Local News

Three miles east of Uptown, Ingebretsen’s Anna Bloomstrand watched her stretch of Lake Street move from crisis to cooperation. What worked was not construction. It was a room where people knew each other.

The Park Board rebuilt the lakeside pavilion for $6.5 million, then renewed a 2017 concession decision without reopening it to bidders. The concept that opened was never competitively evaluated, and two years have cost the park system $291,777.

A grand home on the parkway has sat empty for more than a decade. The county seized it, then handed it back on a promise of renovation that still has not arrived.

In an informal Hill & Lake Press survey of 16 businesses, owners named parking, empty storefronts and public safety as their biggest concerns, and asked neighbors to show up and shop.

Those mysterious road cutouts around the lakes are speed humps and traffic circles, the payoff of an eight-step city process that can take years.

The historic Loring Park landmark, home to a 650-seat theater and a rooftop terrace, goes to a developer known for restorations, and the club stays on as a tenant.

Amelia Bush is a managing editor of The Emory Wheel at Emory University in Atlanta and is interning at the Hill & Lake Press. She grew up in Kenwood.

Searching for a livable Lyndale

For three decades, Steve Vasseur kept the mud pit at Hidden Beach ready and made a generation feel welcome. As the Mud Man enters hospice, neighbors reflect on a legacy of playfulness and community.