Prosperity catalyst | Twin Cities Daily Planet

The late namesake of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome famously observed that without professional sports the Twin Cities would be nothing more than “a cold Omaha.” Well, we’ve dodged that bullet. Even if the Vikings leave town without getting a new playground, we’d still have three major pro teams, plus the football Gophers, performing in their own publicly-funded facilities. Omaha can’t come close to matching that.

Where the Twin Cities don’t measure up to their smaller, warmer Midwestern neighbors, however, is in transit connectivity to jobs. A 2011 report from the Brookings Institution found that our metropolis trails not only Omaha, but also Des Moines, Madison, Milwaukee and Wichita, in getting people to work by bus or rail.

We have fewer working-age residents near transit stops and less frequent service than the national average, which is led, surprisingly, by many cities in the West. Even sprawling Los Angeles does better, as do Fresno, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Tucson.

Fortunately, there’s an outstanding proposal to boost our competitiveness in this vital area—the Southwest light-rail project. It’s supported by a near-unanimous business lobby, local governments, federal officials and a strong majority of Minnesotans. It would directly create more than 3,500 jobs while connecting workers to more than a quarter of a million more, 60,000 of them to be added in the Southwest corridor by 2030.

There’s just one catch. Conservatives who control the Minnesota Legislature have zeroed out Gov. Mark Dayton’s request for $25 million in state borrowing to hold the project’s place in line for $625 million in federal funding. These supposedly business-friendly leaders insist on ignoring the support of five different chambers of commerce for the Southwest line. They’ve vowed to stop the project “in its tracks,” even if it means wasting tens of millions on delays beyond the 2018 all-aboard target.

Some of these same so-called conservatives also favor spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a new Vikings stadium, which would accommodate something like 70,000 fans for 10 games a season, not counting other events that would happily continue at the 30-year-old Metrodome. Southwest LRT is projected to serve 30,000 riders every weekday—a year’s worth of Vikings attendees every month.

On top of that, the same January 2012 bipartisan survey noted above found that 76 percent of Minnesotans say the state would benefit from expanded transit service, 69 percent would like to use transit more often if it were convenient and 61 percent back funding the Southwest LRT. In Hennepin and Ramsey counties alone, 69 percent support the Southwest initiative, with only 26 percent opposed.

“From the Red River Valley to southeastern Minnesota’s bluff country, Minnesotans from all walks of like believe the state would benefit from having an expanded and improved public transportation system,” the survey authors from GOP-oriented Public Opinion Strategies and DFL-aligned Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates concluded. “That finding helps explain why there is such solid voter support—both statewide and especially in the metro area—for moving forward with the Southwest Light Rail Line.”

Furthermore, three-quarters of the 700 voters surveyed statewide found these arguments for the light rail convincing:

• “Transit ridership in the region keeps growing, and we need to continue to meet the need for a reliable way to school and work.”

• “One million more people are projected to live in the Twin Cities area in the next 25 years. If we do not invest in providing more transportation options now, we’ll have more traffic and clogged roads, more pollution and a worse quality of life.”

• “The Southwest Light Rail Line and other public transportation improvements are supported by the Minneapolis and St. Paul Chambers of Commerce [not to mention the TwinWest, Eden Prairie and Edina chambers], other area business groups and hundreds of employers across the region as a way to reduce traffic congestion and provide a way for workers to get to jobs more easily.”

A Vikings stadium and the Southwest LRT have the same daunting price tag: $1 billion plus. Each requires hundreds of millions in contributions from local taxpayers ($500 million from Hennepin County property taxes and Twin Cities sales taxes for the LRT). The proposed state share of $125 million over several years for the Southwest would leverage $9 for every $1 borrowed.

Economic benefits of publicly financed sports arenas are arguable at best, while state-of-the-art transit is a proven widespread prosperity catalyst. The Central Corridor LRT, which won’t start running until 2014, already has spurred lots of redevelopment along St. Paul’s blighted University Avenue. The Northstar and Hiawatha lines also are drawing investments in housing, commerce and employment. The major redevelopment promised for the area around the Metrodome 30 years ago never happened.

We’ll never be a cold Omaha when it comes to professional sports. But it will take some catching up to attain that dubious distinction for our growing population of transit riders.

Will fish swim in an aquarium of sky blue waters? | Minnesota Public Radio

St. Paul, Minn. — The historic Hamm’s brewery in St. Paul made beer for more than a century before it shut down 14 years ago. But it may soon find new life — as a fish farm. A St. Paul landscaper said his idea for an organic fish and produce operation is so crazy it might just work.

Driving down Minnehaha Avenue on St. Paul’s East Side, most people might pass the shuttered Hamm’s brewery and see blight. Rusty padlocks swing between the plant’s gates. Holes gape in the brew house walls where workers ripped out beer making equipment.

But David Haider?

He sees fish.

“We’re going to start with tilapia and once things are up and running, probably branch out to trout and we’ll branch out maybe into a couple other species,” Haider said.

Those fish will be farmed in 4-foot wide, 60-foot long tanks in a brewery outbuilding, just behind the hulking five-story brewhouse. The fish will swim in water from the brewery well. Racks of aquaponic produce will grow above them.

“The fish water would get pumped to the top tier, and all the vegetable roots will hang down, suspended in the nutrient rich water,” Haider said. “As the water passes through, it will feed the plants, and then the roots of the plants will also filter out the water. It’ll drop down to the next tier and so on, and by the time it gets filtered back down to the fish tanks, it will be fresh, filtered water.

