Star Tribune
Chicago-Lake Transit Center to see the wrecking ball
Doors to the Chicago-Lake Transit Center closed two years ago and will not reopen.
The Metropolitan Council Transportation Committee last week voted to permanently shutter the transit center and terminate an easement that gave Metro Transit the right to build the facilities and operate buses on a shared private road on property owned by the Midtown Exchange Commons (MEC).
Sonja Burseth, Metro Transit’s senior planner of engineering and facilities, told the council the transit agency no longer needs the two buildings at 2946 Chicago Av. S.
Buses will continue to stop at the Chicago-Lake Transit Center for about another month before shifting to on-street bus stops.
Chicago-Lake opened in 2006 and served as a south Minneapolis bus hub for the heavily used Routes 5 and 21. But transit routes and needs have changed dramatically over the past few years with the opening of the Metro D-Line, a rapid bus line running from Brooklyn Center to the Mall of America traveling along Chicago Avenue. New platforms where riders are to pay fares in advance of boarding the Metro D-Line opened on Chicago Avenue, eliminating the need for the Chicago-Lake Transit Center. The platforms also are served by Route 5 buses.
Additionally, this fall, new stations on Lake Street, which will serve the Metro B Line when service begins in June, will be substantially completed, allowing them to be used by Route 21 buses until the new rapid line is up and running. The B Line largely will replace Route 21, which runs from southwest Minneapolis near Lake Bde Maka Ska to downtown St. Paul following Lake Street and Selby Avenue.
The new rapid lines allow buses to avoid pulling into a transit center by instead pulling up to curbside platforms, allowing for faster bus trips, something riders place a high value on, Burseth said.
Both of the transit center’s buildings are fully depreciated and have no resale value, said Kelly Jameson, the Met Council’s director of real estate.
The $17 million solution? A new South Minneapolis Community Safety Center at 2633 Minnehaha Av. that would open in early 2025 and combine police with community providers of domestic violence, mental health, human trafficking and youth services.
Amanda Harrington, the city’s director of Community Safety Design, was hired last December. This spring, her team held 40 in-person meetings with various demographic groups, including people experiencing homelessness.
“We’ve actually been moving at lightning speed,” Harrington said.
She is also trying to launch a temporary Lake Street Community Safety Center by November to address the intense needs of the East Lake Street immigrant business corridor. Riots in 2020 heavily damaged the corridor, and it continues to struggle with gun violence and homelessness.
“I’ve never seen in my whole life as many young people, 16 and 17 years old, in full-blown addiction to drugs, and the poverty that’s just plagued Lake Street for decades is still there,” said Jordan Borer Nelson of the Mad Dads violence interrupter group, which has patrolled Lake Street since last summer.
The new center at 2228 E. Lake St. is expected to house a crime prevention specialist, the diversion group Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, opioid prevention services, 311 customer service and Behavioral Crisis Response, the city’s mental health first responders.
Star Tribune
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is flooding courts with a motion for private police data
The motion for a Brady-Giglio review commonly asks the court to order a law enforcement agency — for example, the Minnesota State Patrol or Minneapolis Police Department Internal Affairs — to share disciplinary information against specific officers.
If the judge grants the motion, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office reviews and catalogues the data and gives any information they view as relevant to the judge overseeing the case. The judge then performs what is known as an “in camera” review of the information to determine if it should be shared with the defense.
In the case of the state troopers, Judge Tamara Garcia denied the motion “for lack of a plausible showing such files would contain material evidence.” She cites the Minnesota Supreme Court opinion in State v. Hummel which stated, “having the trial court review confidential material is not a right. It is a discovery option, but only after certain prerequisites are satisfied.” In other cases, judges have approved the motion and ordered the law enforcement agencies to produce specific disciplinary files for review.
The sheer volume of motions the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has filed indicates this is becoming standard operating procedure for a department that works with more than 35 law enforcement agencies to prosecute criminals. The reason for that could be related to gray areas in how different agencies categorize public vs. private police data.
The Minneapolis Police Department has a publicly available “police discipline decision dashboard” which dates back more than a decade and tracks various violations and types of discipline. But, as the Star Tribune reported earlier this year, MPD has used coaching — a form of one-on-one mentoring — as their most common approach to dealing with police complaints in the past decade. Coaching documents are not publicly available.
The ability of law enforcement agencies to make disciplinary actions private matters because they can argue that an employee could sue them if they share private data. These legal motions are one way the Attorney’s Office can work around that concern.
More homeowners are turning toward home improvement projects as mortgage rates continue to stay high, and many people — especially millennials — are staying put as they become priced out of the market.
As a result, homeowners are looking to home projects and renovations to increase the value of their homes and make it closer to their dream, according to Angi, a home services website that allows users to search for contractors for home improvement work. The agency, which surveyed more than 6,000 homeowners in the U.S., found they spent 51% more on home projects last year compared to 2019, according to its “State of Home Spending” report.
The top reasons for not completing work were budget related: either the total project costs or estimates were too high or there was an immediate need to do emergency or unplanned projects. Last year, homeowners spent an average of $9,542 on home improvement projects, according to the report.
“Despite the moderate impact of inflation, homeowners are still improving their home, especially over the past five years,” the report read. “In the eight years we have tracked homeowner spending on home improvement and remodeling, 2023 is the second-highest average.”
Here are three home projects under $2,000 that will elevate any living space on a small budget.
Painting is easily one of the cheapest projects a homeowner can do that has the biggest impact aesthetically, said Nick Slavik, chair of board of directors for the Painting Contractors Association.
Slavik estimates DIY costs start at $200 for supplies, then about $50-$75 per room. If a homeowner booked through a professional company like his New Prague-based Nick Slavik Painting and Restoration Co., he estimates it would cost about $450 for a 100-square-foot room. When hiring a service, homeowners are saving themselves time and effort.
“With painting, you’re going to do the most amount of change of anything you do,” he said.
