Post in Architectural theft

Mar 03 14:35 UTC

Several years ago, an excellent article in City Pages chronicled the work of
Healy Block residents Keith Miller and Marjory Holly to fight Architectural
looting/theft on their street.

http://articles.citypages.com/1999-03-31/news/sherlock-homes/

The article mentions an MCDA/CPED facility near the Grain Belt Brewery at 1335
Water street which was and maybe still is a repository of items which as Wizard
mentions weve"removed" homes MCDA was demolishing or perhaps
items recovered from thieves by the police?

Here's a 2004 notice about auction services for these items...

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/cped/docs/auction_services.pdf

Is this facility open to the public or anyone know if these auctions are still
held?

Someone in my neighborhood, supposedly a former City of
Minneapolis employee has a house surrounded by a very fancy
antique cast iron fence...he also has two large cast iron planters and his home
was surrounded by walls built of street pavers long before these were available
for the taking from Lake Street or available for
sale from the City...

Last summer during the Kingfield garage sale, this neighbor's garage was full
of boxes of gorgeous antique brass lighting fixtures that were clearly from old
houses.  He wanted to sell these for prices which
rivaled the antique salvage dealers.

I'm not saying this neighbor stole what he has, but I think
it's possible that as a current or former City employee, he
probably had an unfair advantage of obtaining these items
for a very low price from the City.

None of the rest of us have that advantage. Do we?

And yes...home or property owners should photo and engrave
all their items...there should be a national registry on
the net of such items and salvage dealers should be
required to check this registry, get full ID from the
sellers (yes I know this can be fake)and
face penalties for accepting stolen items.

Do they face any penalties now?

Here's a recent story on a very blatant stained glass theft group:
http://wcco.com/local/stained.glass.windows.2.369085.html

Madeline Douglass
Kingfield
Downtown East