Gang Graffiti Reveals Dispute Over Cottage Park In Jordan Neighborhood...

Photos and blog post by John Hoff

This weekend, I attended a party at Kip Browne's house with my son Alex, age 12, and somewhere between barbeque and toasting oversized marshmallows, Kip told me we were going on a "Kip and Johnny mission." And I was all, like, whatever. Will some of us not come back alive? Well, give me some gear and sign me up...

We walked to Cottage Park where Kip pointed out a spectacular granite table--complete with chess 'n' checker squares etched into the tabletop--which some no-account gang bangers had marred with graffiti. Like hunters who can tell what animals have passed by from the stinky spoor dropped behind, we could divine information from the graffiti: a gang which represents itself with a five-pointed star had claimed the turf as theirs. But then another gang which represents itself with a six-pointed star had crossed out the other graffiti, and marked the turf as theirs.

Kip Browne announced both gangs are wrong. The park belongs to the decent people, to the taxpayers, not to criminally inclined social misfits. The matter has, of course, been reported to 311 but it's possible folks in the neighborhood may just do something about it on their own, without waiting for permission.

NoMi Revitalization Featured in National Housing Journal!

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman. Image from www.shelterforce.org.

Prompted in part by HUD Secretary Donovan's visit to NoMi last summer, the prominent National Housing Institute journal "Shelterforce" tells the story of the kinds of collaborative partnerships that have brought about success in places like the Hawthorne EcoVillage and Jordan's Cottage Park.

The article is titled, "The 'Minnesota Nice': A Culture of Collaboration." This would have been published on JNS much earlier, but Shelterforce clings somewhat to the "dead tree format" in that its online edition lags several months behind what is available in print.

The publication has all sorts of mortgage geeky, policy wonkish articles that seem like they were written with me personally in mind. But of course the best one is the one that profiles the EcoVillage and Cottage Park clusters.

(Do not click "read more.")

Volunteers Swarm NoMi! (pictorial, part 2 of 2)

Guest post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman

Whenever we experience tragic events, they always seem to overshadow the little day-to-day things that go on in our community and in our lives that make things better. It's been a tough weekend for a lot of people and there's no way around that. But our neighborhood benefited from the hard work of as many as 200 or more volunteers from the Target Corporation and the Pohlad Family of Companies. I don't want to forget that either. So what follows are a few other shots of the Cottage Park cluster work...



Volunteers seemed especially excited to get rid of chain link fences, which can be unsightly and not conducive to a sense of community.



The biggest task seemed to be construction of a retaining wall, as seen below.



I also met Chad Schwitters of Urban Homeworks and his cute-as-a-button daughter. She was eagerly searching for earthworms, then putting them in this jar that had been dug up:




(Nerdy Hawkman “Lord of the Rings” parody alert) The volunteer crew also unearthed this rather disturbing artifact:



NoMi legend has it that when the drilling for geothermal power in the EcoVillage is complete, the Chosen One will hurl this sculpture into the molten core of the earth. Once destroyed, the power of Slummy the Squirrel will be vanquished forever and NoMi will begin a decades-long reign of eco-friendly prosperity and housing code compliance.

But good fortune was already smiling on us. Jay Clark of CURA was dropping off kids from the Farview soccer team. Fresh off a 1-0 victory, they stopped by for lunch and we got to bask in the glory of our star athletes once again.




A special thanks goes out to everyone who works to make NoMi a better place.

HUD Secretary Donovan Visit Was A Triumph For NoMi...

Photos By John Hoff

There are people like Mike Martin of the Fourth Precinct and Council Member Don Samuels who work hard every day to improve our quality of life in NoMi, but don't receive the kind of public credit they deserve. So when HUD Secretary Donovan visited along with Senator Klobuchar, it was a rare moment for these public officials to briefly bask in the limelight of the national stage before, well, getting right back to work.

Bask, I say, bask. I hope Donovan's visit went so well that President Obama finds his way to Jordan's Cottage Park in the near future; though I think the Hawthorne Eco Village is an equally-deserving success story.

In a spirit of appreciation for our local public officials who worked day after day to make a triumph like yesterday possible...

Here are a bunch of photos which basically say: WELL DONE, PUBLIC OFFICIALS.

In the top two photos, Council Member Don Samuels and Mike Christiansen of CPED talk to a youth clean-up crew about positive changes coming to the neighborhood and the need to stay in school. In the next photo, the Secretary's entourage makes its way up the sidewalk led by a gaggle of media.

In the next two photos, a little girl spoke to the Secretary and other public officials, talking about how she loves her neighborhood. The moment stole everybody's heart. In the last photo, Fourth Precinct Commander Mike Martin pulled up in his vehicle long enough to meet Secretary Donovan, but very quickly he was right back in the car and presumably off doing the kind of "cop stuff" which helped bring about a moment like this in the first place.

Donovan's visit was not only a triumph for North Minneapolis, but for the Obama administration. The money from the stimulus package is being spent wisely and well to fix the problems brought on by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. Cottage Park has gone from being a gang-infested hellhole to a photo op for public officials.

And yet none of us can rest on our laurels. We got here one small action at a time; whether that's making a 311 call, supporting the efforts of police, or attending yet another booooooring neighborhood meeting. Yesterday's triumph is widely shared.

But, clearly, we can't rest on our laurels...or we'll never see the day when President Obama tours North Minneapolis, or Mayor Rybak announces he's moving here, or the vacant houses fill up with first time home buyers. Yesterday was a high point. Now we have to keep climbing.