Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
BlackRock Pouncing on Regional MN Utility
It's easy to confuse the three (allegedly) evil Black[blank] companies. There's Blackstone, the private-equity firm that's gobbling up single-family housing; there's Blackwater, the military security contractor responsible for civilian massacres in Iraq; and there's BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, which is currently poised to acquire Minnesota Power. (The Guardian once named BlackRock CEO Larry Fink one of "America’s top 12 climate villains," to satisfy the rule of three corporate depravity hyperlinks.)
Just this week the proposed $6.2 billion takeover of Minnesota Power by Global Infrastructure Partners, a BlackRock subsidiary, made headlines nationally (The Lever) and locally (Minnesota Reformer). At issue: whether a Wall Street giant can better serve 150,000 northern Minnesota customers while working toward the state's 2040 carbon-neutral power goal. (Minnesota Power's current owner, Allete, is a Wall Street lil guy.) Count Karlee Weinmann as skeptical.
"The consumer advocates, environmental groups, and even the judge that have meticulously tracked this proposal for more than a year remain steadfast in their conclusion that it's a bad deal for utility customers," the researcher and communications manager with utility watchdog group the Energy & Policy Institute tells Racket. "Public support for this transaction is concentrated among individuals and organizations with financial ties to the utility. A lawyer for the private equity buyer appears to have been involved in drafting supportive comments submitted by labor unions. If parties who stand to profit from this deal are running an under-the-radar influence operation to secure regulatory approval, that's a huge issue."
The dizzying energy consumption fueling the AI boom is a likely motivator for BlackRock. The company is "waging a scorched-earth campaign" to hoover up utilities, Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever, as CEO/alleged climate villain Fink is bullish on those energy-guzzling data centers. A global firm the size of BlackRock has never before acquired an electric utility, Schwenk reports. “We’re viewing this as a precedent-setting case,” industry watchdog Alissa Jean Schafer tells The Lever. “This is a new thing, a new potential strategy.”
Federal regulators have already approved BlackRock's absorption of Minnesota Power, though the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has yet to decide on it. It's not known when that final vote will occur. Read Brian Martucci's granular Minnesota Reformer breakdown to better understand the 13-month-and-counting saga.
Let's Discuss the New Lake Hiawatha Renderings
Look, at this juncture, we're simply not replacing Lake Hiawatha Golf Course with a sex forest. Sorry!
To combat flooding, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board plans to reduce the 18-hole public course to nine holes as part of the Hiawatha Links project. Last week officials unveiled three proposals for how the parkland could look, and yesterday the Park Board shared those renderings with the public.
Me, personally? I'm in favor of maximizing the boardwalk milage around the creek and lake—let's get positively nutty with that strollable plankage. But you can decide for yourself.
Park Board officials say reimaging the land surrounding Lake Hiawatha will require $40+ million, and work won't begin until around 2030. Click here to view more Hiawatha Links documents and submit feedback.
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Getting New Podcast Series
It's a boom time for fascinating podcasts coming outta the Arrowhead.
Last month via RacketCast, we brought you news of The Fire: A Lutsen Podcast, an investigative series from journalist Joe Friedrichs exploring the 2024 fire that claimed the historic Lutsen Lodge. And today, the Duluth News Tribune's Jay Gabler (another past RacketCast guest) announced Edmund Fitzgerald: 50 Years Below, a deep dive (sorry) into the 1975 Lake Superior shipwreck that claimed 29 souls.
Gabler writes that the five-episode series "draws on a year of research including interviews with historians, as well as with people who responded the night of the sinking and with those who are keeping the vessel's memory alive today." Fans of production value will be delighted to hear that a UMD grad, William Brueggemann, has composed an original score for the pod. The first ep of Edmund Fitzgerald: 50 Years Below will drop October 13 wherever you get podcasts.
Minnehaha Avenue, '90s-Style
Wanna take a photo cruise southward down Minnehaha Avenue, circa 1998? Longfellow Whatever has your specific-craving ass covered. Writes LW founder Trevor Born...
This collection finds the street in a period of limbo. The removal of the streetcar in the 1950s kicked off a decline that was worsened by the exodus of industry along the Hiawatha rail corridor and the urban core more generally. A number of commercial buildings were replaced by mid-size apartment developments in the 60s and 70s. And the decade-long conversion of Hiawatha Avenue from a city road to a highway that began in the late 80s pulled a significant amount of traffic off of the stretch. But even against those headwinds, the fundamentals that made Minnehaha a desirable corridor never went away.
Some stray observations...
- Wildflyer Coffee, Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio, and Trylon Cinema represent massive upgrades from Heart of Gold Jewelry at 3258 Minnehaha.
- We gotta bring back the Duck Inn tavern at 3465 Minnehaha (move over, Universal Chiropractic) and Jimmy's Steaks & Spirits at 3675 Minnehaha (get outta here, The Howe).
- Shoutout to onetime Racket subject D&J Glove Repair at 3742 Minnehaha.
- Fun fact: I used to work at 4554 Minnehaha, pictured in '98 as Minnehaha Bait & Tackle, whose slogan ("10,000 Unemployed Minnows!") rocked. During my barista tenure it was the Minnehaha Cafe coffee shop, and many say my writing career peaked with this social media post that... well, I suppose it was intended to sell coffee.
