Sears/Roof Depot Warehouse Site Up-Date The East Phillips Community Making Waves for Water Works

The curved east wall of the building built as the Sear Warehouse adjacent to railroad track for efficient unloading from railroad cars in the path now the Midtown Greenway with the Martin Sabo Bridge rise of the Greenway over Hiawatha Avenue/Highway #55.

BY CAROL PASS, GAC member and EPIC Board President

Ready or not: Here comes the City Water Yard, its numerous huge diesel trucks, its 100+ employees”' additional cars to one of the most polluted and dangerously traffic-congested areas of the City.

The Promise:

The City”'s Core Principles of Community Engagement PROMISE our “Right to be involved”, namely that “”¦ those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.” (Adopted by the Mpls. City Council, Dec. 2007)

The Reality:

Despite the promise, the City of Minneapolis, unbeknown to the “affected” East Phillips community, had been working on acquiring the Roof Depot site for the purpose of transferring the water yard there for at least ten years without informing us. This only came to light after the East Phillips Community began a major campaign to de-industrialize the very heavy industry area around Cedar Ave. and 28th St. City officials may have realized the outrage it would create in the middle of our campaign to de-industrialize were they to just begin this process without giving the community even an ounce of information before beginning.… Read the rest “Sears/Roof Depot Warehouse Site Up-Date The East Phillips Community Making Waves for Water Works”

Public transit availability and public versus private ownership

BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON

Transit news in Phillips and in the Twin Cities is pretty slow this month, so I thought I”'d congratulate our neighbors to the south in Rochester on finally having Sunday bus service for the first time in 50 years.

Those of us who are transit dependent in big cities often take for granted that service will be there 20 hours a day, every day. Smaller cities aren”'t like that. I lived in Rochester twice, 1988-9 and 2005-6. Needing transit there is like having a 10 PM curfew on weekdays, 6 PM on Saturday, and being grounded every Sunday and holiday, even if you”'re a legal adult who did nothing wrong.

Until five years ago, Rochester was the last city in Minnesota, and one of the last in the United States, to have a privately owned bus system. Most public transit in this country has been run by local governments since the 1970s. Rochester”'s extremely conservative past is probably part of the reason. When I lived there, it was so right-wing that groups like the Posse Comitatus were almost mainstream and George H. W. Bush was considered a flaming liberal. Fortunately, Rochester is no longer so far to the right.… Read the rest “Public transit availability and public versus private ownership”

Glover Family Tree has branches in Tobacco Road MD, St. Louis MO, Grant County WI, Perryville KY, Minneapolis MN, Spokane WA, San Francisco CA, Aberdeen Scotland, and Japan

By Sue Hunter Weir

Glovers had a hand in founding Spokane, WA and Mitsubishi in Japan

It pays to revisit stories that you thought you knew and take another look to see what you”'ve missed or to see what information you have found that you didn”'t have at the time that you wrote it.… Read the rest “Glover Family Tree has branches in Tobacco Road MD, St. Louis MO, Grant County WI, Perryville KY, Minneapolis MN, Spokane WA, San Francisco CA, Aberdeen Scotland, and Japan”