Being part of the ruling party in a one-party system means never having to say “oops, I screwed up” – because what are your citizens subjects going to do?  Complain to government?

Saint Paul is a one-party town.

And people are certainly trying to complain to government.

There may be no more beleaguered person in America – short of a Detroit mortgage broker – than a Saint Paul business owner.  As bad as property taxes are in Minnesota’s capitol city, business taxes (glopped onto the state’s already high rates) are even worse.  And the city’s bureaucracy is legendarily hostile to small entrepreneurs.

And it shows.  Downtown’s occupancy rate (after you leave out all the buildings government is leasing) is up from its already-high rates; the warehouse district isn’t housing a lot of wares; Saint Paul’s Fortune 500s have been doing all their growing elsewhere, from Ecolab’s big R and D facility in Eagan to 3M’s shadow headquarters in Austin TX to USBank moving its Riverbank operations to Bloomington.

Still, people take a whack at it.  In the past 25 years, two generations of immigrant businesspeople, Viet and H’mong and Somali and Eritrean, have turned University from Lexington to the Capitol into a gritty, scrappy, but bustling little strip of restaurants, hair and nail salons, grocery stories and all the other little businesses that a self-contained community will spawn.  It’s not Rodeo Drive, but it’s not the dismal, vacant blotch it was in the 1980s.

Not yet, anyway.  Give it time.

Saint Paul businesses are outraged that the city, the Met Council and the State apparently figure that they can either ride out the building of the Central Corridor on their own, or…

…well, nobody knows:

The owner of AxMan Surplus wondered Wednesday whether the troubled actor Charlie Sheen was somehow involved in the writing of a report on the construction impacts of the Central Corridor light rail line on small businesses along its 11-mile route.

AxMan’s owner, Jim Segal, was among owners of businesses along University Avenue in St. Paul who took sharp aim at the Metropolitan Council and the LRT project at a public hearing Wednesday.

I originally wrote “the report was a whitewash”, but the US Whitewash Council threatened to sue me for defamation.

“Did Charlie Sheen help with that report?” said Segal, whose business is on University just west of Snelling Avenue. “That figure is absolutely unrealistic. It does nothing to address the potential loss of revenue faced by businesses on University Avenue.”

Segal, who estimated that AxMan would lose $100,000 in revenue over the first six months of construction, maintained that the $957 million project’s effects would be felt by businesses long after trains start running in 2014. “The pedestrian environment is going to be terrible while construction is ongoing, and there will be a permanent change to people’s driving and parking patterns. That wasn’t discussed in this report.”

At one point, he said the report, the “Draft Supplemental Environmental Assessment Construction-Related Potential Impacts to Business Revenue,” would be more useful as toilet paper, and he held up a roll to make the point.

The street is going to be torn up for years – and it doesn’t end there:

“The big problem is the major loss of parking,” said Mike Baca, the owner of Impressive Print, located just east of Fairview Avenue.

Baca ridiculed a business mitigation fund support program outlined in the Met Council’s assessment that would provide low- or no-interest loans of up to $10,000 for retail businesses expecting construction-related disruptions. “Who wants a $10,000 loan when you’re losing between 30 and 60 percent of your revenue?” he asked. “This project is going to destroy businesses.”

This blog will be documenting the casualties.

As [Met Council bureaucrats] [“]listened[“], along with Federal Transit Administration representative Maya Ray and Shoua Lee of the Central Corridor Project Office, one business owner after another laid out the damage the project is causing them and condemned what they see as a lack of cooperation from the Met Council and city and state government entities.

If you read this blog, you know that “hamfisted and stupid” and “Government construction effort” are more or less synonyms.  Still, this project just beggars the imagination so far:

Holden estimated that since the beginning of March, when construction began in the area, his business has lost $7,300 in revenue. Baca said he had to hire a driver to deliver print projects because customers are unwilling to drive to his store. Steve Bernick, the owner of Milbern Clothing, said he was promised that Aldine Street, the cross street near his business, would remain a through street during construction. Instead, it was designated right-turn only, forcing drivers to make an illegal U-turn to reach his store.

Diane Pietro, the owner of the Twin Cities Photography Group near Highway 280, said construction workers came into her business without identifying themselves and started tearing up a newly renovated hallway to install water pipes. She also said they were dismissive when she complained.

“This project is ruining my service,” she said. “Families don’t want to come in and sit for a portrait when there are workers walking in and out. I’ve gotten two parking tickets for trying to park in front of my own business. Both of our entrances are blocked and the sidewalks are closed.”

You gotta break eggs to make an omelet.

Jack McCann, the president of the University Avenue Betterment Association, sharply criticized what he saw as “a level of incompetence” in how the assessment was prepared. “It’s unfortunate that we’re even here today,” he said. “The amenities of University Avenue have always been great for businesses, and it already has good mass transit – the 16A bus line.”

McCann, whose Update Co. owns several properties near University and Raymond avenues, said renters are already asking him for a reduction of $1 per square foot for 2011 and 2012 to make up for anticipated lost revenue.

“What are (business owners) expected to do when they rely on on-street parking? That hasn’t been addressed,” he said. “If business owners knew there would be parking near their businesses (during construction), they wouldn’t need mitigation. But people mistrust the Met Council.”

Not without reason.

The comment period for the impact assessment will end March 31, after which the Met Council and the FTA will respond to comments as part of a final supplemental assessment document.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 11:05 am and is filed under Planes Trains and Automobiles, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.