Star Tribune
St. Paul orders woman to remove boulevard garden
Anyone walking down Sherburne Avenue in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood would likely notice the sunny yellow bungalow near Hamline Avenue: rocks, flowers and colorful mosaic sculptures cascade down its front yard.
Nor can you miss the woman behind all of it if she happens to be tending to her gardens, picking up trash or waving hello from her boulevard bench, surrounded by more sculptures and plants.
Iris Logan and her gardens are a Hamline-Midway landmark.
But now the city is requiring her to remove parts of them after someone complained that the gardens had encroached on the boulevard illegally. Meanwhile, the neighborhood group is rallying residents and trying to figure out how to allow some of Logan’s boulevard installation to remain or otherwise honor her contributions to the neighborhood.
“I have so many people I have met,” Logan, 69, said last week. “I have people walking and then they will see all of this and then they’ll come down and they’ll just say how great it is and how much work you put in.”
The way Logan tells it, she got into gardening with rocks because the lawn just wasn’t working out.
“I had been trying to grow grass and grow grass, and grass wasn’t trying to be my friend,” Logan said. Later, back surgery made it harder for her to mow.
She makes the mosaics herself, hand-cutting pieces of tile, plates and glass to assemble them in her dining room. She has won awards for some of her pieces and sold others. Many end up in her yard.
Logan received a letter from the city that said her boulevard garden, which included rocks, a bench and flower planters, violates city code Ch. 105. “Boulevards must be clear of installations or obstructions, including benches, large rocks, really anything that would impede access to buried utility lines,” Casey Rodriguez, a spokesman for St. Paul’s Department of Safety and Inspections, said in an email to the Star Tribune. “This also allows for tree maintenance and provides a place to pile snow when shoveling or plowing.”
Logan said she was surprised to hear it. She said she started putting her ornamentations on the boulevard 30 years ago, and the display has grown over the years without issue.
After Logan’s daughter, Kendra Logan-Pierce, posted about her mom’s situation on Facebook, Justin Lewandowski, a community organizer with the Hamline Midway Coalition, stopped by to help Logan figure out options. They contacted the City Council and started a petition to raise awareness and find a solution. About 600 people signed it.
Initially, Logan was given until Nov. 13 to remove objects on the boulevard. After appealing, a city legislative hearing clerk recommended an extension until Dec. 22.
On Dec. 6, the City Council will decide whether to approve, amend or veto the extension.
That happens to also be the day the council will discuss a separate, but related matter: a proposed amendment to St. Paul code from Council Member Chris Tolbert allowing some raised planters in boulevards.
Lewandowski said he hopes some of Logan’s installations could be grandfathered in. If not, he said, he’s hoping for a longer extension. He said he’s in talks to move some of the boulevard work to nearby Midway Peace Park, where Logan spends time with her grandchildren.
“What we would like to do is to honor Iris’ contributions to the community over the last 30 years, and beautification of the neighborhood and bringing neighbors together to celebrate art and walkability,” he said.
Logan said she was heartbroken that her garden had caused someone to complain — and that neighbors she helped build boulevard rock gardens had also received orders to remove them.
Since receiving the letter, Logan has removed many of the rocks and planters on her boulevard. She said some days she won’t let it stress her out, and other days it bothers her. “But that, too, shall pass,” Logan said. “That’s where I’m at.”
She said she appreciates the support of neighbors but is frustrated that the city doesn’t seem to enforce rules about boulevard gardens consistently. On her phone, she’s collected photos of boulevard planters, boulders and benches — one much bigger than hers on Summit Avenue.
But she said she wouldn’t report anyone.
Logan said she’d love to see the city amend the ordinance to allow more boulevard gardening. Still, she said, she’s done with her boulevard.
“I’m not going back. I can’t go back to that headache,” she said. “I’m kind of over it, but what about the next person?”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
