6:30 PM tonight, Friday, June 18th: Flash Mob in Brooklyn Centre protesting ODOT’s marring of our landscape, I-71 access road. Be there!
I just got this email from Tim regarding a flash mob protesting the destruction by ODOT district 12 of the gateway to our park neighborhood. Please, be there. We’re going to try FaceBooking this as well. It should be a salutary way to start a Friday evening.
Dear XXXXX–
I just got off the telephone with Tom Beres of WKYC Channel 3 News. He has time in his schedule tonight to do a spot at 6:30 PM (1830 if you want to think this is a military operation) about ODOT ‘s unwelcome incursion into the previously green and peaceful Brooklyn Centre.
We need as many people out there as the berm and the access roads can handle–there’s more room now since there are fewer trees. We will be assembling between Fulton Road and Pearl (West 25th Street); I will try to get police support to control traffic and keep things moving. (We will be past the rush hour.)
All of us in Brooklyn Centre are affected by what ODOT has done by destroying the trees against our wishes. Everybody visiting the zoo or MetroHealth is affected. People entering the city from the western approach are affected. It is not too late to make ODOT put the trees back and make a natural, green solution for our noise problem.
Please, show up, especially if you live in Brooklyn Centre or in Tremont and will have to pass by the enormous monstrosity of ODOT’s 20-foot high walls daily for the next few years, closing our neighborhood off, limiting admittance of light and air–the negative impacts are many and varied.
If you despise government overspending and pork, show up. These things are 165% of the cost of a superior green solution, at least.
If you despise bad design, show up. Canada and Germany and now Vermont have viable green solutions that look and function better than this ODOT concrete crap.
If you are offended at having government workers operate with arrogance and impunity, and immunity from adverse consequences, show up. These ODOT punks answer to no one; Lee Fisher and Ted Strickland can’t control them; having ODOT determine our neighborhood’s future is tantamount to being walked by your dog.
If you think first impressions count, show up. Brookside Park, the ZOO, Brooklyn Centre, Riverside Cemetery, and MetroHealth are all part of the same visual approach, welcoming people to the neighborhood and to the city. These hot concrete walls, devoid of trees, change the entire visual statement. Instead of saying welcome to our park neighborhood, welcome to the Forest City, they shout out, Welcome to Cleveland, Now go home.
Again, we’re getting together to get our pictures taken, all of us, at 6:30 PM tonight on the access road to the south of I-71, behind Riverside Avenue, entering from Fulton and proceeding towards Pearl.
This is what the young people call a Flash Mob. We will assemble, have the TV people do what they can, get our pictures taken, and demobilize.
The more the merrier. See you there. Car pool, ride bikes, walk, ride motorcycles, do what you can to conserve space, but show up a little prior to 6:30 PM.
–Tim Ferris & Gloria Ferris
(writing to assemble a media event for Tom Beres, which, as he pointed out, rhymes, sort of–Ferris/Beres)
Sorry I can’t be there, but I will try to watch. Oh ODOT! Will they ever listen? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be the focus and repository for public shame and scorn.
Cyclists – pedal to the press conference. They won’t give you access over the new high dollar bridge which they have forced down our throats. Stand with the neighborhood to Just say NO to ODOT!
Susan Miller
18 Jun 10 at 4:45 pm
Funny I saw the “mob” twice today once out my back window as it was filmed behind my home and also on Chanel 3 news. Funny thing of all the people interviewed the only one directly effected was in favor of the wall. Mr. Ferris and Ms. McShanel do not own property in Brooklyn Centre. Councilman Cummings does and he has been manipulative when it comes to this issue. You see he supposedly distributed the surveys to the residents, but I received none, nor did any of my neighbors.Could that be the reason there were few responses? I went to last summers meeting regarding these but left due to the one sideness of the group, and the lies! One man had photos of walls from the Southeast Suburbs that were in shambles and blatanlty lied by saying they had been recently erected. The had been there for decades, they are not the same as the ones used now. It comes down to this I own property on Riverside and the loss of a tree for a less noisy,less fume filled back yard not to mention no one will jump the fence to break into my house from the freeway, is a good thing. There are alot of problems in Brroklyn Centre for instances I am surrounded by boarded up and abandoned homes, and the few homes that have sold on my street sold for $15,000 or less. Houses are broken into in broad daylight and you people who do not live here want to stop the one thing that my actually increase my home value! Go worry about your neighgborhood leave ours alone!
M.May
18 Jun 10 at 11:45 pm
Excuse me–I do own property in Brooklyn Centre. I have lived here and worked here more than ten years now…
lmcshane
19 Jun 10 at 3:18 am
I agree with M. May. Many of the people that live near enough to the freeway to hear the constant noise would welcome the noise barrier walls. I also noticed that the fliers were not given to all the residents that lived on Poe, which is the street across the freeway from Riverside. Was this purposely done to prevent those of us that are the most impacted by the freeway noise from voicing our opinion that a noise barrier would be a welcome addition to our neighborhood? And now there will be more meetings to discuss the same thing that was already discussed and the same people that were insistent on stopping the noise barriers will again try to stop the construction. Why?
Jacqueline Balyer
20 Jun 10 at 2:04 pm