Quickies: GF and EGF now buddy buddy

The City Beat had to play City Hall reporter and night editor last night, so had no time to blog. Today, I spent the day planning the voters' pamphlet, so have no time to blog. In lieu of that, I'll throw out a few comments on stories I've written in the last two days.

• GFPD's Lt. Mike Hedlund gets the top job at EGFPD. I asked Mayor Lynn Stauss why he included in the interview GFPD Chief John Packett, Hedlund's current boss. In the past, East Side has been eager to exert its independence from Grand Forks, so there seemed to be more conflict than cooperation. These days, they seem to get along swimmingly. East Grand Forks City Council member Wayne Gregoire, you'll remember, encouraged the city to explore linking its and American Crystal's sewer systems with Grand Forks'. Now the mayor's making sure his new police chief gets along with GFPD.
• For those excited by plasma gasification technology for getting rid of the region's garbage, the city is watching a similar development in Koochiching County, Minn. The expense of that project has caused some delays, said city public works director Todd Feland. Just to study the viability of the project will cost more than $400,000. I don't know how much exactly but $400,000 is all the state will chip in and everybody's been squabbling over who gets what. Total project cost is $30 million, with the feds, the state and the county $10 million each. I've been getting sarcastic e-mails from a reader asking why the county doesn't call in developers to build a plasma gasification plant for free. These developers are just dying to make some money from electricity. Gee, maybe Koochiching should call my reader. He sure knows a lot.
• I followed up on this story by biz reporter Ryan Schuster today. It was no surprise the finance committee tabled that University Flats development until fall. As I noted in my story, University Flats will result in six condo units but, if the developers get their way, it will cost the city $200,000 in free money. In contrast, the Elite Brownstones has 27 units and the Current apartments 40 units, and the city only gave them loans. I asked urban development director Greg Hoover if the $200,000 made University Flats a non-starter and he confirmed it. Schuster and I asked about the affordability factor, which developers noted in Schuster's story. Greg said the units are priced at about $170,000 but without the city subsidies, they'd cost $190,000.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 5/07/2008 at 10:40 PM | Comments (5) | Permalink

Correction

Sorry people, I know there's an error here but I'm not absolutely sure what's wrong.

Two people from municipal court called and left a message with colleagues of mine the other day but didn't call back. I've tried the city attorney after hours but he hasn't called back. Oddly enough, no one on the City Council has said anything.

Hopefully, someone will get back to me tomorrow. Until then, there won't be any official correction in the paper. The only thing more embarrassing than a correction is a correction of a correction.

I'll make the correction here first since it's just the blog.

Here's the old law:

My read was $6 per mph on top of the base fine. I think that should be $6 per mph on top of the base fine only above 46 mph. There was no indentation or anything else to indicate that the "plus, for each mile" clause was a subset of the "46-@" clausem, so...

I would've called a city official to ask except that I couldn't get a copy of the ordinance change until after the meeting. Since it all seemed pretty straight forward, I didn't feel it necessary to pester people at home in the middle of the night. You don't want to be doing that all the time or people will lose their patience with you.

So here's the new table:

There's apparently a $1 court fee on top of all this.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 5/07/2008 at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Why downtown rocks (and it's not because I'm here)

It's been a heck of a week for the City Beat. I spent too much time talking to downtown bar owners for a special on downtown's evolution into the center of nightlife in the metro area. Biz reporter Ryan Schuster and I teamed up on this one, he with the intro story and me with the "in their own voices" vignettes and videos.

There was some thought in the newsroom of doing a story about downtown in general but I pushed for a focus on nightlife because that's the essence of what downtown has become.

Downtown housing, while a mildly interesting topic, is really about nightlife. People don't live downtown just to struggle with parking every night. They live there for the nightlife. Retail, another mildly interesting topic, isn't much of a story as there is little in the way of retail now.

One of the things I was fascinated by but didn't quite make it into the story as much as I'd like is the three separate waves of downtown growth since the flood. The assumption here is that the flood turned downtown into a tabula rasa, a clearing away of the old so that the new can take any shape it wants.

The first wave was the pre-flood businesses that chose to return to downtown after being wiped out by the flood. I was curious why these business owners came back to an area that was like "bombed-out Beirut," in the words Jon Bonzer, one of the owners. The flood cost these guys a lot of money and a decision to spend more money to come back must not have been easy.

Representing this wave are Jon, the owner of Bonzer's; Dave Homstad, the owner of the Blue Moose; and Rae Ann Moe, the owner of the Hub, the official Herald watering hole.

The second wave came almost a decade after the flood when today's biggest players, Gilly's and Joe Black's, opened. I say biggest because they're the anchor establishments that bring in the biggest crowds.

Representing this wave are Josh Gilleland, the owner of Gilly's, Level 10 and O'Really's; Joe Schneider and Denny Blackmun, the owners of Joe Black's; and Shawn Clapp and Jon Holth, the owners of the Toasted Frog.

