The year was 1968. Minneapolis city government, caught up in a prolonged fit of pompous tidiness formally known as urban renewal, had recently demolished the whole east side of the downtown area. I didn't arrive in the area until 1965, so I have no memories of most of what was destroyed, but I've studied the many photos taken before that vast destruction, and I do remember the great nothingness that lay there for many years afterward. I recall that, as if to emphasize the starkness, a lonely IBM building sat isolated near the center. It later vanished too.

The destroyed area was, at one time, the heart of Minneapolis. It once included City Hall and the building in which the Tribune began. Part of it was the Gateway Center that was to greet visitors from the east... the Mississippi river. Hennepin and Nicollet avenues once angled together at the gateway. The area was an amalgam of small businesses, bars, hotels, and a huge number of apartments on upper floors. It was CITY, in the manner that city used to be... a place in which a great many people lived, worked, shopped and played... on foot. Businesses of all shapes and sizes, including some grand old buildings that were at one time the pride of the city, co-mingled with residences and all the small businesses to support both individuals and corporations.

Who can live downtown now? Where there were once many low-cost hotels and apartments there is now only "upscale" living. The prices have been driven up by catering to big business and by regulations that prevent "cheap" in the name of safety and finery.

There is no doubt that the area to be destroyed contained run-down properties. We would do well to remember that we had been through a severe depression and a world war, each of which might have destroyed a less-energetic citizenry. With the post-war era came an urge to get back to living, and an impatience fueled by a government that had used the war to become gigantic and controlling. The "U. S. Housing Act of 1949" promised federal money to match city and state taxes for the purpose of upgrading, beautifying, and "clearing slums", all over the nation, and for affordable housing to replace them. It was called urban renewal, but it was in fact the shameless, forcible eviction of a massive number of working citizens and small businesses in favor of large corporations and wealthy individuals.

Urban renewal was sold as a grand plan in the extravagant, promising manner we've come to expect from government, and with the usual governmental results. The destruction of the old was completed, followed by a long period when the space sat wasted. Purchase and destruction was costly, and the dozens of vacant blocks were producing no tax revenue. Undoubtedly, the city gave some lucrative incentives to those groups wealthy enough to build big and "acceptable" structures from scratch. The affordable replacement housing, if it was ever really intended, certainly didn't develop. The final result is an area that most of us never notice, because there is nothing there for us. The whole vast area from the post office to Washington Ave. and beyond... from 3rd Avenue to Hennepin, and beyond, is nondescript at best... an area to drive around. Younger people would have no way of knowing that it was once the heart and life of the city, filled with excitement and activity they would enjoy.

Downtown Minneapolis, after urban renewal, became a place to work and visit, not to live... a place to travel to, from, and around, but not to stay. The people were driven out from downtown, and it was essentially given over to business interests. City development became massive projects designed to draw visitors to the downtown area for sports, theatre and musical events. Then the visitors return to their homes elsewhere. Bus service caters to that traffic flow, and light rail adds a bit to the same pattern.  We have massive treks into and out of the city on freeways and streets, and scores of parking ramps, all of which consume real estate that were once neighborhoods of people.

Those changes were deliberate and forcible. There was nothing natural about the change from a city of people to a city of businesses. It was brought about by the influence of the older downtown businesses and by public servants who were swayed, or purchased, by those influences.

What remains of what was once a city of people is little more than a very tall office complex with interspersed event venues. Frankly, to anyone who remembers what it once was, or who has spent time in cities around the world, or in Seattle or San Francisco, the Minneapolis downtown is almost a total bore.

What angers me about the development of Minneapolis is that many thousands of individual citizens were tossed out by their own government. Lives were destroyed, and more were severely wrenched, and it was always the poorest of the people who suffered... their homes and property ripped away from them, their lives upset... forced to relocate.

Tomorrow, I'll relate the story of a small group of those evicted citizens. Some of you know the Fuji-Ya story, but it's a story so representative of government abuse and stupidity, with results so grievous, that it deserves to be told over and over in hopes that we might all stand up and declare it completely unacceptable, and STOP electing people who accept such criminal behavior.