[Mpls] Cedar Square West 's present relevance

[Bob Johnson]

[Mains]:  Regarding that Infamous Minneapolis Landmark-- Cedar
Square West: ...it was a failed project--only one phase of this
massive project* was ever built and HUD ended up foreclosing on it.

[Johnson]:  Mains' understanding is defective. Take A and B for starters:
A. The award was given for Cedar Square West, not for the "massive
project".
B. Doubtless the AIA gave this award on the basis of its architectural
conception and execution, not, as Mains evidently thinks, on the basis
of the fallout of actions and mismanagement by the City Council through
and with its MCDA, in consort not only with the second (and present
owner of the buildings only), but also, and most importantly, with the
self-described radical socialist/anarchist group which held forth in
Cedar-Riverside West Bank (C-RWB) in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, This cast of
characters caused the eventual failure of Cedar Square West and the
"massive project" - it can't be laid on Heller. To establish this,
reading the following will more than suffice:
[SN] Snoose News, 1st and 2nd Series, 1975-1983 and 1987-1991, resp.,
[MB] Martin's book,
[PA] Platt's article,
[VA] Vogel's article,
[SB] Stoecker's book, and
[SR] Stoecker's report           (citations in next post)

But I have the advantage of having lived in C-RWB for the last 26 years, 
in Cedar Square West (now Riverside Plaza), in Cedar North (now 
Riverview Tower), and now in a 100-year-old building sitting on the
extreme SW corner of the four blocks combined in 1971 for building Cedar
Square West. And I am still here - didn't move to Seward or Longfellow.

Heller was way ahead of the times - recall that now-a-days it's all the 
fashion to cite Minneapolis' dire needs for high density housing
particularly along the Hiawatha LRT line. Unfortunately, it is still
equally fashionable in some circles to continue the propagation of the
tales of the self-described "reckless crazies". But Cedar-Riverside West 
Bank has changed somewhat for the better. Even Stoecker as late as 2002 
[SR-14] laments the fact that the old guard has folded its tents and
silently crept away, and even “the memory of how it used to be...has 
faded. Today people in the neighborhood can (no longer) quote Marx or 
Mao on the collectivist side, or Kropotkin or Goldman on the anarchist 
side. The deep-into-the-night discussions trying to resolve [!] the 
linkages between philosophies and practices no longer occur...”

Stoecker in his role as apologist for the radical socialist/anarchist
movement in C-RWB takes great satisfaction in stating its motto by
reporting from his interview of one of the gang of ten, "gee, we had 
fun", not only on the first line of the first page, but also on the 
final line of the final page of his 307-page book [SB]. Reminds me of 
young boys playing around with their new chemistry sets received on 
Christmas Day, but bored with. Yeah, they had fun, but then they flew 
the coop or co-op, take your choice, both are correct. But the 
experiments of this group had profound, lasting effects in C-RWB
including effecting the failure of Cedar Square West, but leading the 
infiltration of the DFL Party by "New Left political activists" [SB-51]. 
So these "reckless crazies" were the forefathers of today's 
Blame-America-First crowd in Minneapolis. Blame can be laid on Heller 
for neither.

[Mains]:  In the case of Cedar-Riverside, I view it as a very poorly 
executed copy of Le Corbusier's apartment building in Marseilles...

[Johnson]:  Cedar Square West owes as much to Finland's Tapiola as to 
Corbu's Unite d'habilitation in Marseilles - both happened immediately
after WWII, but it is probable that Cedar Square West owes more to
Mondrian and the de Stijl group in Holland which predates Tapiola and
Unite d'habilitation by thirty years [MB]. I enjoyed living in similar 
housing with my wife and two young children in Zuerich 1960-1963 while I 
earned a Dr.-Ing. degree at Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule. When 
I arrived in the Twin Cities (1972) to live, I was struck by the 
understated elegance of Cedar Square West as it stood bright beside 
I-94. That opinion has not changed, in spite of its poor condition.

[Mains]:  It also had (and probably still has) a lot of the same 
problems as the infamous Cabrini Green project in Chicago.