Haider hopes to sell the fish and vegetables, offer some hands-on science education to neighborhood school kids and take advantage of the local food movement.

Odd as that may sound for a brewery, it’s already working in an abandoned crane factory in Milwaukee. Sweet Water Organics raises about 35,000 perch and 20,000 tilapia, along with lettuce, watercress, basil and wheatgrass.

Back in St. Paul, Haider’s efforts are a little more down to earth for now. Literally. He and his wife run Urban Nature, a small landscaping company. They and business partner Chris Ames are starting the fish farm.

They have an initial approval for $300,000 from a city-run development fund and Haider said they’re rounding up another quarter million in private funding.

St. Paul City Council President Kathy Lantry said the fish farm will be a perfect fit.

“I mean, they’re going to raise fish, so what do you need? A water source — voila, the well’s on site,” Lantry said. “They need buildings that are overbuilt, because they’re going to have giant tubs of water in a building. What sort of building is overbuilt to have liquids in them? A brewery.

It has taken a long time to see that potential. Stroh’s brewing stopped making beer there in 1997. The site has been mostly notable since for catching fire.

In it’s heyday, Hamm’s was the fifth-biggest brewer in the U.S. Its St. Paul roots date back to the Civil War.

Along with 3M and the neighboring Whirlpool factory, Hamm’s was the beating blue collar heart of the East Side. At one time, Hamm’s employed as many as 2,000 people in St. Paul.

“Back in the day, (that) was an awful lot of folks,” said Kirk Schnitker, president of the Hamm’s Club, which he founded to keep alive the memory of the historic beer and its maker.

At the mid-century height of its business, he says there were shifts running around the clock at the brewery. The Hamm family sold it in 1965.

“You know it had a long run of making Hamm’s there and Old Style and Pheiffer’s and Buckhorn and a number of other brands. And finally, Stroh’s,” Schnitker said. “The run was long, and eventually it was ended by the larger beer interests.”

Since the brewery closed, planners have pitched homes, offices and warehouse space on the site. Plans for an Asian Pacific cultural center were vetoed by then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“We’ve been looking at reuse of these buildings. It’s difficult, because it was built as a brewery, and these are massive buildings,” said David Gontarek a planner for the city of St. Paul, which owns the southern half of the Hamm’s site.

If all goes as planned, there will be fish swimming around in some of them by March.

Twin Cities Public Television will air films on waning suburbs | MinnPost

Didn’t get to that see the movies or join in the community discussion about waning inner-ring suburbs here at home as well as across the nation, or learn how they’re handling their problems?

Well, here’s the reel replay: both “The New Metropolis” and its sibling, “New Metropolis Minnesota,” will be aired on Twin Cities Public Television, tpt, starting at 8 p.m. Sunday May 1. 

For a sense of the issues and the mood, this is what “New Metropolis” filmmaker Andrea Torrice told me in a phone interview last month: 

“I’m very concerned about all the communities in America, the way we are growing and the way we are becoming more unequal, both economically and in terms of racial segregation,” Torrice said.  

Cool App Concept: Qonqr to be like mobile, real-life Risk | Android and Me

A team of Minnesota-based developers submitted an awesome idea to the Twin Cities Startup Weekend, a local competition that challenges budding entrepreneurs to build a prototype business over the course of a single weekend.

The team ended up winning the competition with Qonqr (pronounced Conquer), a check-in-based game that has been likened to playing a real-live version of Risk with other players in your community. The actual gameplay for Qonqr is a bit strange; users build teams of “nanobots”, your tiny, invisible robot army that can conquer entire cities.

Qonqr will require you to be at or near the city’s center in order to send your nanobots to conquer the city, unless of course you want to shell out some real dough. If you’re not close to the city you want to conquer, you can use real money to buy a “virtual missle” to send nanobots remotely to conquer cities far and wide.

What happens if your city is already taken over by another player? It’s simple, really; the player with the most nanobots wins the battle for the city.

Groom Arrested After Fight With Best Man

stuffaboutminneapolis:

The Chaska Police Department arrested a groom, still dressed in his tuxedo, after a fight broke out over accusations that he made out with a bridesmaid — just hours after he said his “I do’s.”

Police said they first saw the man on Highway 41 in downtown Chaska around 1:15 a.m. Sunday. An officer said the man appeared to be intoxicated and stumbling. About an hour later, the officer again saw the man “punching the air while walking briskly.”

The man motioned for the officer to leave him alone but the officer approached him and placed him in handcuffs, due to his erratic behavior. The man said he was drunk and was being bitten my mosquitoes.

He told the officer it was his wedding night and that he got drunk and left his reception at the Best Western Hotel. The officer attempted to find a sober person to release the man to, as he was not under arrest, and eventually located the bride, who was still in her wedding dress, at the hotel.

Police said she joked about signing her married name for the first time on the police’s inebriated person release form. The groom’s handcuffs were released, but without warning, the officer said the man became belligerent and began clenching his fists as he walked away from the officers.

The groom immediately began an altercation with another man, later identified as the best man. Police say the men were pushing each other, yelling and swearing. The officers attempted to calm the groom and best man down but the two men turned on the officers, becoming aggressive and refusing to comply with police demands.

Police say the fight initially began between the two men because the groom had been accused of “making out” with one of the bridesmaids at the reception.

I’m callling it….Chaska is the Coon Rapids of the south metro.

Are you sure that Coon Rapids isn’t the Chaska of the north metro? My dad owns a convenience store out there. Lots of ‘characters’.