Star Tribune
A grocery store was supposed to make a neighborhood near the Mall of America. It closed in less than four months.
The recent, sudden closure of a supermarket near a Bloomington light rail stop dealt a blow to the city’s efforts to build a dense, walkable neighborhood near the Mall of America.
Bloomington leaders have hoped the area on the grounds of the old Metropolitan Stadium could become an urban neighborhood where people might choose to drive less — walking to the store or a coffee shop, and catching the light rail to work. Bloomington subsidized development with tax-increment financing and tried to push developer McGough to build mixed-use buildings as part of that vision.
Oxendale’s Market, the small Minneapolis-based chain of neighborhood supermarkets, was supposed to anchor the new neighborhood. The grocer opened its doors in November, but closed abruptly this month.
“Despite our best efforts and initial optimism, Oxendale’s has made the difficult decision to cease operations,” McGough officials said in an emailed statement. “While we are disappointed by this turn of events, we remain committed to the success of our development … We are actively exploring opportunities to fill the vacant space with a new tenant that will complement the vibrant atmosphere of the neighborhood.”
The owner of Oxendale’s did not respond to an email asking what led to the store’s closure.
Even though the grocery store failed, Bloomington still hopes for a walkable neighborhood near its light rail station, Port Authority Administrator Holly Masek said in an email. Bloomington will keep supporting projects that bring more residents and future businesses, and will keep planning events in the area to bring people in, Masek said.
The grocery story isn’t the only retail space to shutter recently: nearby coffee shop Fiddlehead closed late last year.
Then last month, just before Oxendale’s closed, McGough scaled back what was supposed to be another apartment building with a shop or restaurant on the ground floor, instead proposing senior housing without any shops.
Planning commissioners were frustrated with the change that chipped away at their vision for the neighborhood, but saw no way to make McGough to stick to its original plan to build a store or restaurant space.
Now, the sole restaurant left in the immediate area of Bloomington Central Station is in a hotel, with another restaurant about an eight-minute walk across six-lane Old Shakopee Road. The next-closest businesses are in the Mall of America.
In an email, McGough said the ground floor space briefly occupied by Oxendale’s might become another kind of business like a brewery, a restaurant or a gym. Masek said the developer would be required to come before the Port Authority Commission to get approval for something other than a grocery store.
The city subsidized the cost of land, and built streets, sidewalks and a parking ramp for the building. In return, the developers agreed to keep rent lower for 36 of the more than 400 apartments for 20 years, and the building had to rent its commercial space to a grocery store.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
