Developments in my area

There are three dense, transit-friendly developments proposed in my area that I see as really beneficial for housing, the environment, and quality of life:

One is for a transit corridor connecting people to the airport, the river, the Blue line (light rail) and downtown Saint Paul.

Another is a proposed apartment complex with a grocery store that would reopen Snelling Avenue south of 46th street so it is no longer a dead end. It would redevelop what is now a boxy warehouse-style building surrounded by a large parking lot.

The last is the redevelopment of the former Ford plant on Ford Parkway. This is a fantastic opportunity for dense, mixed development with a renewed connection to the river instead of a perimeter wall and a vast parking lot.

I’m thrilled about each of them. But already, the anti-everything crowd is organizing. At a recent community meeting I watched as a group shouted down the city planner and engineer as they asserted, based on actual studies, that the area can handle the projected traffic.

I read a letter to the editor in the Star Tribune that claimed grocery stores were not needed in the area and that the area’s traffic was already outrageous and intolerable.

I just walked by giant red signs opposing streetcars on the Riverview corridor on 46th street that homeowners had put up on their fences.

I guess they would prefer the status quo: four lanes of speeding traffic and the constant smell of exhaust fumes. The entrenched homeowners would like to deny people a place to live so that they wouldn’t personally experience more traffic. And the letter writer would deny a grocery store to a federally identified food desert because she doesn’t want to be inconvenienced.

Truly, some people are an awful combination of noisy and selfish. They see no problem with pulling up the ladder behind them. They think, “I got mine, fuck all the rest.”

The problem is, future residents have little voice in the process since they don’t know they might one day live in these neighborhoods. They are not as vocal as the entrenched homeowners who see every development as an infringement on their lives. To add to the hypocrisy, it is residents of single-family, detached homes who make the most car trips on average. I worry that the Ford site redevelopment will end up so watered down in zoning that only wealthy retirees can afford to live there. What if it turns out to be Saint Paul’s first gated retirement community?

I just hope local politicians have the sense to disregard the shrieking or at least take it with a great deal of skepticism.

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