The third wave came last year and is still on going. These are the businesses looking to take advantage of the crowds generated by the second wave.

Representing this wave are Brad Beauchamp, the owner of the Crosstown Lounge, and Bob Moore, the owner of the River Cinema. I tried to get the guy from Guiseppe's but he was a no show for our interview. If I'd been thinking straight, I would've called Rhombus Pizza.

Full disclosure for you all: Jon Bonzer and Josh are my neighbors at the Brownstones and most of the other people are longtime acquaintances of mine. I didn't mean to interview people I knew but, well, I do hang out downtown a lot!

Internally, we jokingly called the three waves the OGs, the Young Turks and the Next Generation.

The OGs

Basically, the OGs made a bet that downtown would come back after a time. Some of that was financial and some of that was emotional. Jon Bonzer, for instance, could've gone anywhere, out of state even, but the family decided to rebuild downtown because it just felt right. Rae said she looked around but felt that it's better to keep making those payments on her business, even with the cleanup costs, rather than pay rent to someone else. She's got it paid off now and says she's feeling pretty comfortable.

I wonder if these guys would've made the same decisions now. Both thought downtown would return to pre-flood levels earlier but they were dead wrong. It took nearly 10 years.

Dave at the Blue Moose probably had it about right. East Side came back a lot earlier because of a conscious effort by city leaders to revive the entertainment district that had always been that city's forte.

The most incisive analysis I heard was from Josh (you can hear him here). He said the city made a mistake by focusing so much on filling retail and office space right away. There was hardly anyone living downtown at the time so the city lacked the population base to support retail and office. He'd owned a downtown business but decided not to move to Fargo for that reason. When the Third Street apartments opened -- the ones owned by Schoen Associates southeast of Town Square -- is when he started thinking about making a return.

Several bar owners said that, with new housing downtown -- the Brownstones condos and the Current apartments nearby -- and more coming in, they expect retail to come back. More on this in a bit.

So, from 1997 to about 2006, East Side nightlife grew at a fairly steady pace. There were a few steps backwards such as the Blarney Mill, Paulo's and the Buffet House, but there were more steps forward, such as Applebee's and Mike's Pizza. (By the way, Grand Forks yuppies are congregating there for Ocho de Mayo, a holiday we made up.)

In Grand Forks, you had Joe DiMaggio's, now Joe Black's, and The Edge, now Level 10, shutting down. For a time, I think there were more people at El Rocko and Borrowed Bucks on the weekends than in every bar in downtown Grand Forks.

Young Turks

Shortly after city leaders decided to offer incentives for new housing downtown -- the credit goes to City Council members Curt Kreun and Doug Christensen for pushing this one -- the Young Turks showed up.

Downtown had pretty much recovered from the flood by then but only in terms of infrastructure. Economically, it was still in the hurt bag. Lots of empty store fronts and only a moderate population base. In most people's minds, the place was dullsville.

Gilly's, Joe Black's and the Toasted Frog changed that. The first two, especially, created that critical mass of downtown bar goers. Bar goers by their nature barhop, which created opportunities for other businesses.

One of the stories you probably haven't heard is that Josh's expansion into Level 10 and O'Really's was totally premature. I made the assumption that he'd made a wad of cash with Gilly's and was ready to go next doors. He told me it was a defensive move. Josh heard some guy was going to buy what is Level 10 now and open a rival dance club so he bought the place first and got O'Really's to boot. This allowed him to control the development of that particular corner of downtown.

It was important to Josh that there was diversity in bars and clubs. Another club would just divide a finite number of clubgoers and, by his estimate, not generate additional traffic. Diversity is what generates traffic because people want to try different places as their mood changes. For example, if you don't care much for dancing and your friends drag you to Gilly's, you know you can always retreat to O'Really's or, my second living room, the Hub.

It's no coincidence that the moods at Gilly's, Joe Black's and Toasted Frog are so different. Gilly's has a more intense atmosphere. Joe Black's is relaxed -- Joe said his observation is that it's kind of a meeting place where you go to look for your friends toward the end of the night. The Frog has the polish of a pub gone upscale.

The combination of diversity and having everything within walking distance is the core appeal of downtown. Joe observed that college students, the key nightlife demographic, always feel like they're missing out on something so they love moving around.

Check out this map I made. I count 29 different venues. There's a lot of bars but there are also other things to do, too. Surprisingly, plenty of people hang out at the coffee shops at night, so it's not all drinking. People can see movies and they can dine. It's pretty sweet.

Next Generation

The Next Generation contributed to those 29 by filling in some of the holes. It feels like a long way from Bonzer's to, say, Level 10, but you can make a pit stop at the Crosstown Lounge. East Side's got some nice places to dine but with the River Cinema, you can do dinner and a movie.

The end result is an explosion that has pushed downtown way past what it was pre-flood. Shawn at the Frog, used to live downtown then and worked at Sander's, said foot traffic is about four times what used to be. That's an extraordinary observation.

