The Hawthorne neighborhood’s EcoVillage is part of a strategy to revitalize an area hit hard by crime, market forces and neglect.
By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune
1/7/10
Pam Patrek was ready to bail out of the Hawthorne neighborhood back in 2007, after the second of two burglaries to the house where she’s lived for close to 15 years. So was neighbor Valerie Golebiowski, who’s lived for 55 years in the house her aunt and uncle built.
But both said Thursday they’re staying put, which is a tribute to the changes in a four-block target area of the north Minneapolis neighborhood’s northeast corner, just off Interstate 94 and Lowry Avenue N.
“I couldn’t imagine a year and a half ago that we’d be standing here talking about how far we’ve come,” Patrek said.
Both will get a new neighbor come spring. The Hawthorne Neighborhood Council, nonprofit developer Project for Pride in Living and city officials gathered to mark the imminent start of construction of a three-bedroom home on Patrek and Golebiowski’s block.
It’s just one house, but to Hawthorne it marks the first concrete step toward a long-awaited revitalization of the four-block area. The neighborhood has dubbed the area its EcoVillage, for the energy-saving features that new or rehabbed housing there will incorporate.
But a lot of seedbed preparation had to be done before the redevelopment got started.
Jeff Skrenes, the neighborhood’s point person on the redevelopment, described the intersection at the heart of the area as once being “so tough that people didn’t feel safe coming to a stop at the four-way stop sign. They’d just roll through.”
The area was ravaged by market forces and neglect. At one point last year, 54 of the 72 parcels in the four-square-block area had been either cleared of their housing, boarded up or foreclosed upon.
Using the holistic approach that city development chief Mike Christenson has espoused, the city worked with residents to attack crime, then to deal with housing violations.
“This is how you change a neighborhood,” police inspector Mike Martin said
Hawthorne has bigger plans. Another house is planned later this year, and two houses will be rehabbed once potential buyers are found to take advantage of no-interest, contract-for-deed financing. And the neighborhood hopes to have about a half-dozen ownership townhouses built on lots it has cleared.
Eventually, other high-density housing, probably apartments, may be built along Lowry Avenue, according to Skrenes.
The EcoVillage is one of a half-dozen clusters on the North Side where the city has been accumulating property for redevelopment.
Patrek has already seen the impact on the EcoVillage area.
“We have a different quality of life now,” Patrek said