Mayor Jacob Frey
City Hall
350 S. 5th St, Room 331
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Dear Mayor Frey:
In my nearly 50 years living in Minneapolis, I have never seen such a planning botch as the Hennepin Avenue redo now proposed. If and when it comes up before you, I hope you will veto it for a solution that is truly green.
I know you have been inundated with citizen concerns, so I will add only three.
- Before you sign anything, pay one more visit to the block of Hennepin Avenue between Lake Street and 31st, a near retail-desert. There are several reasons, including social unrest on Lake Street. But the few surviving businesses will regale you with the hardship the loss of parking has brought them. “Aggressively anti-business” says the owner of Amazing Thailand, one of the few surviving businesses on the block. Instead of turning the rest of Hennepin Avenue into a no-parking, bike- and bus-only retail desert, the city should UNDO the calamity already visited on that Hennepin block. Susan and I are patrons of many of the small businesses along Hennepin, such as Rinata and Namaste restaurants and Osman Cleaners, all fearing death by the new anti- parking plan. Meanwhile, as a biker I know there are plentiful safe bikeways on both sides of Hennepin, never crowded, and the idea that extra off-street parking is plentiful is a chimera.
- The fundamental problem with this city bike-first transit development is that it ignores the Twin Cities as a massively sprawling metro area with different suburban zoning and transit requirements. As important as bike friendliness is, making life transit-onerous for city families with children and those with disabilities plus inconvenient for local businesses drives people to suburbs without similar restrictions, exacerbating, not reducing, climate costs. Density is indeed part of a city’s solution to the climate crisis and supporting local businesses should be a green city priority.
- The future of transport in a northern climate like ours is not carless but electric vehicles powered by renewables (what I do now with solar from Ramp )A). That is the pragmatic climate model, including future dispatchable solar- powered vehicles for families with convenient pick-up and drop-off. That is the green model that should be facilitated by the city, not a bicycle-priority model limited mostly to able-bodied single individuals, important as that is.
My generation helped rescue cities, schools, and local retail by moving back from suburban sprawl to urban density—walkable, bikeable, navigable, parkable, close to local schools, not incidentally helping rescue the city tax base.
The suburbs did not go away but remain with their ever-increasing sprawl while Minneapolis planners make our city untenable for families and others who need vehicle transport.
Thank you for listening.
Sincerely,
Jim Lenfestey
