A real estate transaction currently under way would have a crescent-shaped commercial property in the Bottineau neighborhood become an auto impound lot. Employees of Bobby & Steve’s Auto World Downtown, along with broker Chad Blihovde and designers from Civil Site Group gave a presentation at a Bottineau Neighborhood Association Board meeting the evening of March 12, outlining the auto service company’s plans for the site, for which they have a purchase agreement.

Claytopia, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)’s 53rd annual conference will take place in Minneapolis, March 27-30 and will engage regional, national and international artists, thinkers, curators, educators, and students to produce an array of exhibitions and experiences that build on, respond to, celebrate, and push against ceramic art’s diverse legacies. Claytopia will feature ceramic exhibitions that will be part of the bus tours in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District.

Imagine a pair of locomotives pull out of the BNSF railyard near Marshall Street and St. Anthony Blvd. and head east toward St. Anthony. They’re pulling a train of 100 cars, each loaded with 30,000 gallons of highly-flammable Bakken crude oil. The engines cross 37th Avenue and Stinson Blvd., but there’s an irregularity in the track behind them. One of the cars, not maintained as well as it should be, tips over and splits, disgorging thousands of gallons of oil. It pulls over the one behind it, then another and another and another. Soon, Columbia Heights, St. Anthony and Minneapolis are awash in oil all the way down to MSP airport.

Chief John Larkin’s 29 years as a Columbia Heights firefighter ended with his retirement on February 28. The party the day before brought forth comments from Heights Police Chief Lenny Austin, City Manager Kelli Bourgeois, and Mayor Donna Schmitt, and good wishes from the area’s fire and police community.

Neighborhoods 2020 is an effort by the City of Minneapolis to encourage more diverse leadership and participation in city policies at the neighborhood level: “The Neighborhoods 2020 vision is to have an inclusive community where all people are valued, all communities are engaged, and leadership mirrors the great diversity of the city.”

The area around St. Anthony Falls was rapidly becoming a commercial strip in the early 1900s. In 1904, Wilbert H. McMullen opened a store on the corner of Fourth Street and what was then called Central Avenue. McMullen changed careers often. Minneapolis City Directories for the early to mid-1880s record […]