Neighborhoods

Czech Christmas in St. Paul Amy Danielson reports on Czech Christmas ornaments.
New management plan for Loeb Lake, a neighborhood treasure Mary Thoemke writes about Loeb Lake and Marydale Park—neighborhood treasures in the middle of the city.
Saving the Fjelde House—or not Sheila Regan reports from a neighborhood meeting about new owners’ plans to raze the house and make it a parking lot, and a movement to designate it as a historic landmark. MORE »

Loeb Lake and the surrounding Marydale Park is a North End neighborhood treasure in the middle of the city. Despite its location near the busy intersection of Dale and Maryland, the quality of the lake water is good because it receives only a small amount of stormwater runoff from streets. MORE »

Saint Lucia crowning on Saturday in Minneapolis Kids, Lutherans, Swedes — and lots of candles.

Soccer moms at Powderhorn Park? Latino kids and their parents want more soccer at Powderhorn Park.

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Would more soccer fields make Powderhorn Park — and the Powderhorn and Phillips neighborhoods — more or less safe? Latino soccer players and their parents delivered more than 400 post cards to Minneapolis Parks Commissioner Scott Vreeland in early December, asking for more soccer fields in the north part of Powderhorn Park. They believe soccer keeps kids out of trouble. On the other side, some neighborhood residents fear that the soccer fields would create parking and other problems. MORE »

Ongoing battles at Jordan Area Community Council landed in District Court on December 3, as vice board chair (and former chair) Ben Myers, an attorney, sued three community members. Myers charges that Dan Wagner, Ann McCandless, and Megan Goodmundson — and “John Doe and Jane Doe” — defamed his character. The ins and outs of the situation are hard to track, in part because lawsuits by Myers and Executive Director Jerry Moore have left many in the community afraid to talk. Several people approached for this story declined to talk, saying that they were afraid of being sued and having to pay thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. Myers first attempted to have JACC sue “the usual suspects” as he referred to them in an email, but then went ahead with a personal lawsuit. Defendants have characterized the lawsuit as an attack on public participation and a violation of Minnesota’s anti-SLAPP law (see sidebar.) MORE »

I first became aware of the Como Park Alliance when I noticed the signs posted in the glassed in bulletin board alongside the walking path next to the Come Park Pavilion. Curious, I went home to check out the website. MORE »

When we first ran the Insight News story about the Jordan Area Community Council, I wondered about its description of the controversy, since the article quoted only one of the people involved. While we do fact-checking and editing of Daily Planet original articles, we do not re-edit articles from our community media partners. So we published the article, and an explosion of comments from readers immediately confirmed that this was not the whole story:

“... the facts were not well represented and neither was the opinion of the community JACC serves ..”

“... how many of you would be excited to participate in a community organization where the executive director files lawsuits against a board member for asking to see the financial records?...”

“This article is bias. Did the reporter interviewer anybody else other than Moore?”

Agreeing with the reader who commented that “a complicated story such as this has many facets to it,” we decided to dig deeper. MORE »

Santa Claus is coming to breakfast on Sunday December 7, 2008, at Saint Bernard’s Parish Center located at Rice and Geranium in the North End of Saint Paul. Children can visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus and they will have a chance to enter the contest to win his special chair. There will also be a coloring contest and drawings every half hour for toys. MORE »