St. Paul May Build All the Triplexes and Fourplexes That Minneapolis Won’t

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.

Is It 2040 in St. Paul Already?

One of the more controversial proposals in the court-delayed (if not court-eliminated) 2040 Plan in Minneapolis was to zone more areas for multi-family housing. We don’t need to remind you how heated the battle got. But as Kyle Stokes points out at MinnPost today, St. Paul is on its way to allowing duplexes and triplexes on almost every lot in the city—including options for larger buildings in many areas—with hardly a voice raised in complaint. (City council was set to vote today, but had to delay a week because an amendment was introduced—to raise height limits.) No one is quite sure why an increase in multi-family development is more popular in the state capital, though Stokes raises some possibilities. Maybe it’s that St. Paul has made smaller changes along these lines in the past without negative consequences. Maybe it’s that the zoning changes didn’t have as large an effect as expected in Minneapolis. Maybe it’s that the St. Paul city council did less to publicize the decision. Or maybe it’s just that in this, as in so many other ways, St. Paul is just a different city. 

New News Website Just Dropped

From 1970 to 2018, a free newspaper known as the Downtown Journal existed in Minneapolis. Early on, it focused on gossipier to-dos and even ran a "Ms. Skyway" piece that featured future U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 1988 (she'd later joke about it on Colbert). It got newsier over the years, and reached a peak circulation of 30,000. “We were really good at capturing the moment when downtown was reaching its full potential,” David Brauer, the Journal's editor in the '00s, told the Strib's Neal Justin in '18. And today, something of a digital spiritual successor debuted: Downtown Voices.

The new publication's co-founder, Charlie Rybak, knows a thing or two about digital spiritual successors to neighborhood papers; his team at Minneapolis Voices launched Southwest Voices, a callback to the departed Southwest Journal, two years ago. With Downtown Voices, Rybak says, "We will always be objective, and we won’t always be sunshine and rainbows... we will also readily admit that we are biased—and our bias is that we want Downtown Minneapolis to do well, to thrive, to grow, to welcome everyone, and to prosper." (Click here for the full mission statement.) DTV will soon announce its first-ever editor, though stories are already coming out, like this Twins playoff primer and this neat downtown pulse-check introduction.

Food News Speed Round

There's been a lotta food news over the last day or so, so let's quickly recap, shall we? Over at Mpls. St. Paul Mag, Stephanie March has the scoop on Bûcheron, a new dinner spot from a group of Gavin Kaysen alums that will open this winter in the former Revival/Corner Table space in Kingfield. (It doesn't mean "butcher"; it's French for "lumberjack.") March also got all the info on Chilango, a coming Mex-Tex spot by Bde Maka Ska from Petite León's Jorge Guzmán. Bring Me the News reports that Mi Mexico Querido has opened in the former Dumpling space along Minnehaha Avenue; it joins their existing location in St. Paul. Also, LITT Pinball Bar pushed back its opening from today until tomorrow—we'll have a preview of the new hot spot in the ol' Liquor Lyle's space for ya then. And, in more bummery news, Fire & Nice Alehouse, which opened at 27th and Lyndale in 2020, has announced that it'll close after three years. The last day of service is October 20.

Broken Apartment Skylight Offers New Water Feature!

Another day, another potential slumlord situation. This time we’re at 905 Franklin Ave. in Minneapolis, where Minnesota Reformer is reporting on the stuff of nightmares. When torrential August rains broke through a hallway skylight of the 46-unit, 121-year-old building, signs of major water damage started showing up fast, including squishy flooring, swollen walls, black mold, and wood rot. But renters claim that the property manager has been slow to get on repairs (“I told her I was going to file legal action, and she laughed. She said, ‘I have lawyers too,’” one renter says). City inspectors, who visited the building in late September, were also unimpressed. “The entire skylight is just a tarp,” the report notes. The city is giving building owners, Dankmar Arms, LLC, until October 20 to fix the wide variety of issues, which also include electrical, stair, and heating violations. In the meantime, tenants are regularly giving tours of the chaos via YouTube and TikTok.