Leaning Tower's Sidewalk-Obstructing Patio

We've got a patio situation. Leaning Tower of Pizza maintains a front sidewalk patio. Patios are great. I enjoy eating in the outdoors. But this patio is too big for this section of sidewalk. It has seemed lately that this patio is just a little more in the way each day. Now I have proof.

Developers Still Building Parking; Whittier Alliance Still Terrible

image: flickr

Sixty-four units of affordable "workforce" housing are coming to the Whittier neighborhood. This is good for Whittier, and Minneapolis as a whole, which has a need for affordable housing. The project will have plenty of parking, which is disappointing, but not surprising (I once made a bold prediction that we hadn't seen the end of off-street parking in Minneapolis).

Analysis of Minneapolis City Council 2014 Fundraising

There's still 846 days until the 2017 election, but Minneapolis City Council Members are already out there raising money. I have combed through 2014's campaign finance reports to assess how each of them is doing on the financial road to 2017.

Progress on Parking: A Channel 79 EXCLUSIVE

"We're hearing unconfirmed reports that the City Council has banned cars."
image credit: Omar Bárcena

Minneapolis is one City Council vote away from enacting a major, nationally-heralded parking reform authored by Council Member Lisa Bender. I've watched with great interest as the debate has unfolded on Channel 79. To summarize the back-and-forth as uncharitably as possible: utopians on bicycles deployed a slew of crowd-pleasing parking analogies* (1, 2), while some of our city's original inhabitants countered with predictions of the aparkolypse (it's a "boondoggle" of an "epic fail"). 

Constituent Emails

You may remember the agitated gentleman from a few months ago who emailed me a PDF of my own Tweets. Now that I'm an elected public official, I have set up an email filter to clear my inbox of all messages not containing the phrase "you're a hero" (I will still be accepting your vitriol via Tweet, however).

29th Street: Interpreting the Open Streets Experience

View from the LHENA tent at Open Streets on Lyndale Ave.

It's been an interesting first two months on the job as a LHENA Board Member. Many blog posts have gone unwritten, while others have been drafted only to remain unpublished. Some observers have speculated that I'm saving material for a political autobiography (rumored title: Eyewitness to Power: God, Guns, Grits, Gravy, and Screenshots).

Draft of LHE Historic District Study

We have obtained a draft of the Lowry Hill East Residential Historic District designation study. Is your house "contributing" or "non-contributing"? It's time to start judging your neighbors.