Installing a Sidewalk the City Couldn’t Get Built

On a balmy October morning in 2009 a small construction crew and volunteers from the West Bank CDC spent their Saturday morning constructing a 100 foot sidewalk across an unused parcel of land owned by the City of Minneapolis. The parcel was left vacant when the historic Dania Hall burned down nine years earlier and the community had been calling for a sidewalk in that location ever since. It is on a major pedestrian thoroughfare between the 1,300 units in Riverside Plaza and points south on Riverside Avenue and is heavily traveled by neighborhood residents, many of whom are elderly or disabled. They were forced to navigate the unpaved and unmaintained vacant lot which included serious mud puddles in summer and un-shoveled snow and ice in winter.

The CDC and neighborhood residents had pressed the City to build the sidewalk for over five years before they decided to take matters into their own hands. The sidewalk became necessary when the City let a bar owner acquire the public right of way and close the previously public sidewalk to build an outdoor patio. Pedestrians were then forced to walk around the fenced patio through the vacant lot.

At first City staff argued that the sidewalk was a bad idea but they were overruled by their own planning department when it completed a Small Area Plan that identified the 5^th Street thoroughfare as a major pedestrian pathway and recommended the same sidewalk the residents had been demanding for two years. Still no sidewalk was constructed and the City Council Member, who supported the sidewalk, seemed powerless to get it done. When the CDC Board heard that the Council Member was trying to find grant money to build the sidewalk, they lost all faith in city government. How could the City fail to implement a universally supported, inexpensive public improvement that would improve the lives of so many community members? The CDC and individual residents donated the $3,500 it took to complete the project.