, you’re a MAGA white supremacist1

BERG: Oh, clearly.

And SCENE

“The Twin Cities are victim of Greater Minnesota!”

It’s a weird approach to messaging.

But the DFL’s noise machine is apparently betting long on it.

A common refrain from Minnesota Republicans goes something like this: Rural communities are overtaxed, underfunded and ignored by legislators. Greater Minnesota sends their tax dollars to the Twin Cities, where metro residents benefit from government programs…It’s a sweeping argument that plays into the state’s often bitterly divided partisan and geographic politics, which have become deeply intertwined during the past decade, with Republicans dominating greater Minnesota while the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has locked down the metro. It also simplifies a complicated web of tax and revenue distributions — and it’s factually untrue. 

This is an extension of Paul Krugman’s ludicrious claim from 15-odd years ago that “blue” states “send more revenue” to “red” states than the other way around.

To the extent that its true, it’s because:

• Much federal spending is huge-ticket items – farm bills, interstate highwatys, military bases – dropped into sparsely-populated states. A Minuteman III squadron in a bunch of farmers fields in northwest North Dakota may consumer hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but almost none of it goes into local pockets.
• Costs of living and incomes are higher in urban, “blue” areas. Wait – don’t Democrats support “progressive taxation”?

But for whatever reason, DFLers are hammering on this “issue” this week. The DFL’s “taxation expert” Aisha Gomez:

We talked about this in 2010: big-ticket “public good infrastructure costs the same in Greater Minnesota (basically) as in the metro; a school or water treatment plant or road in a town of 4,000 doesn’t cost 1% as much as a school in MInneapolis (400,000). Those costs are spread across a smaller population – meaning higher per capita consumption.

Gomez could point that out.

Or she could demigogue the – for lack of a better term – “issue” and try to use it to wedge the Blue cities and Red state even further.

Why? No idea.

But if I were forced to bet on this, I’d spot a couple bucks that:

• The next financial forecast isn’t nearly as rosy as the last couple
• The DFL is pre-emptively trying to demigogue the issue to stoke their base’s sense of victimhood and tribal rage.
• That sense of rage is a good bit of “preparing the PR battlefield” for an election in a decaying economy where the SCOTUS can’t overturn Roe again.

Action on that bet?

…one of those people who doesn’t need food, energy, shelter, or transportation, Paul Krugman’s got great news for you:

And apparently, if you are one of those people who needs those things, you either don’t count or are a failure.

Mike Casey is running for the GOP nomination in CD4.

Jim Schulz, former MN Attorney General candidate, is with the Minnesota Private Business Council.

And here’s today’s music list:

As we noted the other day, Target is closing nine stores in four, blue, cities.

The news brought out a flood of expert social media opinion from people who have never worked in the productive private sector. “Target is just using teh crime to cover up teh realz reazons they’re closing” was the big line around mid-week.

Including this, from our long time acquaintance, Molly Priesmeyer.

You may remember Molly – and “award winning journalist“ who is never let the fact she doesn’t know anything about a subject stop her from writing about it.

She turns her keen-eyed expertise to the world of business:

Let’s be frank – many things can be true simultaneously.

Business ain’t easy. Balancing supply, demand and asking price isn’t for the faint of heart, and that’s before you get into taxes, regulations, and externalities like regular “shrinkage”.

WIth all that, though, Target’s been in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and even NYC for literally decades, through good times and bad, ups and downs in markets, the works.

And the closures aren’t spread across the entire market.

As far as Target’s security? Not sure if they’re better than the FBI – but let’s say they perfected teh art of store security. That means they catch thieves, grifters, swindlers and other ne’er do wells.

And then…

Well, Target may do a lot of things, but rthey don’t run any county attorney’s offfices. Or any city councils, especially the ones making laws like shoplifting less than $900 doesn’t even warrant a charge, much less a sentence.

Target’s big, but not that big.

Perhaps “award winning journalist” Priesjeyer has some insight on the facts that aren’t apparent from, well, the facts. I’m all ears.

Over the past couple of days, it seems every vapid progressive mouthpiece has adopted the term “boy math”.

In context, I guess it means “math I disagree with, but can’t say why, so I’m going to insult it”.

Case in point:

Progressive girl math is dumping trillions of dollars into an economy, and expecting prices not to rise, and then saying increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes is the answer.

Alternate definition of “boy math”, apparently. math done with reason and accountability?

Citing the rise in meth-related crimes and low revenue, Target is closing nine stores in Nebraska, Kentucky and Montana.