We've yet to see the impact of this latest wave though it may be the final wave for a while -- at least as far as nightlife is concerned. Bar owners say they don't feel there's a demand for more bars downtown. I take it what they're saying is they don't want any more drunks causing trouble and making City Council members nervous. Some say a few more restaurants might be OK though they didn't sound that enthused.

The next change for downtown might be the return of retail. A few bar owners made this sentiment, observing that, as the downtown population grows, more retailers will pop up to service them. You might say that the Dakota Harvest bakery is one of them and it's already here. Amazing Grains, otherwise known as the hippy grocery store, is another, though it doesn't open late so is less useful and organic ain't cheap.

The earlier retailers, because of the lack of population, had to be destination stores, such as Meadowbrook, now moved to the Grand Cities Mall, and the Water Front, um, toilet store. There are few stores that are appropriate in this role and, personally, the ridiculous "gift shops" that pop up now and then deserve death. Hence, lots of empty store fronts.

Coincidentally, I talked to Don Faulkner, an architect and NDSU professor, today. He was one of the guys who helped the city create a vision for downtown after the flood. I observed that the Grand Forks side looked like it strived for mixed use, which, as Josh said, needed the population base. Hence, recovery was slower. In East Grand Forks, they said screw the mix use, East Side is all about partying. A concentration of bars and restaurants made the place a destination. Hence, recovery was faster (except for the mall, which has to compete with Grand Forks' 32nd Avenue South corridor.).

Don said that he would agree but, because East Side has not encouraged downtown housing as Grand Forks has, growth there has reached a plateau. Grand Forks, he said, can keep going.

Perhaps that will be the next step for the East Side city fathers. They can't count on that campground to save them when it's only open from May to September.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 5/05/2008 at 11:23 PM | Comments (14) | Permalink

Big city traffic fines big no more

Well, the Grand Forks City Council's passed that law to bring city traffic fines in line with state law.

It wasn't real clear how much the fines would change in the other stories because the city attorney didn't have the ordinance ready yet. Now it's clear how incredibly high the fines used to be.

Take a gander at this:

The state rate might be a little low as far as deterrent is concerned but the city rate, Jesus H. Christ, that's just extortion. I realize you almost never get a ticket for going 5 mph over but the 6 mph to 10 mph rates are nuts. Going 50 down that long straightaway on DeMers Avenue isn't so dangerous that it's worth a $110 ticket. I mean, really?

On the other hand, if you're going 75 down DeMers, a $70 fine is ridiculous. I always thought they threw people in jail for that sort of thing.

Please note that with the old fines, the per mile fine was a flat $6 over the speed limit. With the new fines, there's a scale. If you're going 35 over the limit, the per mile fine doesn't kick in unless you're going over 25 mph. So you subtract 35 from 25, get 10 and multiply that by the per mile rate of $3.

Am I crazy or does this not make any sense? Am I misreading it? This is what it says for 35 mph:

26-35: $40

Plus, for each mile per hour over 25 mph: $3.

So: $40 + [(35-25) x 3] = $70.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 5/05/2008 at 10:47 PM | Comments (10) | Permalink

Trash to treasure

The good news from Grand Forks' landfill is that big ol' pile of garbage could contain 20 year's worth of power for the city's sewage plant and garbage baling facility. That's what UND's Energy and Environment Research Center says, anyway.

The EERC put together a report for the city, which City Council members will discuss today at the public service committee. I've been hounding public works' Todd Feland for a few months to get my hands on the report.

The good news is that the amount of landfill gas -- made up mostly of methane -- the landfill emits everyday is enough to power a 2-megawatt generator. That's a lot of alternative energy and, since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, the city could kill two birds with one stone on this one.

The bad news is the 20 year estimate is based on a lot of assumptions that may not turn out to be true with further sampling. Todd's worried about that so he'll be asking the council to pay for another, more in-depth study.

The other bad news is the cost-to-benefit ratio, which is also based on a lot of assumptions. The $3.5 million estimate is a "typical" cost and, under this scenario, the payback is about six years.

The worst case scenario is in the neighborhood of $5.5 million. The gas might have too many contaminants and cost too much to purify. The gas collection system might cost more than expected. If we're assuming a linear relationship between cost and payback, that'd be a nine-year payback.

The best case scenario is $1.1 million. Payback is in two years.

Todd said the ideal payback for the city is five years, though six is acceptable.

One aspect of this story that deserves attention is the siting of the landfill and the sewage plant near one another. This has been and still is a good idea. Both facilities smell. The landfill generates garbage juice that the sewage plant can treat so the closer the two the bigger the savings in pipeline costs. Now, there will be savings on the gas pipeline.

Of course, in 1965, nobody knew about the danger that garbage-loving birds pose to planes.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 5/05/2008 at 10:13 PM | Comments (7) | Permalink