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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Rocky Road: The 35W Access Project Controversy
Wednesday 17 December @ 15:14:19 |
 by Jane Franklin
We Americans may love our roads with the emotional force of a thousand SUV commercials, but we’re usually not too clear about how we got the roads in the first place. Name-check Jack Kerouac and we’re there; start talking about parking variances and environmental impact statements and our eyes glaze over. Which is why a potentially controversial highway expansion and the repaving of Lake Street have been organized right under our noses, with little public attention and even less public input.
At first, it’s difficult to understand why there could be much of an interest—never mind controversy—in this pair of complex but routine projects. The 35W Access project aims to relieve congestion and improve the connection to Lake Street and several other major South Minneapolis arteries, while the repaving project would rearrange lanes and parking along a road which has not been repaved in fifty years. But both projects are dogged by allegations of conflict of interest, inadequate public input, and concerns about harm to struggling small businesses. More disturbingly, both projects highlight the confusing and closed decision-making process by which the very shape of our city is determined. Who decides for whom in Minneapolis?
  
Homes that would be demolished by the proposed 35w access project
Roads are power. Road projects bring state and federal dollars to government agencies, which then dole out the coveted contracts for materials, labor and design. A road project can revitalize a neighborhood, connecting it to jobs, customers for local business and public transit. But a big road can also rip right through an area, sinking property values, destroying housing stock and scattering previously tight-knit communities. Roads shape economic development—massive construction after World War Two effectively subsidized suburbanization and gave birth to today’s landscape of urban sprawl.
Road-building in the Twin Cities does not have a particularly glorious history. For its population, the metro area is one of the nation’s most sprawling and highway-dominated. In the 1960s, the construction of I-94 decimated Rondo, then St. Paul’s largest black neighborhood. Rondo had been a regional center for cultural events and black-owned businesses, bringing families who had lived in the area for decades together with new immigrants from the rural South. Also in the sixties, the West Bank was divided by 35W, weakening a neighborhood perceived by the police as a hotbed of dissent. Protest against the expansion of Highway 55 produced the largest police operation in Minneapolis history, as well as the brutal spectacle of riot cops beating and pepper-spraying peaceful protestors, some already handcuffed. That particular expansion had been on the agenda since the 1960s, and had been repeatedly opposed by citizens’ groups.
Critics of the Access Project and the repaving see these plans as continuing a harmful tradition. Most vocal is STRIDE (Southside Traffic Initiative for Determining Our Environment), a group whose informal nature, passionate Web site, scrappy attitude, and willingness to use mildly unconventional political tactics have raised accusations of “clowning” from some supporters of the projects. STRIDE members have run a cartoon characterizing lawyer and public process manager Tom Johnson as the devil, performed an anti-expansion folk song at a public meeting, and freely use the word “sucks” on their Web site. But STRIDE members have also organized well-attended public informational meetings in English and Spanish and served on the Lake Street Public Advisory Committee (Lake Street PAC), an advisory body required by law if the projects are to receive federal dollars. Their open, accessible Web site provides an extensive set of links to urban design material geared to nonexperts.
STRIDE members describe the case against the projects like this: Both are geared to move more cars faster, and both project an enormous increase in the number of cars on the roads. Both projects threaten local businesses and homeowners, the Access Project because it requires the demolition of homes and a number of small businesses along Lake, and the repaving project because it will close down major stretches of the street for long periods, meaning that small business owners will see a sharp fall-off in customers. Both projects are geared to the needs of commuters and large local businesses like Abbott Northwestern Hospital and Wells Fargo. And both projects, say STRIDE members, have been overseen by the same network of big businesses, lawyers and politicians, with inadequate public input and insufficient information available.
  
Businesses that would be demolished by the proposed 35w access project
In physical terms, the most controversial aspect of the 35W project is the ramps at 26th Street and 28th Street, which will steer workers and commuters almost directly to the parking lots of Abbott and Wells Fargo, both businesses closely tied to the design process. These ramps will require the demolition of a number of houses and small businesses, as well as increasing traffic on two busy streets. Nearby residents have already indicated, in a nineties survey, that 26th and 28th are hazardously busy.
