RNC demonstration route
From:
Bob McLean
Date:
May 16 16:37 UTC
Short link
Some Downtown residents are in for a big hassle from the protest marches, for
others it will not be too big a deal. Maybe a lot will skip town, like I plan
to.
I cannot imagine that where people lived Downtown was not taken into
consideration in selecting this route, but it is hard to believe that it was.
The Downtown residents that will be the hardest hit with security, noise and
human traffic will be on the blocks East of Cedar, North of 7th St. to Hwy. 94
and West of St. Peter. Seven out of nine of the blocks in this area contain one
or more residential properties.
This morning I walked the neighborhood and talked to a Postman and a couple of
the building superintendents. The rest of my count is available on the net and
I got the census data from the Wilder Research Center. From South to North and
East to West here is a list of residences and number of units in property:
Property Units
City Walk Condominiums 228
Naomi Family Center 70
The Point Condominiums 290
Central Presbyterian Rectory 1
St. Louis Church Rectory 1
Central Towers Presbyterian Home 197
Fitzgerald Condominiums 40
Viking Apartments 33
10 West Exchange Apartments 194
545 Wabasha Apartments 70
Gallery Towers Condominiums 182
That comes to a total of 1,306 units, or 145 units per block (1,306 / 9) and
two of the blocks have no residential properties on them. Looking at 2000
census data, there were 5,743 people that were living in 3,772 occupied housing
units and there was a 6.1% vacancy rate for all housing units. All of the above
properties were complete and occupied in 2000. Using that data, that would mean
that there were 1.523 occupants per housing unit in 2000, or 1.43 occupants
adjusted for the vacancy rate ((5,743/3772) X (1 - .061)): TOTAL = 1,868
residents in the effected area, or 208 souls for each of the nine blocks. I am
only guessing on this, but I venture that this is not only the most densely
populated nine blocks of Downtown, but of the entire city - remember, these are
smaller Downtown blocks, not Highland, or Summit/Groveland blocks.
By way of comparison, take a look at the residential units on the entire John
Ireland Blvd. to Kellogg Blvd. route. It is probably does not have 10% of the
neighborhood chosen.
Way to fight for your constituents Dave!