Hoops-Hater Sues Neighbors, City Over Air Balls

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Only In the Suburbs: Basketball Hoop Elicits Lawsuit

There won’t be any friendly games of "H.O.R.S.E" or "Around the World" between neighbors at the Moeding household. In fact, if one neighbor has her way, there won’t be any basketball games in their driveway this summer.

In January, Julia Ramos filed a lawsuit against neighbors Ross and Lilly Moeding, as well as the city of St. Louis Park, over the placement of the family’s driveway b-ball court. In an affidavit filed last week, Ramos argues that kids (the family has two sons) are crossing her yard to retrieve errant balls, which could lead to them getting run over by cars using her driveway, people tripping on her property, or players hitting someone with a ball on her lawn. 

“Children regularly overshoot basketball hoops due to biomechanical inefficiency, excessive force application, and unpredictable shot trajectories,” the suit alleges, deploying surplus language to describe kids sucking at basketball. “Missed shots by children, particularly ‘air balls,’ often travel significantly beyond five feet from the hoop, especially those with flatter trajectories or excessive force.”

Upon moving in, Ramos noted to the family that the hoop was too close to her property. While the Moedings moved it with the city’s approval, Ramos argues the approved distance was incorrect. "I have lost so much sleep over this. It's been so stressful,” Lilly tells Fox 9. “I still honestly can't wrap my brain around it." The Moedings have set up a GoFundMe to pay for ongoing legal costs.

Wanna Rent the Uptown Urban Outfitters?

We all know Minneapolis has an empty storefront problem. So last July the city launched the Arts & Culture Vibrant Storefronts, a program that allows small businesses, organizations, and artists to apply to receive funds to help secure rental space on Harmon Place in downtown. This year the program has expanded, offering properties in the Warehouse District, Loring Park, and Uptown. 

Places open for applications include the former and North Face and Urban Outfitters on Hennepin Avenue, the MAC Cosmetics storefront at the corners of Lake Street & Hennepin, and People’s Organic in Seven Points. In Loring Park the former Oak Grove Cinema is available, as are a ton of studio spaces downtown. Applicants who sign a two-year-lease and can receive up to $50,000 each year to help pay rent.

And there may already be takers. After a tour, local muralist Jesse Quam told Southwest Voice’s Melody Hoffmann that he’d like to set up a gallery/merch/print space “kind of like Intermedia Arts.” He’d be in good company: Recipients of last year’s project include design Studio Blackbird Revolt, Twin Cities Pride, and Flavor World, the latter of which is a music venue, pop-up marketplace, and print shop that opened last weekend. 

Black Home Ownership Is Way Down in Minnesota

A new report from the Minnesota State Demographic Center shows that African American home ownership in Minnesota has been getting worse over the past 50-plus years. While overall home ownership in the state tends to hover around 72%, Black families have seen a drop from 42% in 1970 to 26% in 2022.  

“In other words, since the 1970s, Black or African American householders have been increasingly concentrated into rental housing units," the report states. "This is a historical trend unique to Black or African American households.”

Among Black immigrants, however, homeownership rates increased. 

“One thing that we have seen in the data is that there have been gains made by more recent Black people coming to the United States," state demographer Jeff Howison tells Nina Moini at MPR." Particularly, people from Ethiopia and Liberia have seen gains since, let's say, over about the last 20 years."

Another group that is consistently seeing higher home owning numbers: Asian home owners, whose numbers are consistently increasing and are now hovering at about 70%. Hmong ownership has seen one of the biggest percentage jumps. "Hmong homeownership has risen from about 10% in 1990 to about 60% in the latest data," the report finds.

Only in the Suburbs Part 2: People Are Freakin’ for Dirty Soda

If there’s one thing soda probably doesn’t need any more of, it’s sugar. But that’s what the sweet-crazed folks offer over at Maple Grove’s Sota Pop, which announced plans this week to open a second store in Edina’s Southdale Center sometime in June. The shop specializes in “dirty soda,” a concoction where syrups, fruit purees, jams, and creams are added to classic pops like Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Fanta, as well as just plain ol’ sparkling water. 

These kinds of beverages are a hit in the Mormon community, where alcohol and coffee are prohibited but sugar is a-OK. They’re also super popular in Minnesota; since opening Sota Pop in Maple Grove two years ago, Salt Lake City-raised Chad Taylor has seen gangbusters business (the website warns of hour-plus lines on the weekends). “Within about a month of opening, we had lines out of the door even in negative [temperatures]," Taylor tells Abby Bulger at Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.