West Bank residents push for Cedar Avenue
LRT stop

by DENNIS GEISINGER

(Photo by Dennis Geisinger)

“This was a victory for the representatives who worked so hard to get a workable transportation system for their community,” said Doris Wickstrom, chair of the Land Use Committee for the West Bank Community Coalition (WBCC). “This has been a wonderful project for the experience of getting things done,” Wickstrom said.

Wickstrom was responding to questions asked last week by Southside Pride about her organization’s experience in working with and sometimes against the interests of political powerhouses like the University of Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis and the Metropolitan Council in making sure that the needs of the Cedar-Riverside Neighborhood were fairly addressed while plans were being drawn up for the $840 million light rail transit project that will connect Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Central to the WBCC’s objectives within that planning process was making sure the train’s West Bank Station will be on Cedar Avenue instead of the on-campus location in front of the University’s Blegen Hall, where it was originally envisioned.
“The Met agreed in December to the Cedar Avenue Station location,” said Wickstrom. “Cedar is our main business area. Plus, there were safety issues if people had to walk across campus to get to the train,” Wickstrom said.

Updated plans for the new West Bank LRT Station show its platform extending from the east side of Cedar Avenue, under 19th Avenue, with pedestrian access on both ends. Another coup for Wickstrom and the efforts of her committee was getting an elevator that had been pinned to the 19th Avenue access moved to Cedar Avenue.

“People who live in Riverside Plaza [the tall multi-colored apartment towers that dominate the West Bank skyline] will be big users of the Cedar Avenue Station,” Wickstrom said.

According to 2000 Census figures available from the WBCC, 45 percent of people living in Cedar-Riverside are foreign-born. More than 500 of the neighborhood’s residents speak African languages, more than 500 speak Spanish, and more than 500 speak Vietnamese. The actual number of those for whom English is not a primary language is likely far greater, says the WBCC. The major immigrant groups in the neighborhood are Somali, Oromo, Ethiopian, Hispanic, Vietnamese and Korean.

Cedar-Riverside also has the city’s largest concentration of affordable housing, with a population earning among the lowest incomes in the area.

Bringing the needs of such a widely diverse population to the fore in a multi-million dollar public transportation project was not an easy task, according to WBCC officials. But, according to the group’s autobiography, the reason it came together in the first place was to represent “the conviction that people of the community have a moral right to be part of the decisions made about their homes.”

The Metropolitan Council is scheduled to vote on a final plan for the proposed light rail project on Feb. 27. The question is, will the Met be able to boil down the requirements of enough of the city’s residents who will all be—in one way or another—tied to the LRT’s tracks?

“I certainly hope so. I think it’s going to depend a lot on the university,” said Wickstrom. “But, I don’t think this [part of the Central Corridor LRT] plan for Cedar/Riverside would have gotten done without the residents and resident associations.”