3/14/2023 0 Comments Light rail route mnOur community-based reporting is for everyone. Support nonprofit journalism dedicated to Minnesota's diverse voices. The university began its contract in September, and hopes to finalize a report within 18 months, according to a press release. Representatives with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs did not respond to requests for comment. She’s happy about the contract with the University of Minnesota to study displacement, but hopeful the planners will wait for the final academic report before recommending a route. Harrison wants other neighborhoods to learn from its experience, Qannani said. Metro Transit display materials are seen at a Blue Line informational open house on West Broadway Avenue in north Minneapolis on November 12, 2021. Planners hope to decide between the Lowry Avenue and West Broadway routes by the end of 2022. ![]() When negotiations with BNSF finally fell apart, Metro Transit saw it as an opportunity to route the project more through the heart of north Minneapolis, O’Connell said. Such a report is a first for a Minnesota transportation project, Fernando said. “People want there to be restaurants, amenities, more green spaces and fast transit but they don’t believe if those things come they’ll be able to stay here,”Qannani said.įernando said she hopes the University of Minnesota displacement report can provide real data to back up anecdotal evidence that rents are going up and long-term residents are being forced to move. The fears are the same as those expressed about the nearby Upper Harbor Terminal redevelopment project: if the area gets nicer, will it still be affordable for working class people of color? The original planned route along the BNSF alignment would have passed through the Harrison neighborhood along Highway 55, but the route was abandoned after negotiations with the railroad fell through. The neighborhood association has heard from residents who are seeing their monthly rents increase by as much as $200, she said. Harrison is a 70 percent renter neighborhood, Qannani said, and when the route was planned along it, the area became ripe for real estate investors. “Even though the line is no longer coming here, we’re still getting displacement from long term residents who are renting in the community,” said Qannani Omar, a housing organizer with the Harrison Neighborhood Association. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Council. Metro Transit planners are trying to decide the best path to get through north Minneapolis for the Blue Line Extension. Either of those two routes would stop near North Memorial Hospital on the border of Robbinsdale and Minneapolis, a major employment and healthcare hub. Now, Metro Transit planners are weighing two routes that bypass the Harrison neighborhood: one that takes Washington Avenue north and cuts west on Lowry Avenue, and one primarily using West Broadway. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. ![]() ![]() They are attempting to ease community concerns that current residents will be priced out, and recently hired the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs to study anti-displacement strategies and potential gentrification impacts of the project. Now planners are weighing options on how the commuter line should cut through north Minneapolis on its way to Robbinsdale, Crystal, and Brooklyn Park. But in 2020, BNSF issued a final resounding no, leaving the Metropolitan Council and Hennepin County to find a new route after nearly three decades of planning. But more than a decade later, no tracks have been laid for the long-planned project to extend Minnesota’s first light rail line from downtown Minneapolis to Brooklyn Park.įernando was elected in 2018, when the new Hennepin County Board made one last push to convince freight rail company BNSF to share its corridor through the northwest metro. Fernando still lives in Harrison today, and represents her neighborhood, north and northeast Minneapolis, and a portion of the northwest suburbs on the Hennepin County Board. It was the reason she attended her first neighborhood meeting in Harrison, on Minnneapolis’ North Side, several years ago. Irene Fernando has spent years thinking about the Blue Line light rail extension.
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