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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Bad judgment reaching South?


Over Sunday morning coffee, Oct. 14, I go to online Strib, and find this:

Headline = Missing: Downtown Bloomington. The poor folks of Bloomington apparently have no Town Center. Some want, in their wisdom, to fix that - and so the story goes. Read Strib, I only present their image and an admittedly slanted excerpting from a quite equivocal report. Read it soon, Strib has the habit of pulling stories in a week or two, into the access-for-pay Strib archives. But read it and think it over. Here's the excerpt:



Bloomington has had more than one contender for the title of city center ... but some still wish it had a bustling gathering place to call its own.

By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune
Last update: October 13, 2007 – 9:41 PM


Back when roads were made of dirt and shoppers loaded their dry goods into the backs of wagons, downtown Bloomington consisted of a general store, a Grange hall and a town hall at the dusty intersection of Old Shakopee Road and Penn Avenue. Ever since, "downtown Bloomington" has been a matter of perception.


Interestingly, it was the late '70s and early '80s when Ramsey first tarred the dirt roads in many neighborhoods, but wagons, other than SUVs, were gone by then. We trailed Bloomington that way, the dirt roads and the Met Council hookups. Strib continues ---

Bloomington officials want to change that with the carefully planned redevelopment of 150 acres that includes the Southtown shopping center, near the intersection of Interstates 494 and 35W. They hope the area -- by being close to transit and having a mix of multistory housing, shops, restaurants, offices and perhaps a park -- will become a destination for people who want to eat, shop and walk as well as those who want to live in a lively neighborhood.

"We've never really had a downtown in Bloomington," said City Council Member Steve Elkins. "If you asked someone to meet you in downtown Bloomington, where would you go? ... People are feeling there is no 'there' there. And we want a 'there' there.


There, there, Steve - It's okay. Just don't do something really stupid.

Strib reports, Bloomington might do just that, with advice from specialists, resuming with a quote from Steve ---

"Suburban communities that have never had downtowns feel like they're missing things. There's a longing for places that can foster and help community."


Steve, you cannot begin to guess how familiar that refrain sounds in Ramsey. Dogbert will be coming for you, be certain. Continuing and leaving out talk of "Excelsior & Grand" in St. Louis Park and with other excerpting ---

Last week, when Linda Johnson of Moorhead was asked at the Mall of America where downtown Bloomington was, she looked around and said, "Right here." If it's not the mall, she said, "I could not tell you how to find downtown Bloomington."

At Southtown, Edina resident Rosemary Dean said it seemed like any downtown should be farther away from the freeways. "To me, a downtown is more of a special area that draws you to it because it's a destination," she said.

Exactly so, said Larry Lee, Bloomington's director of community development. He calls Bloomington a "multi-nodal city." In other words, it has many downtowns.

"For my generation, it might be 98th and Lyndale, but for my daughter, it's the Mall of America," Lee said. "It's generational, and it's geographic."

One of the consultants [we know cousultants, they abound in Ramsey, like crabgrass] working on a study of the Southtown area, David Graham of ESG Architects, is adamant that the main goal is not to create a downtown. City officials want development to emphasize sustainability, quality streets, transit, a way to market the city and creative use of space. "But if it evolves [into a downtown] it makes sense, because of that location," he said.

Graham thinks the obsession with suburban town centers is partly nostalgic and is probably overdone. But it's also a reaction to suburbs that are aging and have a kind of sameness, "just roads and buildings." He said people want to be able to say, "This is the center of our place."

"Excelsior & Grand is less about being downtown St. Louis Park and more about just a great place to be," he said. "It's a destination."


Please read that David Graham quote outloud, several times until you get a good feeling for it. Also, it might be helpful to put that specialist, David Graham of ESG, into a persepctive we in Ramsey can understand. We should know exactly who he is when he talks of suburbanite peoples' "overdone" nostalgic yearning for the days of frontier railroad towns, the yearning to escape a present sense of sameness in the 'burbs: "Graham thinks the obsession with suburban town centers is partly nostalgic and is probably overdone. But it's also a reaction to suburbs that are aging and have a kind of sameness, 'just roads and buildings.' He said people want to be able to say, 'This is the center of our place.' "

"ESG" is Elness, Swenson Graham Architects Inc., aka Feges folks, with this in their trophy case, proving their excellence. See, here for more "because we say so" trophy-case proof of excellence, and here for more "because we say so" don't worry be happy double talk from Met Council, the folks who invented "because we say so" planner-speak, and including a pic showing a personification of double talk.

So we do not forget "rose-colored glasses" rhetoric, aka planner-speak, aka abuse of the English language, that first link given in the above paragraph, closed with this memorable Feges-like prose, italicized as in the original:

Jury Comments
“A beautiful dynamic is set up between the residential neighborhoods to one side and the city center and transit station to the other. This imminently [sic] livable plan is in the best tradition of town planning where home and work and civic spaces are more closely related and a sense of place is created.”


"Imminent" means close in time. "Eminent" means, roughly, special and outstanding in a positive way. And, spinning thoughts of outstanding, there is this pastel closing image giving "a beautiful dynamic" of a "sense of place," from here:


That certainly is a beautiful dynamic. You can just sense the place has a sense of place. One question: Is it imminent; or do you, like me, rely on track record and what's now on ground, to doubt it as imminent by any measure?

I quibble about Jim Deal and my thinking is his one Town Center building where his PSD LLC is headquartered looks cobbled together with more complexity than needed [in one sense, special and outstanding, but not eminent unless you like the blend of so many styles in one structure]. Yet I do not see the man as anyone's fool. I am almost certain we will not hear any of that sad rhetoric from him. It will be refreshing to have someone whose roots reach back to the Agriculture Department instead of ESG or Met Council, saying and doing things that are anchored with two feet on the ground and not with a head in the ozone layer - twilight zone of planner-speak. With an ag background, he's probably stepped more than once into piles of that rhetoric, while walking pastures.

Also, I wonder if that pastel watercolor pen-and-ink rendering is what Jim Deal has in mind as a view of success and the unsubsidized goal he would aim for if he buys the gamble at a fair price. I doubt he would turn that way to try to avoid the trap of suburban sameness, in things we call Ramsey. Jim Deal might even share a Dogbert sentiment about it and about the folks instrumental in marketing it to our council.

So Jim, cut a deal and take a shot. It's boring just sitting and waiting. Some people up for reelection next year may get antsy. They could do something that would have Dogbert after them after the fact. Forestall that by stepping up, Jim.

Bruce Nedegaard apparently drank the planner-speak Koolaid. He was on extensive medication when key decisions were made, but with a successful background of prudently building sound single-family upscale homes. Maybe it was the medication reaching to affect his judgment. Maybe just a gamble that failed.

Jim Deal --- there's cause to think he will not be hitting the Koolaid, and will be prudent and a careful skeptic instead. For example, I doubt there will be a bankruptcy court future for Deal, or Minnwest. I do not see Dogbert ever coming for Jim Deal, while Minnwest will eat a big part of its bad loan despite its hope to wiggle out and hand off acreage free of any Master Plan reach. There are those funky zoning abnormalities there for the bank and ultimate owner to face.

For now it appears no one besides Jim Deal has any taste for biting off the remaining lion's share of the venture. Either the bank sits an inordinate time for a bank to sit, hoping -&- waiting, or they get sense and agree to Deal's price and terms. Halloween, the next postponed foreclosure sale date, will perhaps have an answer. Probably not. The thing probably overwinters into next spring's construction period, with Minnwest hoping the housing market changes.