When controversy happens….when tempers flare….we read the comments, so you don’t have to.
Emergency kitten
Perhaps you have heard of the Ford Site, in St. Paul? It is no longer being used to make trucks. It is one of the largest, best pieces of land to be developed in the city core right now on either side of the river. It is near the river and near excellent neighborhoods that have expensive housing and walkable grocery stores and stuff!
So, naturally, the city is trying to plan development. And that’s where all hell has broken loose between advocates of development, NIMBY long-time residents of the area, YIMBY long-time residents of the area, and even squirrels who live near the river!
There has been a lot of media coverage of the debates over the plan. We’re going to focus solely on those published recently that we found by searching “Ford Site” in Google News.
We decided to read the comments and rate each media outlet on a scale of 1-5 stars, where 1 means “reading these made us feel dumber,” and 5 means “we have hope for our civilization, even if the conditional use permit for the #carbucks on Marshall isn’t revoked.”
29 comments, and we’re going to note that the headline itself is a bit of a snipe, given that even certain city council members have claimed the process has not been open enough.
Highlights:
- “No matter what the City of St. Paul does with this Ford redevelopment, half of the people will not like it. So they just need to do what they think is best.” Good luck with that in an election year with a mayoral race on the ballot!
- User “leftwingnews” at once complains about his property tax ($4k on a 100 square foot home) and simultaneously complains that the city/county see dollar signs by adding density (in other words: tax base).
- “Muti family housing is not the issue. The issue is the level of density.” Uh.
- “The complaint about transparency is absurd. This site has been discussed for re-development for 10+ years. Why on earth would anyone be opposed to taking this site and bringing it up to 2020 standards?”
Score: 2
. This may seem high by recent standards, but it’s really two HP NIMBYs fighting everyone else, and there are only 29 comments.
The article itself contains several high-quality zingers from last week’s hearing. We could spend hours on those alone! But instead, we will look at the 40 comments.
Highlights:
- “If the neighborhood activists and the affordable housing crew and the density lovers and the density haters all hate the plan a little bit, I think that means those in charge did a pretty good job splitting the baby and managing competing interests.” This… is not actually the worst observation! Density people want more height, more density, and often more affordable/lower income non-senior housing. Anti-density people want a linear park. Some people seem to hate the plan more than a little bit though!
- A white guy claims everyone can bootstrap it and affordable/dense housing is just liberal subsidy. An actual decent discussion about societal benefits reaped in the process of overcoming economic challenge follows! OMG.
- “The only thing that is missing is the unicorn park and the central square so the people have a place to do mandatory group exercise. Oh and I forgot about the may pole park so they can dance to the pagan gods in their one piece grey zipper suits during the solstice and other pagan rituals. One more thing, they will need a government subsidized broom factory so the little people can try to support themselves.”
I like unicorns.
- An argument about the site’s viability to be an auto plant again also ensues. “Bow to your lords, the urban planners! Coffee houses, craft kombucha breweries, and farm-to-table restaurants for all!” They all sound like nice destinations after the unicorn park!
- Someone suggests building a casino there. Uh. Also, I’m sure the Highland Park NIMBYs would love that. What.
Score: Um. 1? PiPress comments are invariably awful. There were okay observations and a shocking discourse on bootstraps that was not terrible. But there were unicorns and kombucha. So.
WCCO: St. Paul Group Aims to Stop Ford Site Development
This actually has 0 comments!
Star Tribune: St. Paul shrinks building heights in proposed Ford site development plan
78 comments.
Highlights:
- “The utopians want to build Cabrini-Green. And we will all densely frolic merrily together, on bicycles! How quickly we forget the lessons of history.”
I grew up near Chicago in the 1970s, and I am betting this person has never been near a Chicago project. I actually hired staff living in projects. I suspect this person has nary a clue WTF they are talking about.
- Someone points out to an HP NIMBY that this is a separate neighborhood and the plan would make it such.
- “St. Paul families want to live in houses if they can. Small families may start out here but no one will live in these permanently – until they become run down.”
- “Build them TALLER by the river….those are the views people will pay a premium to have.”
- A NIMBY accuses supporters of having no intent to live in or near the development. Another user: “We’ll be here long after the cries of “traffic!” “parking!” and “crime!” have faded into the recesses of history.” Another points out that if they built to the density of Orono, they could add 56 people.
- “Nearby residents’ concerns are based on class. They assume that they have no responsibility to accommodate anyone that doesn’t live like them. That is not how cities operate. That is how gated communities work.” A debate on classism ensues.
Score: We give up. Also, it’s 5PM somewhere.
To be honest: Wednesday’s hearing was quite interesting. The Say Yes crowd did a great job of organizing themselves to be visually dominant, and had clear messaging. The Livable St. Paul crew were, frankly, somewhat outclassed. The continuation next Wednesday at 3:30 should be pretty amazing to observe.
We will hopefully be covering it on Twitter if you cannot attend, and/or monitoring accounts that are in attendance providing detail. Note that any re-tweets of these aren’t endorsement by Streets.MN of anything but the interestingness of the tweet and hearing!
And, no doubt, there will be more comments to read Thursday. We have a few days to recover before then.