The decline and fall of Minneapolis

We tour the growing ruins of this once great Midwestern city.

Yesterday, my colleague David Zimmer and I took our third trip this month to see the sights in the rapidly deteriorating Detroit on the Mississippi.

Our first stop was this burned-out hulk on Olson Memorial Highway (Route 55), just west of I-94 downtown:

The building was a multi-family unit within the city’s Heritage Park development. Heritage Park is a low-income housing development which replaced outdated high-rise, low-income housing projects.

The building burned under undetermined circumstances in March 2021. With the city owning the land, and a private developer owning the building, demolition and rebuilding efforts have been caught in a bureaucratic morass for over a year. At this point, they’re setting their sights on 2023.

The next two stops were light rail stations along the Metro Transit Blue Line between downtown and the Mall of America.

Both the Franklin Avenue and the Lake Street/Midtown stations are the scene of almost daily drug overdoses.

From the entrance to the Lake Street station, you can look down the street and see the burned-out ruin of the MPD 3rd Precinct police station. After the police pulled out, the resulting vacuum pulled in a battalion of drug addicts.

Not pictured above is a gentleman with a cardboard sign, soliciting donations, clad only in a maroon University of Minnesota sweatshirt and a pair of shoes.

Our final stop was a return visit to George Floyd Square at 38th and Chicago. We had previously crossed the square going east and west. This time we crossed the square going north and south:

In this video, you get a better look at the memorial in front of Cup Foods and a better angle at the occupation of the former Speedway gas station.

The block has been under continuous occupation as an autonomous zone for more than two years. It does not appear to be a success for anarchist government.