Just kidding. They’re in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and New York City:

Target is closing nine stores in major cities across four states, claiming theft and organized retail crime have made the environment unsafe for staff and customers – and unsustainable for business.

The big box chain is part of a wave of retailers – both large and small – that say they’re struggling to contain store crimes that have hurt their bottom lines. Many have closed stores or made changes to merchandise and layouts.

Of course, the hecklers are out in force; “crime can’t possibly be that bad…”.

It’s not clear that crime is growing significantly more serious. But as economic fears grow amid inflation and rising borrowing costs, shoplifting often comes with the territory, industry watchers say.

Somehow I suspect that’s not the reason these small businesses in Oakland were bucking the narrative:

Target was not the only retailer to raise concerns about retail crime today. Approximately two hundred Oakland business owners closed up shop for a couple hours Tuesday morning and held a demonstration to bring attention to crime plaguing the area.

Target was not the only retailer to raise concerns about retail crime today. Approximately two hundred Oakland business owners closed up shop for a couple hours Tuesday morning and held a demonstration to bring attention to crime plaguing the area.

If there were just some sort of connecting thread…

Hope you’re enjoying your long weekend dedicated to a movement that mistook “two decades of inflated wages when the US was the world’s only functional economy, while Japan and Germany and South Korea were bombed flat and India and China were busy with socialist noodling and starving themselves back to the 1800s and unable to manufacture anything more complicated than motor scooters” for an eternal entitlement.

And they still do:

Senator (gag) Smith: go ahead. Put a bunch of workers – with or without union cards – in an open field. See if a factory or a workshop or, since you’re a DFLer and it’s your only perspective of the private sector, a coffee shop springs up around them.

We’ll wait.

Well, tomorrow I’ll wait. I’ve got labor day plans.

I saw this tweet from Governor Klink, and it brought me back in time almost (cough cough) years, to when I was trying to decide what to do after college:

And I clearly remember my thought process when figuring out where to move, and why:

1. If a condom breaks, will my future nonexistent girlfriend be able to abort it even up until birth?
2. If we have a kid, and get divorced, and that kid decides to transition genders, will I be able to get the custody order ignored?
3. Can I afford the rent…not now, per se, but at some indeterminate point in the future, when a hodgepodge of government programs have some promised effect, whatever it is?
4. Can I get paid leave from the job I neither have nor, honestly, have really figured out what it’ll be, yet?
5. Will other kids coming after me be “prepared” for the jobs I’m trying to get?

Kudos, Governor Klink. Nailed it.

Is it just me, or was that tweet about coaxing young people to move to Minnesota – something they’re not doing – written by someone who’s never been a young person thinking about moving to another state?

So we’re reliably informed that Downtown Minneapolis is back.

But that it desperately needs Target to force its workers back into the office.

Reporter Brianna Kelly spent months talking to downtown Minneapolis businesses about the flexible hybrid approach of downtown’s largest employer, and the impact it is having on the local economy.

“You know, everyone wants Target to be back; we need Target to be back,” Kelly said. “They’re a huge part of the entire ecosystem downtown.”

The story behind the story is this: if the wellbeing of Downtown Minneapolis is that dependent on a single employer, that whole “Minneapolis is a Cold Flint” comparison is looking better and better, and I don’t say that with any great joy.

A friend of the blog emails:

Should we start a list?

The friend started with the list below, which includes Minnesota companies that are abandoning operations in Minnesota, or moving lots of jobs out of state.

• 3M expansion in South Dakota
• Shutterfly
• TE Connectivity

Any more?

I’d like to make this a running list.

The Shutterfly warehouse in Shakopee is going to close.

A picture products and service company has decided to close its facility in Shakopee, costing around 250 employees their jobs.

Shutterfly said in a notice to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development that it plans to permanently close its location on Deen Lakes Boulevard near the end of June 2024.

A friend of the blogs, right, saying the closing “couldn’t be the new laws just passed”, could it?

The list of possibilities is so rich:

• “Bidenomics” – three years of inflationary government spending combined with falling output as companies and capital consolidating with both fists.
• The end of the tax increment financing that Shakopee implemented to get the warehouse in the first place
• Minnesota’s owners, new laws and taxes.

Take your pick.

Speaking for myself?

I”d go back and try to show…

…well, not “the idiots who shut down nuclear power”, so much as the mushy minds that believed them, how much trouble and misery they would eventually cause around the world.

Of course, destroying cornucopia in general is a goal of the totalitarian left. Poor people don’t solve problems – but they do demand strongmen to solve the problems for them.

