Star Tribune
Aeon to sell Huntington Place in Brooklyn Park to MAS Capital
“People stopped paying rent because they didn’t have to, and you couldn’t evict them for it, and it’s just became a free for all where people didn’t respect the place where they were staying or living anymore, and the management couldn’t hold people accountable,” Faust said.
The turning point came when the city, Aeon and tenant advocacy groups like the Village BP started collaborating in earnest, issuing weekly memos to communicate what actions they were taking to claw back control of Huntington Place. Aeon hired an armed patrol, installed security cameras and erected a fence to restrict movement in and out of its parking lot, spending $1.353 million annually from 2021 to 2024. The police raided the units of drug dealers and Aeon jettisoned them as the moratorium eased. City staff door-knocked floor by floor, issuing repair orders for discharged fire extinguishers that were never replaced, unpatched holes in the wall, mold, water damage, mice and roaches. Repairs improved the look and feel of the complex. The addition of sidewalks helped residents walk to the bus stop, and speed bumps broke up the roadway near the front checkpoint area that had been nicknamed the “racetrack.”
Crime stats paint the picture of a massive ship yawing straight. Between 2022 and 2023, there was a 56.6% plunge in violent crime. The trend continues downward.
Longtime resident Ernie Jackson said he and his wife Kim used to only leave their apartment to let their dog out because, “You know, who wants to be involved in the chaos and craziness?” But since security was restored, he’s spent a significant amount of time this summer soaking up the sun in his lawn chair.
Aeon has informed them that residents need not worry about displacement because affordable housing covenants will follow the property through January 2050. The Jacksons are heartened by that. Still, Kim wonders whether the new owner will maintain the social support services that Aeon worked with city and community partners to offer — the school supply giveaways, the health resource fairs and vaccine outreach, pizza nights with police, and the teen outings to Dunwoody College.
Not much is known about MAS Capital locally. It doesn’t own any other affordable housing projects in the Twin Cities region, and the firm did not respond to questions from the Star Tribune about its long-term intentions.
Star Tribune
Aunt IDs 3-year-old who was fatally shot in Minneapolis home, speaks about what happened
A close relative on Tuesday identified the 3-year-old boy who was fatally shot this week in his family’s northeast Minneapolis apartment a day earlier.
Woods said police have told the family that Jajuan got ahold of the gun and it went off.
“Someone left a loaded gun [in the home,” said Woods, who has started an online fundraiser for her sister, Charlotte Williams. “He got ahold of it thinking it was a toy.”
Woods said her nephew, who went by Junior, “loved trucks and dinosaurs. He was just so silly and goofy. He was a momma’s boy.”
Jajuan suffered a gunshot wound to the top of the head, a source with knowledge of the incident told the Star Tribune. Paramedics rushed the toddler to HCMC, where he died a short time later.
Woods said she did not know who owned the gun.
Police spokesman Trevor Folke said Tuesday evening there have been no arrests and had no update to share in the “active and ongoing investigation.”
Bergman is championing efforts to boost literacy and invest in early childhood programming, and getting there, she said, requires financial sustainability, and that may mean closings and mergers. She attended last week’s finance committee meeting — as she’s done on a regular basis — and described the mention of “opportunity” as another rosy way of avoiding hard truths.
The district is spread too thin, she said. Some schools could take more students. Yet in others, class sizes are huge and caseloads so large that educators can’t build relationships with students and families, she said.
“I just fundamentally believe, and it’s been one of the objectives of my campaign, to be someone out in the community talking about this moment, listening to reactions, and listening for the places where families could get on board with the possibility of their beloved school having to close,” she said.
A way to get there, Bergman said, is by consolidating buildings, and in turn, expanding programming — perhaps not far from the school left behind.
Callahan argues that the mere mention of closings is causing families to leave the district: “This is not something that should be talked about so flippantly,” she said.
She said she would entertain the idea only if there also are plans to stabilize and recruit students, plus answers to three questions: How much money is being saved by closing a building? How many students will be retained if the school closes? And how many new students have to enroll to keep it open?
State environmental regulators are suing the Lake County Planning Commission to try to stop a developer from building 49 new cabins at a century-old fishing resort on an entry lake to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said that the planning board ignored local and state shoreline protection rules to allow the Silver Rapids Resort on Farm Lake to build the cabins. The project would accompany an extensive remodel and renovation to a motel and restaurant on the site that would also increase the size and number of docks.
The agency asked a district court judge in a suit filed Oct. 3 to throw out the resort’s permit for the construction. A hearing is scheduled for November and no work will be allowed to start while the case is pending. A group of homeowners in the area opposed to the project filed a separate lawsuit that also seeks to overturn the resort’s permit.
Alex Campbell, the environmental service specialist for the planning commission, declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Commission member and Lake County Board Chair Rich Sve did not return phone calls seeking an interview. Sandy Hoff, one of the site’s developers, did not return messages seeking comment.
Silver Rapids opened in 1919 as a fishing resort on a stretch of shore where White Iron Lake meets the western edge of Farm Lake. The Boundary Waters begins on Farm Lake’s eastern shore a couple miles from the resort. It has 12 small cabins on site, an 11-room motel, a restaurant and 21 campsites.
Developers asked the county planning commission for a permit to allow an $45 million expansion that would include a remodel of the restaurant, the installation of a tiki bar and the building of 49 new cabins that would each be sold to up to four owners apiece and rented out when those owners aren’t using them.
The expansion would increase the total number of dwelling units on the site from 13 to 62 and add 12 new docks with space for 75 boats.
But the county’s shoreline protection rules, which were written in the 1990s, allow the resort a maximum of 29 dwelling units and docks that could fit a maximum of 14 boats, the DNR argued in its complaint.