[Johnson]: You betcha it now has - Riverside Plaza is a ghetto in poor 
shape. Cabrini Green is now gone because it was a ghetto in poor 
condition. Again neither can be laid on Heller. Vogel had it right in 
her cover article [VA]. Three years after Sherman et al. acquired the 
buildings (only) in a sweetheart deal arranged by the City Council, they 
were in poor condition and still are to this day. They should be 
imploded just as Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini Green have been.

Since immigrants arrived here in several waves since 1860 and initially 
lived in C-RWB, people seem to believe that C-RWB has been consecrated 
as the City's official ghetto, and that it will always be just that. 
Heller never thought that - in absolute fact, his strategy was to change 
that pattern. The owner-occupants of Riverview Tower (RT), where I had 
unit 2205 from 1979 until 2003, never believed that. RT was a co-op in 
C-RWB three years before the radical socialist/anarchist experiment
started, and it remains viable today. They never would mention this 
owner-occupant co-op - it did not fit their collectivist pattern.

[Note to Scott Vreeland:  The current poor condition of Riverside
Plaza is irrelevant to evaluation of the architectural design of Cedar
Square West and its execution. However, the current poor condition of 
Riverside Plaza is very relevant to the development of valuable land in
downtown-neighborhoods-along-the-river. CPED City Planner Dr. Jack Byers 
considers C-RWB a part of the generic downtown. So compare the 
still-standing Riverside Plaza to urban ghettos in St. Louis and Chicago 
which have been imploded:

Pruitt-Igoe:  built 1956; imploded 1973; buildings 17 years old at
implosion; 2,870 units; 34 acres; 84.4 units per acre; 33 11-story
buildings
http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/PruittIgoe.html
http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/illustrations.htm

Cabrini-Green:  built ca. 1962; imploded beginning 2003; buildings 41
years old at implosion; 3,500 units; 70 acres;  50 units per acre; 23
hirises; 17,990 residents in 1963; 6,000 residents in 2003
http://thecha.org/housingdev/cabrini_green_homes.html
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/apr97peterson.html
http://www.moynihaninstitute.org/cabrinigreen.htm

Riverside Plaza (aka Cedar Square West up to 1988):  built 1973;
buildings 32 years old; 1,303 units; 13.7 acres; 95.1 units per acre;
6 buildings, 3 to 39 floors

[Mains]:  And regarding Victoria's claim of never taking government 
money for anything...How about all the government support of Cedar 
Riverside Associates (CRA) against the community groups in Cedar 
Riverside that were opposing the CRA project.

[Johnson]:  You can't believe that Coyle/Scallon/Greenfield allowed
City Council to support Heller against the "reckless crazies". Please 
document for our education. Hint: it would have to be recorded as an 
expenditure authorized by the City Council. Or was it the State 
Legislature or the Hennepin County Commissioners? I am smiling. Coyle 
was a very close friend of mine; I will just leave it at that.

[Mains]:  How about the funding for Cedar Square West from Housing and 
Urban Development under the New Town program. How about the foreclosure
by HUD for nonpayment of the mortgage?

[Johnson]:  HUD took over the property, land and buildings, in lieu of
the outstanding mortgage. HUD sold the property to the City's real 
estate agent, the "MCDA for $15 million, even though estimates of its
worth on the open market ranged from $20 million to $31 million. The
MCDA immediately resold the property [only the buildings] to [Sherman et 
al.] for $17 million and paid $2 million in closing costs." [VA-9]  In a 
lickety-split sweetheart deal, the City issued $27 million in municipal 
bonds for the transaction (not including the land), allowing Sherman et 
al. to collect the $27 million, which allowed Sherman et al. to pay the 
City the $17 million purchase price, and pocket $10 million. Great deal 
- not for Heller, to be sure. I challenge Mains to document for his 
claims, the amounts of money flowing to Heller, government sources, and 
dates.

(disclosure in next post)

Bob Johnson
Cedar-Riverside West Bank
W2/P10