These ramps will be several blocks of flyover through a busy residential neighborhood. Additionally, a recent Star Tribune article revealed that MnDOT has a history of underpaying for property that it takes for road projects. Only property owners who can pay court costs and appraisal fees in the tens of thousands of dollars can fight these low offers.
The plan proposes that the design will be “ameliorated,” or made more pleasing, by parks placed next to the off-ramps. STRIDE members contend that these empty areas will not be used as parks because they are, after all, right next to a highway exit. Instead, they say, these areas are designated as “parks” in an effort to make the plan more palatable to local residents.
All of this goes back a long way. The Access Project, for example, was defeated in 1992 when it was part of a MnDOT-led “megaproject” which would have vastly expanded much larger sections of the highway. The project was opposed by no less than then-mayor Sharon Sayles Belton and current highway-advocate County Chair Peter McLaughlin, as well as by a host of civic groups. Once a project has been refused, it is illegal to break that project into segments, or “incrementalize” it, in order to complete it on a piece by piece basis. And yet, STRIDE member Liz McLemore, this is just what has been done.
She points to the Crosstown project, the I-94/35W interchange and the addition of lanes to I-94 south of 35-W, all of which are being expanded or are slated for expansion, and all of which would have been part of the original plan. It is difficult to know how else to describe this process, since these projects do compose large parts of the proposed megaproject.
Segmentation is supposed to be illegal because it is a way around both public outcry and rigorous environmental impact statements. According to STRIDE members, the megaproject would have needed a full Environmental Impact Statement to qualify for federal aid; the smaller projects require only an Environmental Assessment, which requires shorter public discussion and lower standards of review. The megaproject roused so much ire that a public meeting drew thousands of attendees, while the smaller projects have gone through without much fuss. Sven, a source involved in the project who would speak only on condition of anonymity, adds that it is difficult to fight segmentation because such cases are protracted, expensive and require going up against powerful state agencies and their lawyers.
For Lake Street, the problem areas have been lane designations and funding. Should the street have four lanes or three? How wide should sidewalks be? How much parking can we fit in? Where do the bikes go? And how exactly do we pay for all of this? Business owners will also need to pay a special assessment to cover a part of the project’s cost, as well as seeing reduced business while the rebuilding is underway.
Lake Street has recently produced a delicate economic renaissance, mostly due to small business owners, many of whom are African-American, recent African immigrants or Latinos. And it may be precisely because Lake Street’s buildings vary in size, newness and quality that the street is such a good incubator for small business—new, spacious buildings may rent for so much that small businesses can’t afford to operate there. Spaces like that may be most appealing to large businesses or to chains with a lot of capital to spend on establishing a new location—Chipotle might be able to succeed in an expensive space where a Mexican restaurant run by local Mexican-Americans might not, just as Starbucks can succeed because it can pay the rent for a new location while a clientele builds up. An independent café might not have enough capital to survive while it becomes popular.
STRIDE supports a three-lane plan for Lake Street—one lane in each direction, with a shared center lane for making left turns and parking on both sides of the street. To STRIDE members, this design calms traffic. The parking lanes insulate pedestrians from cars, as well as making the sidewalks more suitable for outside seating for the cafes and restaurants that line parts of Lake. Parking along Lake would also, says STRIDE, provide more access for customers of local businesses. STRIDE members also urge expanded public transit along Lake and the creation of a bike lane.
The designs that have been chosen by the Lake Street PAC are both four-lane designs which will reduce parking along Lake by anywhere from 80 to 200 slots and which do not include a bike lane. These designs do emphasize widening sidewalks, but one of the designs has parking along only one side of Lake.
All of these plans have to fit into a streetscape that is 80 feet wide on the west end and 100 feet on the east—that is 80 or 100 feet from the buildings on one side of the street to the buildings on the other. This means that a change of even a foot or two in lane width is hotly contested.
