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Community To the Rescue!
Back in 1889, mason/homebuilder John L. Cook built himself a mighty fine home in Minneapolis. And it stayed a mighty fine home for over 100 years; the Queen Anne-style house, located at 948 18th Ave. NE, was eventually designated a historic landmark. It’s been vacant and rotting for over a decade, however, and right now it's looking really rough. So when Master Properties, the real estate developer that purchased the home in 2019 for $240K, filed paperwork to tear it down, neighbors mobilized to block demolition and buy the house themselves.
And last week they did! The leaders of the project, husband-and-wife team Elizabeth Richardson and Seth Stattmiller (also co-owners of the nearby Recovery Bike Shop) say that MP has accepted their offer to purchase the property. So far, community members have already “offered up materials, labor, expertise, and funds to back the restoration,” Ashley Grams reports for WCCO News.
"[The Cook House] was home to the people who built the industry of northeast, mostly immigrants, craftspeople, laborers," Richardson says. "So to me, it really epitomizes the spirit of what Northeast is all about.”
Can’t We Just Go To the Fucking Store?
Oh great, the vampires over at Amazon found a new way to get $3.99-$13.99 out of you, and for once it’s not by upping Prime membership fees. Instead we’re getting Amazon Now, a 30-minute delivery service that launched today in a handful of test markets, including Minneapolis. Lucky us! Items available for delivery include groceries, healthcare, electronics, cleaning supplies, and, for some reason, board and card games—I want Connect Four NOW!
Working at Amazon is already the stuff of nightmares, and even same-day delivery has resulted in a host of occupational health and safety concerns. Surely shorter delivery offerings won’t escalate labor abuses, right?
On the other hand, while I’ve waited longer for an ambulance to arrive, you can already get pizza, weed, booze, and DoorDash in 30 minutes or less. And this could be a good thing for folks with chronic pain or disabilities. But do people really need Ring doorbells, Febreze plug-ins, or a Monopoly game that fast? I guess so, according to Amazon numbers.
“In 2025, Amazon Prime members received over 13 billion total items via either same-day or next-day delivery globally,” Sarah Perez writes at Techcrunch. “The U.S. alone accounted for 8 billion of those items, a figure up 30% year-over-year.”
Tim Pawlenty Launches Himself Into the Sun
OK, not literally. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the former Minnesota governor is now working for “Big Sun” as the new president and CEO of The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). “The sun is the safest, most natural, and largest nuclear reactor in the world,” T-Paw says via press release, “and it provides an abundant source of energy we should be using to its fullest potential.”
The national trade association works with manufacturers, the media, and lawmakers to push sun-forward education, policies, and employment. Pawlenty, who once shit-talked Trump while also admitting to voting for him, may want to rethink his support once again, as the current administration has not been kind to the solar power industry. Pawlenty spent much of his post-governorship lobbying for Wall Street.
Wanna Run MinnPost?
Are you interested in entering the super-glamorous, highly lucrative world of local news? Well, have we got the job opening for you: executive director at MinnPost, a position held by Tanner Curl from 2020 to 2025 and, since then, on an interim basis by Jim Bernard.
The nonprofit, hyper-local news source, founded in 2007, is looking for someone to handle pretty much everything except the journalism. That includes revenue management, fundraising, dealing with the Board of Directors, being the public face of the org, and setting the overall “vibe” in the office. And while we joked about the pay, the ED at MinnPost actually takes home a $160,000 to $180,000 salary—downright princely for this dying industry.
If running a news source just isn’t your thing and you're job hunting, City Cast’s Twin Cities Job Board always has some really interesting gigs. Today’s postings include a job as a “bumble bee research technician” at the UMN iBug Lab and a “high-level aerial circus coach” at Circus Juventas. Now those sound like fun jobs!
