Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Why would the Ghetto in the Sky need a million dollar security upgrade (oh, it will be, by the time cost over-runs are included)?
How many hateful racists are living on the West Bank, making residents afraid to walk to the light rail station, vandalizing cars, and robbing tenants? Why not round them up and throw them in the clink?
Key fob, cameras and a new fence which I assume includes a gate to enter and exit . . . is this a “gated community?” Is that a good thing, now?
As far as Minneapolis voters know, it is…
is this “Key fob, cameras and a new fence” meant to protect the people inside from the people outside or is it to protect the people outside from the people inside?
this is Ms Bender’s vision of the future for the people of Mpls – high density housing along mass transit corridors.
Originally back in the late 60s and early 70s the idea was to build a second “New Town in Town” on Nicolette Island which, coincidentally I’m sure, currently has commuter rail running through it and a lot of open space begging for development.
Cedar-Riverside Apartments have been the Cabrini Green of Mpls virtually since the day they were constructed. Wrecking ball and bulldozer treatment makes more sense that fence building.
Now were they built as a “project” a la Cabrini Green? WIki article makes it look like they were not, but became one over time.
Either way, blow it up. Every time I see it, I have flashbacks to the day I spent in East Berlin in 1989. Except that even Erich Honecker had the good sense not to build higher than six stories or so–I’m told because party functionaries pointed out that if you built higher, you’d have to install elevators.
As someone who has delivered meals on wheels to those apartments its sad, but I do it at lunch. If you are a white person and in that area after dusk you are mentally ill or have a death wish.
Also from being in there it looks like the original goal was for a high class community not a slum in the sky.
When I pulled into MPLS for the first time in 91, the sight of that shithole depressed me.
What, do you think, are the chances that it’s not Sammies doing all the crimes there? Even the black gangsters from North don’t go over there at night.
These people are a pestilence…they aren’t even welcome in other African countries.
Swiftee – you’re exactly right. I drive Uber and pick up an African-American from an Amazon facility in Eagan. He was shaking his head and talking about what a tough day he had. On his phone, he told his buddy “those damn Somalis – them n****rs are f***ing crazy!”
SB
there’s a reason the few remaining whites in the neighborhood refer to it as Little Mogadishu
I’ve always thought of the place as another jewel in the crown of the social engineers, a freaking eyesore. There has been a ton of money spent on the crap hole over the +45 years to sustain the architect’s perversion. The whole stinking place should have been imploded years ago. Another reason to avoid Mpls at all costs!