A year ago, I watched as two excavators knocked down a 116-year-old house in north Minneapolis in the name of urban redevelopment. I had written an eight-stanza blog series that culminated with the demolition of 2717 Penn Avenue North. Acquired by speculators, struck by arson, caught up in a foreclosure and condemned by the city, 2717 Penn had transformed in a few short years from a comfortable old wooden three-bedroom home to a blight on the city landscape. A cheerful sign on the lot of 2717 and the house next door, which was also demolished last summer, promised that new housing would spring up.

So far, nothing is growing there but grass.

The economic troubles and foreclosures that have ravaged the North Side have unraveled the market for new homes, said Earl Pettiford, senior project coordinator for single-family housing in Minneapolis’s Community Planning and Economic Development Department.

The city continues to buy distressed properties in the few blocks around Penn Avenue North’s 2700 block, with the hope of creating a “cluster” of new houses, Pettiford told me. But he said the developer, the non-profit Greater Metropolitan Housing Corp., hasn’t been able to sell a new house one block away, at 2618 Penn Av. N., so the organization is reluctant to start building more nearby.

For now, the empty lots will multiply, as the city continues to acquire and tear down old homes in the hope of building new ones more suited to modern tastes. Someday, Pettiford said, Penn Avenue North may serve as a “renewal avenue,” showcasing to folks riding through on cars and buses that the North Side has new, energy-efficient, affordable homes.

“There are still a lot of people that love the North Side of the city, and want to see it rebound,” Pettiford said. “I feel confident that we’re going to see it bounce back.”

A little over a year ago, I had a conversation with Al Colberg, who lived at 2717 Penn Avenue North in the mid-1970s. A first house is always something special, and Al and his wife Jackie spent months stripping the paint off the wooden banister and its newel post, which was topped with an elegant sphere. They sent me this picture of the back of the house from that time.

The neighborhood began to change. The last straw for the Colbergs was a fight that broke out in front of 2717 Penn Avenue. One time, after he had moved away, Colberg stopped at his old house and peeked in the window. The old newel post was painted purple.

When I walked through the house, moments before its demolition, the post and its spherical top were painted white. I regret to this day that I didn’t somehow yank it free and give it to the Colbergs.

My friend, photographer Karl Herber, took this shot of the final moments of 2717 Penn Avenue North.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Government spends your money, Property problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.