JNS BLOG EDITORIAL: Something Smells Rotten In Koenig-Land...

Gingerbread House Image From Michelle Koenig "Majestic Farm" Blog, Which Is Public, Click here to go to original image, image is reproduced for First Amendment purposes of criticism and commentary

In my opinion, and I'm entitled to one, Paul Koenig should be in jail for what he has done to North Minneapolis with his slummy Pamiko Properties fiasco, extensively documented on this blog and--back channel information has it--increasingly on the radar of public officials. (I will write about that if and when I can) The degree of involvement of Paul's wife, Michelle, is unknown, so I'm not sure whether (in my opinion) SHE should be in jail, but based on information available from her extensive "majestic farm" blog posts, click here, it appears she is enjoying a lifestyle derived--at least in part--from Paul Koenig's extensive and ongoing victimization of North Minneapolis through slumlord activities.

I would STRONGLY SUGGEST readers click on this link and check out Michelle Koenig's blog posts NOW, before the blog and the information it contains disappears. Hopefully, the person(s) asked to make screen shots of the information are hard at work, because it is not the nature of this blog to sit on information and play back room policy wonk. Information wants to be free. Fly, information about the Koenigs, you're free, you're free!

At this point, it might be good to review how this Pamiko story emerged and evolved...

It all started with Hawthorne Housing Board Member Michael Klick, though this information might surprise Michael. See, Michael was compiling a list of properties in Hawthorne which it might be good for the city to acquire for demolition and/or rehab, but probably demolition. We were particularly interested in clusters of bad properties, since our experience tells us that revitalization in clusters has a bigger impact than a house here, a house there. Michael had a pretty good list of houses in his own Hawthorne Neighborhood quadrant, but the Housing Committee agreed a more extensive list should be compiled and turned over to CPED for consideration.

In the course of compiling this list, Hawthorne Housing Director Jeff Skrenes discovered a foreclosure with a shockingly large value attached, the "slumdog millionaire" house on Bryant Ave. N.

So picture this, gentle reader. Jeff calls me up--I'm on the road driving, as usual, and I remember I was on a break at a Flying J truck stop with an extensive collection of trucker cuisine, which has been evolving and getting dinosaur-large in proportion while nobody was looking. I distinctly remember sitting in the dark cab of my vehicle munching on a Polish sausage shish kabob--with green pepper and onion--while Jeff was telling me about this very odd foreclosure with the large amount of money associated with it. Jeff thought it was quite notable, and maybe even the tip of some kind of ice berg of mortgage irregularity, but at this point ALL JEFF HAD was the "slumdog millionaire" house information.

Jeff didn't think the info he'd developed was very extensive. He thought maybe the info should be developed more but, geez, how should one go about it? And--between bites of Polish sausage shish kabob--I told Jeff about All The President's Men, a book every aspiring student in journalism school gets around to reading for class at least ONCE. I told Jeff how the entire Watergate story started out as a small item about a rather odd burglary with some interesting characters involved. Nobody knew where the story would go at the time, but the Washington Post operated on a principal of "publish what we've got." And the story went somewhere. It went all kinds of places. The rest is history.

Jeff published what we had in a blog post about the "slumdog millionaire" house on Bryant Avenue North. (My label, not Jeff's) Within a short while, a highly-placed source kicked a list of Pamiko properties to Jeff, which resulted in more blog posts and more information coming available. All along, readers contributed more valuable bits and pieces of info. Then it was time to start contacting reporters and public officials.

Now it appears that some public officials and journalists are interested. In fact, it was word that a particular large media entity had been making pointed inquiries which spurred this blog post. I am working under the assumption the Koenigs are aware of what is being written here, so there's no point in pretending NoMi neighborhood activists are not reading their "majestic farm" blog and finding out about their (expletive) horsey hobby, supported on the bleeding back of our neighborhood.

According to a neighborhood source, Paul Koenig was involved in the "dream homes" fiasco which involved putting up prefabricated slabs of solidified crap and calling them a home. The dream homes fiasco is not extensively documented, and hopefully this blog can change that in the future--photo tour, Hawkman?--but here is some information I found making mention of it, click here.

My opinion: Paul Koenig needs to be in jail. I only hope public officials act quickly before evidence of criminal wrongdoing (if, indeed, there was any) is destroyed and authorities are looking for him in (expletive) Belize. (A hypothetical (expletive) example)

Paul Koenig--you predatory scum--if you want to answer for yourself, there is a comments thread below. If you see protestors on the sidewalk in front of your oh-so-nice home, don't bother calling the police--we will have already contacted them beforehand.