… how iconic brands in Minneapolis never find buyers? They always go from humming along to closing up shop for good?

Psycho Suzies tiki lounge may have been one of the most distinctive bars/restaurants in the city, that, for its many faults, as always been pretty creative on the food front.

It’s been a while since I’ve been there – although one of my most treasured memories is cleaning Bridget Cronin‘s vomit off my shoes during one of her birthday parties there. But every time I was ever there, it was packed, especially on gorgeous summer nights, where you could sit and look across the Mississippi River at the sparkling of gunfire from North Minneapolis.

You think it would be a hot property, including its branding, for someone.

But nooooo…

Psycho Suzie’s Motor Lounge announced it will permanently close on Aug. 19.

“For the past two decades we’ve welcomed you through our tiki laden jungle to enjoy tropical drinks, pizza pies, waterfront seating, and the company of new and old friends… but all good things must come to an end and this Psycho Suzi is ready to hang it up and put on her retirement hat,” said owner Leslie Bock, in a Facebook post.

So what Minneapolis social tradition will be next? City government has drawn a line in the Sand around the first Avenue, clearly – that place is escaped the apathy of the market. Thanks to city intervention a number of times.

The Dakota? God forbid.

I’m sure Senator Hauschild – or the DFL comms goon managing his account – thinks this story looks like a victory:

Minnesota: the state where you need to have a state senator in your bullpen to rebuild a business that burned down.

Not even starting a new business.

Wonder what that’d take?

Anheuser Busch, reeling from its epic self-inflicted shot in the foot, is laying off workers.

And they’ve belatedly learned…well, something (emphasis added):

In a statement to The Associated Press, the beer maker said the layoffs will impact less than 2% of its workforce. Anheuser-Busch’s website says the company employs 19,000 employees nationwide. Warehouse staff, drivers and other frontline employees will not be affected, the company said.

After throwing their key, blue-collar clientele under the bus in the first place, it’s probably a relief to know someone at InBev knew better than to make the working stiffs pay for their suits’ hubrus.

Well, at least pay first for it…

Minnesota DFLers are giving themselves rotor-cuff issues patting themselves on the back…

…over, uh, this:

Minnesota came in one slot of Texas. I’m old enough to remember when Minnesota was overwhelmed with New York City. Plus ca change…

But what is the rationale for this list, from always-Democrat-friendly CNBC?

I’ll add some emphasis:

To determine its rankings, CNBC factored in metrics across 10 categories, listed here in order of their weight: workforce; infrastructure; economy; life, health and inclusion; cost of doing business; technology and innovation; business friendliness; education; access to capital; and cost of living.

So – according to a list that ranks stuff HR cares about well ahead of stuff Accounting cares about, Minnesota beats Texas…

…by one.

Wheeeeeee.

Congrats, DFL.

A friend of the blog emails:

[This advertiser] had it right.

Oh, I completely agree.

It was still morning in America.Notice, of course, thst it was 34 years ago. Reagan had barely left office. The Berlin Wall had yet to fall, but it was teetering.

But this is a good time to remind d you to be the backlash you want to see.

Parts of the Twin Cities housing market are doing very well.

Others…not so much:

“Nowhere have home prices fallen more in the past year than in Uptown Minneapolis — specifically the 55408 ZIP code that includes Lyn-Lake and part of Whittier — where closing prices last month were almost 51% less than what they were in April 2019.”

Amazing what three years of crime, ongoing “civil disturbances” and endemic disorder will do to stability.

…when “Cultural Appropriation” was considered a bad thing.

Realtor markets to gays who are hysterical about Texas laws about…

…checks notes…

…restrictions on chemical neutering of mentally-ill minors, by calling his marketing ploy “the Rainbow Underground Railroad”:

When someone goes to the website FleeRedStates.com, a message reads, “As LGBTQIA+ citizens in Red States, many of us feel at risk. Current laws are highly discriminatory against trans youth and their families. Our marriages, our families, and even our safety are at risk. If you feel the need to leave the jurisdiction of a Red State, let us help you sell your property here and connect with you an LGBTQIA+ or ally agent in a better location of your choice. We are licensed in Texas and we have affiliates in all 50 states and several countries.” People can share their contact information to create an account and start the process of connecting with a real estate expert.

“We’re calling it kind of the ‘rainbow Underground Railroad,’” McCranie said. “We’re trying to get people out quietly and get them to someplace where they feel safer.”

And if you are more than two months old, you’re old enough to remember it, too.