In the comments following an entry in Rambix's blog, a typical urban liberal ("pops") tried to explain how businesses were fleeing downtown Minneapolis because the economy was so bad, because of the Iraq war.

I had to make a few comments. I thought I'd share my fun with you here.

Well done! Good reasoned discussion.

Nice job Andrew!

I stopped out their and looked at the discussion, and sadly I suspect your argument is lost on him. Good going anyhow.

I would add that the smoking ban has harmed dowtown quite a bit, many people I know used to go to the bars downtown after work, but when the ban was enacted, it was just as easy for them to go home, and hit the bar in their area. Once the slide begins in the nightlife, then it loses appeal to peole who are looking to go out with thier drinking pals, and the slide progresses.

This lack of nightlife would negatively impact the sale sector to a degree as well since people aren't downtown shopping between work and hitting the bar.

Don't cha love "pops"? Completely deaf to any reasonable statement that disagrees with him. Can't say he's a liberal, though, so much as a dummy.

If businesses are fleeing Downtown Minneapolis, why is the IDS Center 95% full? It was only 50% full about 5 years ago. And why are they getting $25 a freaking square foot?!?!?

City Center is half empty because they just completed a major renovation and there was no access to half the businesses.

Perhaps they dont want to get shot walkign around block E

Perhaps we suburbanites dont like panhandlers

Perhaps we dont like crowds

Oh wait a minute - I have it - We dislike bunny hugging - tree loving - patchouli wearing hippie freaks that think that hugs and social programs are the cure for all ills.

I happen to love Minneapolis and am not afraid to go ANYWHERE in this area - I will not live in fear - I will use due caution but I will not be afraid of any man that walks this earth....

For work related stuff, I have to be both downtown and uptown quite a bit during the evening hours. It sure looks to me like there are a whole lot of people out and about, just about every night of the week.

Andrew:

+1.

It is an exaggeration to say that the downtown is a ghost town -- it's not.

But neither is it the thriving entertainment magnet that the city fathers have envisioned, over and over, through the last few decades.

And a good part of the reason that it isn't is that suburban folks don't consider it a safe and pleasant place to be.

I used to be an old pro at the downtown area. I worked there for many years, knew the parking situation, knew the skyways, knew the shortcuts, knew the good restaurants for lunch and after work places, etc. I also lived about 8 minutes from the heart of downtown by way of Park and Portland Avenues since I lived right on Park at 48th. Still, in the 7 years I was living there and during the 4 years I worked down there, I can probably still count on both hands (and maybe a few toes) the number of times I went downtown for entertainment, shopping or for destination dining.

My wife and I loved Aquavit when it was open and ate there a couple of times a year, we went to a few concerts at Fine Line or Target Ctr. and took my in-laws there for Christmas shopping one year. It wasn't because I didn't feel safe, we always traveled the Skyways or in large groups to populated areas of downtown and RARELY after 11 pm. And most of that time I had my own reserved parking space and yet it was still a giant hassle to go downtown and be fed or entertained.

Dangerous or not, I just don't think there's that much sophisticated, upscale night life to be found there anymore (although the riverfront is getting better, if I remember right) and I'm not too interested in the "hooting, hollering and booze-up" scene, although that can be found closer to my suburb now, if I ever need it...

Dirk

Starting in the 1980s, groups of black youths -- kids, really -- began roaming downtown and on occasion beating up people. The fact that they were (and are) black has no particular significance, other than the simple reality that most white folks feel a degree of fear when approached by a group of black gangbangers, a feeling that is intensified if the thugs call them racial epithets and beat them badly enough to put them in the hospital.

I worked as a reporter for the Horrible Old Strib at the time, and it was kind of strange to have this going on while the staff, very much aware of it, was basically not allowed to write about it. Reporters are fairly normal people but there was this elephant in the room, you know, like nobody talks about how Mom gets falling-down drunk every night.

So nothing was said. There was just no way to write it without the story being at least somewhat specific about who was doing what and to whom. That would have amounted to saying that blacks were committing crimes against whites, and the Strib does not write that story.

The situation, as far as I know, has remained that way, without benefit of being remarked on by the press, for all these years. TV, however, is different. It operates under no such restrictions -- not the black-white thing, but the making-sense thing. WCCO-TV took a whack at it by reporting that "downtown businesses" were complaining that their customers were being frightened off by the "downtown crime problem."

They illustrated it with file footage of (drumroll, please) cops rousting a sleeping wino out of an alley. Never any mention of the exact nature of the problem, nor of who was doing what to whom.

If you didn't happen to know, you'd assume that people were not shopping downtown because of drunks sleeping in alleys.

A couple of reporter friends of mine tried to find ways to report it, but the editors kept bouncing the stories back because they were too negative. There was no way to put a positive spin on it, unless "The Percentage of Whites Who Had their Teeth Kicked in by Black Gangs Rose by a Smaller Than Predicted Percentage This Year" is a positive story.

Political correctness and fear of profiling have killed downtown, then.

Last night on TV news they reported that bars and restaurants are doing business at levels they haven't seen since 1991.