But whose numbers to use? Supporters of the four-lane designs contend that four lanes are vital for a road that moves more than 20,000 cars a day. Tom Johnson, who handles public participation in the project for law firm Smith Parker, even links the four-lane designs to the effectiveness of public transit. He contends that only four-lanes will move traffic fast enough to make taking the bus an attractive alternative to driving. Supporters of the four lane designs also want to widen the parking lanes on Lake Street to 10 feet, which means reducing either sidewalk width or lanes of parking. Tom Johnson points out that buses are 10.5 feet wide, so that even a ten foot lane leaves a bus sticking out into traffic, with potentially hazardous results. However, Minneapolis parking lanes are currently less than ten feet wide. Although a ten foot parking lane might add room to maneuver, a narrower lane manifestly does not lead to a rash of accidents.
The 35W ACCESS PROJECT could increase accidents
Is this scarcity model really the only way to tackle the Minneapolis problem? STRIDE members point to Chicago as an overlooked alternative. In Chicago, many streets which are narrower and handle more traffic than Lake (in one case as many as 31,800 cars per day) have one lane in each direction, on-street parking on each side—and a bike lane!
Supporters of the four lane alternatives generally point to a projected increase in traffic—and a substantial increase in the rate of increase—to bolster the need for more lanes. But STRIDE members contest these numbers as well, saying that through the nineties traffic increased at less than projected rates and asking what will speed up traffic increases in the next few years.
McLemore also asks whether more traffic on Lake Street is really a good idea. According to McLemore, medical studies have shown people who live near extremely busy streets run much greater risks of cancer and respiratory problems like asthma. Certainly the 1999 Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Report on Air Toxics pointed out that a number of air toxics exceed “health benchmarks” in the Twin Cities, increasing our cumulative exposure, or CEP, ratings. (The CEP is the Cumulative Exposure Project, an arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which determines risk of cancer from lifelong exposure to ordinary outdoor air.) And another study by the MPCA showed that the CEP actually underestimated results for Minnesota, so that our cancer risk is greater than anticipated. The Report on Air Toxics points out that most of these chemicals are most commonly generated by mobile sources such as cars.
It is difficult not to read this as a choice between taking aggressive steps to reduce traffic from its present levels and taking an increased cancer risk as an acceptable trade-off for running higher volumes of cars through the city.
When addressing mass transit, Johnson points out the possibility of increased express bus service, a new transit center at the Lake Street bridge and a possible circulator bus connecting 35W and Hiawatha may increase mass transit usage. Though he adds, that “transit ridership, even if it doubles or triples, will not cut into the total amount of traffic on Lake.”
Certainly this is a topic worthy of further research by MnDOT or the MCDA—it seems counterintuitive that vastly increased use of mass transit in South Minneapolis will not reduce the use of cars.
In the background of this debate is the question of conflict of interest—and the question of Smith Parker and Tom Johnson. Smith Parker is the local law firm appointed by managing entity the Phillips Partnership to oversee the public part of the decision-making process. Phillips Partnership is an organization of corporate CEOs and local politicians with the laudable goal of reducing crime and improving infrastructure in Phillips. Tom Johnson is a lawyer who has worked extensively with many of the major players in the project.
Public-private partnership is a newly popular model for city management. According to Sven it is a product of “reinvention of government” in the early nineties, when it seemed that the best way to organize civic life was according to a business metaphor. “Everyone was saying that the private sector could do it better,” says Sven.
But he adds that a public-private partnership “takes the political heat off the state.” MnDOT spearheaded a massively unpopular 35W expansion initiative in the early nineties, until massive citizen resistance led to the dropping of the project. With a public-private partnership, the state is not directly in charge of the project. Complaints must go to a private agency, not an elected body. Sven points out that Smith Parker, which manages the public part of both processes, has all the original documentation of minutes, meetings and so on. To see them, you must make an appointment and go to Smith Parker’s offices rather than going to a government site where documents are routinely available at regular hours. A public-private partnership, says Sven, puts one more barrier in the way of public participation. Referring to traditional practices, Sven says: “The process before wasn’t perfect, but it was not so nakedly in private hands.”
