New LRT planned for VA

by Dennis Geisinger

Plans for several developments in the Nokomis neighborhood are moving forward with a healthy dose of critical input from area residents. Planning for the light rail and its two area transit stations has shown the train to be a mixed blessing for its neighbors.

Sites included for revamping and construction include land along Riverview Road and 54th Street and development of the 50th Street and VA Medical Center LRT station areas.

The parcel slated for revitalization along Riverview Road is owned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. When the street was moved west, the state took more space than it ultimately needed. MnDOT is currently trying to liquidate about 75,000 square feet of land along 54th Street that locals have strongly identified as a prime location for senior housing. Current plans call for 600 square feet of living space in four town homes.

“The Nokomis plan lays out the vision for development in the area over the next five, ten to 20 years,” said Minneapolis Senior City Planner Paul Mogush in a recent interview. “The stage we’re in now is developing guides for the private market in design and construction,” he said.

“The plan itself is the result of a great deal of community input,” according to Mogush. “The neighborhood association continues to be involved in almost every aspect of development,” he said.

“We’ve been at this since 2004,” said Nokomis East Neighborhood Association staffer Doug Walter. “We’ve had around 12 public meetings since then.”
Most of the community feedback about neighborhood projects comes from comment cards that are mailed out or distributed at meetings, according to Walter. Meetings have seen turn-outs as high as 200 people to as few as 30. Much of NENA’s work involves gauging community needs and then matching them to project goals.
“We’ve tried to give the highest weight to the opinions of people who live closest to individual projects,” said Walter, who maintains the association’s website. “We try to keep everyone as up to date as possible,” he said.
Optimizing the area around LRT stations has its own set of problems.
“The experience of having the LRT in the neighborhood has been bitter-sweet,” said Walter. The advantage of being located so close to a major transportation source can also be a real nightmare for other forms traffic. There’s little if any parking for those on Minnehaha Avenue and getting around on foot can be daunting.
“We feel that putting the LRT in the middle of Minnehaha Avenue was a bad design decision,” said Walter. “It’s surely impeded our ability to make the area pedestrian friendly,” he said.

Neither of the LRT stations have pedestrian overlay districts, which in a general design philosophy would lean toward pedestrian and bicycle traffic. That part of the design was not allowed for at the outset, according to NENA, because there wasn’t a master plan in effect when the stations were built.

“We’re the last LRT station area to be developed, so it has given us time to see what has worked and what hasn’t worked,” said Walter.

One ugly development for commuters and neighbors at the LRT stations is the recent crime they have attracted. According to Metro Transit Police, an arrest was made in the Oct. 4 assault of a 44-year-old Minneapolis woman abducted from a 38th St. light rail station in the early morning hours.

“We don’t have any accurate statistics about how crime has escalated around the LRTs,” said Walter, “but we hear a lot of things anecdotally from phone calls or reports from people in the neighborhood or from news reports. We’ve heard stories about at least 16 assaults committed at our LRT stations,” Walter said.
Minneapolis Police could not confirm or deny most recent crime reports at or around LFT stations at the time of this report.
“There’s been a definite minimizing by police of crime reports around the LRTs,” said Walter.