Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
How One Property Owner Explains St. Paul's Woes
St. Paul is uh, really going through it right now. Crashing out, to use the Gen Z parlance. And who better to turn to for help explaining that crashout than Bill Lindeke, MinnPost Cityscape columnist? (We turn to Lindeke any time we need help explaining anything about St. Paul.)
This week, Lindeke details why property owner Madison Equities "cannot be ignored" when discussing the city's mounting problems. Actually, backing up a bit—first he explains that while downtown St. Paul has always been a bit on the sleepier side, and while concerns about its ongoing death/demise are eternal, this moment is, actually, different. The city is bleeding out, losing restaurants, shops, and large companies alike. "I never thought the fate of downtown would hinge on keeping a Walgreens open," he writes, "but here we are."
So what's the good news? There isn't any, unless you like knowing where to point a finger. And there, Lindeke has you covered: "The company that has owned the largest number of buildings, Madison Equities, has spent a decade disinvesting in, and now abandoning, downtown St. Paul," he explains. The column takes us through the 1990s, when Madison had purchased a handful of historic properties in St. Paul, through the 2010s, when it started acquiring more office towers—and when it started systematically firing union staffers and replacing them with cheaper workers.
(And if you want to read a lot more about that era, he recommends Susan Du's 2019 City Pages cover story "St. Paul’s promise: The mean task of bringing business to the Capital City.")
Anyway, the story continues through the Covid era and today, and concludes with a few theories as to how downtown St. Paul might eventually recover. The answer, really, is simple: St. Paul properties would need to be owned by those who want to invest in them and grow their value. (In an email earlier this week to Racket, labor prof Peter Rachleff chastised downtown's many tax-exempt "ed and med" companies who don't contribute to the public purse.) Writes Lindeke, "The blame for St. Paul’s downtown decline is often misplaced onto other political and cultural factors, when in fact much of the responsibility for the current quagmire can be traced to one bad apple."
Five More Student Visas Revoked in MN
Neither the school nor the students had been alerted by the Department of Homeland Security, but administrators at Minnesota State University, Mankato, discovered this week during a status check that five students have had visas revoked. University President Edward Inch says none of those students were abducted by ICE, but they are required to “self-deport within 60 days.” Writing in a public statement, Inch notes that the school is helping with lawyer referrals while also contacting other international students with legal info and resources.
Last week, ICE detained U of M student Doğukan Günaydın as well as an unidentified student at MSU, Mankato. Department of Home Security’s Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Günaydın's arrest was due to a 2023 DUI conviction. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the Turkish student points out that his student visa was revoked seven hours after his arrest and that DUIs aren’t on the DHS’s list of termination reasons.
But Günaydın, who is currently being held in a federal prison in Elk River, hasn’t even been charged yet. “Without a charging document, Mr. Günaydın and counsel remain in the dark about the basis for his detention,” his attorney, Hannah Brown, writes in the petition.
Why Is Childcare So Expensive in MN?
Did you know it's more expensive to send a child to daycare for a year than it is to pay for a year at the University of Minnesota?
Tiffany Lukk has this report for Minneapolis.St.Paul Mag on the sticker shock new parents face when they start looking into childcare. Minnesota is the third-most expensive state when it comes to infant care—a year will cost you $20,165 on average (it's $15,148 for a year at the U). That's due to a number of factors: the cost of high-quality care, high median incomes in the Twin Cities, and the state's higher-than-average share of mothers who participate in the workforce. Of course, not everyone who lives in the state earns that high median income, and the gap in learning skills between children who receive quality early education and those who don’t will remain present through their entire education, Lukk reports.
“I think as a society, we should really be thinking about greater public investment in the early years, and society will benefit as a whole,” says Elizabeth Davis, a professor of applied economics at the U of M. “But it's largely down the road that they will see those benefits, and so it's hard to convince politicians to support those kinds of programs.”
KQ Goes Gen X
I, Jay, am an old enough townie to remember when KOOL 108 played the Chiffons and the Monkees instead of Matchbox Twenty and Backstreet Boys. So the cruel passage of time primed me, as it should have you, for the big programming announcement today from KQRS, the long-running classic rock frequency. Here's the deeply corporate-sounding statement from corporate broadcasting parent company Cumulus Media...
Twin Cities Rock station 92KQRS-FM has turned up the volume on its programming today with a new sound and an updated on-air lineup, evolving the legendary Rock brand. At 6:00am, 92KQRS unveiled its enhanced music offerings, featuring artists like Nirvana, R.E.M., Green Day, and U2, in addition to Rock cornerstones Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. The new music mix will also put greater focus on the legendary Rock that came from Minnesota, with music from artists including Prince, Soul Asylum, The Replacements, and Bob Dylan.
Love enhancement. Just love it.
So yes, the thrust will be less US Festival and more Lollapalooza. Two familiar Twin Cities DJs will also be added to the mix: Paul Fletcher, he of Cities 97 fame, scored the midday slot; Jade, a welcome and familiar name to fans of 89.3 the Current, nabbed the afternoon/evening drive-time assignment. Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman will continue holding down mornings, as he has since replacing the not-at-all-bitter Tom Barnard a couple years ago.