It is unclear what kind of oversight process exists in this case. According to STRIDE member Liz McLemore, Hennepin county oversees Smith Parker, but Hennepin County hired Smith Parker—without taking any other bids.
STRIDE members in general are highly critical of Johnson and Smith Parker, contending that Johnson is too closely tied to major corporate players Wells Fargo and Abbot Northwestern. STRIDE member David Piehl characterizes Smith Parker as a “public relations law firm” and says that Smith Parker has called meetings on short notice, with insufficient outreach to non-English speaking communities.
The question of Smith Parker’s connections to Wells Fargo and Abbot Northwestern is a curious one.
Johnson describes allegations of conflict of interest as a “red herring,” and says that “there have been a couple of occasions that they [Smith Parker attorneys] have represented Wells Fargo and Abbot in employment legislation…We are not ever, ever told by Wells Fargo or Abbott or anybody else what we should deliver.”
Before the 35W Access Project
The initial plan for the Lake Street ramps was written by Johnson for Abbot Northwestern in 1997 when he worked for them as a consultant.
According to Sven, this report was taken up virtually unaltered by the Phillips Partnership. He worries that a list of recommendations for a private corporation has suddenly become public policy.
The Partnership stands behind the flyover project and the repaving of Lake Street, which its Web site describes as “a community-endorsed plan.”
After the 35W Access Project
It is a public-private organization which describes itself as “building bridges to solve issues that span public agency jurisdictions, traditional appropriations categories, and individual corporate interests.” On the Phillips Partnership board are Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, and representatives of Abbott Northwestern, Wells Fargo and Metro Transit.
Surprisingly, the Partnership’s board does not appear to reflect the composition of the neighborhood, with its mostly white, mostly male membership of wealthy business people and important local politicians. The Phillips Partnership retains Smith Parker as its legal counsel, and in 1998 Tom Johnson was hired by Smith Parker to work on the Access Project.
Neighborhood resident input on the projects has been restricted to nonvoting open houses. Both the Lake Street PAC and the 35W PAC are often described as “volunteer” organizations, most notably on Hennepin County’s project Web site. While these positions are unpaid, members are either appointed by City Councilmembers or drawn from neighborhood business associations. There is no process for including nonbusiness people who are not already known to Councilmembers.
McLemore contends that the public participation process has not been managed well. The PAC’s meetings in Spanish, she says, have been geared toward Latino business people only, not toward the many Latino residents of the affected neighborhoods. STRIDE member Dave Piehl feels that the PAC has never made clear that public money is tied to increased capacity—that is, the government will only provide money to repave Lake Street if we all agree that it needs to support more cars than it does already. “If you put the Lake Street project into the context of increased capacity,” Piehl comments via e-mail, “I think many people would decline it altogether…it seems there is a strategy—not unlike with the Access Project—to let residents say their piece, then eliminate all resident ideas for “technical” reasons, making it seem that the PAC has selected the otherwise unacceptable expansion of Lake Street capacity.”
What is striking about both these projects is how the structure of the process has governed the debate. Serious questions, like the apparent segmentation of the 35W megaproject and the lack of an Environmental Impact Statement for Lake Street, as well as possible alternatives like the Chicago model, have never been placed before the public. Because public funds are tied to expanding capacity, there really hasn’t been a chance to talk about serious traffic reduction.
Because there is no requirement for outside monitoring, two large civic improvement projects are being undertaken by a small network of people with a lot of authority, some of them the very same big business managers who stand to benefit extensively from the projects. Even assuming absolute maximum goodwill on everyone’s part, surely this is not the best way to address the economic and social implications of road construction. It is difficult to see anything but a big, smoggy gridlock at the end of this particular tunnel.
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