On the Street Where You Live

Like the emptiness of a Paris winter, we often times don’t see what’s all around us as we trudge through the streets of life. In 1929, the great French architect Le Corbusier turned from designing houses to the planning of cities. His classic book shocked and thrilled a world already deep in the throes of the modern age.

One of Le Corbusier’s favorite arguments was that there is an order to things and an order in our lives whether we know it or not. Growing up in Saint Paul, I was hardly aware of the urban changes going on all around me. It signaled the end of one period of growth for the City and a slow painful aging process that followed. Old St. Paul was gradually being replaced with a newer version of itself. Turns out there were subtle changes going on all around me while I was pondering third grade math in grade school downtown.

Old Saint Paul proper was going through its last death rattles as I boarded a city bus each day to attend ‘the little French school’ on a hill overlooking downtown. The city, which had once prided itself as the steamboat capitol of the upper Midwest, had long ago thrown on the cloak of growing wealth and opulence of its early pioneers. Thus had begun a new period of brick and mortar replacing stick buildings with turn-of-the-century modernism. Yet by the mid-to-late-forties, time and a changing demographic had spelled the end of its downtown area as a core of business, social and economic growth.

Le Corbusier had defined the parameters of a great city back around the turn of the century and metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities and New York were struggling to find and define a new definition of a livable city. Urban development ran rampant and old neighborhoods were falling victim to the times.

Old St. Paul was a Midwestern repeat of New York City’s Jane Jacobs and her continuing battles with transportation czar Robert Moses fighting to save whole neighborhoods from being swept away by elevated highways slashing through their communities. Only in the case of Saint Paul, Interstate Highway 94 won out and the Rondo community fell by the wayside.

From 1943 through 1949, I was living on the outskirts of downtown, moving from one rental to the next. Growing up near downtown St. Paul, I was too young to understand the organic changes happening all around me. Even after we moved to the Highland Park neighborhood, I was still too young to understand the ever-changing cityscape from 1949 through 1957, as I traveled to downtown St. Paul each day.

photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

From 1957 through 1961, I was pretty much cloistered in my own neighborhood with frequent trips to first ring suburbs like Roseville. After 1961and high school graduation, downtown St. Paul had become a place to avoid because there was nothing there of interest for me.

My horizons broadened with time in the service, living abroad, and finally settling into a hovel near the University of Minnesota. The West Bank, Como area, and Dinkytown became a place of refuge for me. Little did I know at the time that the entire area, especially north of Dinkytown, was going through revitalization with dozens of old mansions like my ghetto being torn down for modern student apartments.

Fast forward many years later and I was working at our public television’s new digs in downtown St. Paul. By the late seventies, the Lowertown area of St. Paul had started to come out of its century’s old shell of neglect and decay. The area east of the downtown core began to take on the accoutrements of an urban village; at least in the minds of developers and real estate speculators.

By then I was settled into a third ring suburb and raising kids in a modest yet comfortable environment. The thought of living in the cities never occurred to me. Jump ahead another twenty years and my daughter now lives in St. Paul, less than five blocks from where I was raised. She and her husband love their home, their neighborhood, and new St. Paul.

Sharon and I now have to travel to my old stomping grounds to see our grandchildren in a neighborhood filled with young families eager to enjoy the benefits of living in the city.

I guess it’s true; what goes around comes around.

My Hometown

Aerial of Apple Valley

Lebanon Township has come a long way in the last fifty years. There was a land rush here back in the late sixties and early seventies which turned our agrarian township into a residential success. That progress keeps moving along well into the twenty-first century. While still a third tier suburb, Apple Valley continues a tradition of solid sensible growth that has made it an ideal place to raise our kids. Now it continues as a comfortable place to live in retirement.

Back in the day, Orrin Thompson was a large residential developer. He had built over four thousand homes in places like Coon Rapids, Cottage Grove and Bloomington. Lebanon Township was an ideal location for his next big development. His homes back then were nothing fancy but still solidly built structures that reflected the skilled craftsmen he hired.

Old Cedar Ave | Apple Valley

When we first moved to Apple Valley, Cedar Avenue was a two lane black-top roadway that could easily handle the daily traffic of our infant suburb. It edged alongside the bones of the old Eaton’s Ranch. Years earlier that abode to the fifties was the site of many high school hayrides and bonfire soirees. For my Cretin chums and me it was beyond the end of nowhere and about as far from Saint Paul as any of us had ever ventured.

Eaton's Ranch

Cretin Hayride

The ranch was started back in the late thirties as a working ranch and cattle operation. For a kid growing up in the cities it was truly foreign turf. My only memories of those hay rides was freezing my tush off just to be cool and trying so hard to impress the girls from St. Joe’s Academy and OLP.

Back then new urbanism was all the rage among city planners. There was talk of creating small villages throughout the township at first. Eventually the intersection of Cedar Avenue and 42nd Street became the core from which retail and now multi-family housing spread out. It’s called TOD, transit-orientated development, and it seems to have caught on in a big way downtown.

There has always been new construction going on someplace in Apple Valley. Recently what little vacant land remained is beginning to fill in rapidly, especially in its downtown core. It’s been a long time in coming. The 2008 recession and poor financing on the part of various developers dictated a delayed timeline that the city would have liked to have accelerated but couldn’t.

At the heart of downtown is Kelley Park. It’s has been a proven winner since its inception. It compliments a city-wide system of parks and pathways that has shown the way for other communities to emulate. We’re at the stage now in our lives where our grandchildren love to use the park’s splash pad and playground.

Over the years, Sharon and I have served on several city and community organizations. I was on the Apple Valley Planning Commission for five years and spent several years on the cable commission. My previous company, Sharden Productions, Inc. provided cable programming for the Police and Fire Departments as well as a cable magazine entitled ‘Apple Valley Today’ for many years.

Sharon was on the city council for several years and together we’ve volunteered for a number of city events. It’s all part and parcel of being a member of the community. The city still has a good school system and a wonderful collection of neighborhoods.

We’ve been here for thirty-nine years. That’s longer than my childhood in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. We’re still in the same home we bought back in 1977 for $49,500 and were just glad we could afford the monthly payments. It’s the only home our kids ever knew growing up.

Our cul-de-sac has changed households many times over but we’ve always been lucky to have replaced them with new friendly neighbors. While many of our neighbors decided to move up in the world we chose to stay in our humble abode. It worked out pretty well for us, socially and economically.

Our home has evolved over the years as the kids grew up and then moved away. It has gone over a number of the obligatory make-overs, remodeling and adjustments. I needed a home office and Sharon’s art studio needed more space.

At this stage in our lives, a lot of our friends and neighbors are shifting over to an easier lifestyle. They’ve found someone else to do the shoveling, cut the grass and rake the leaves. In other words, an HOA or management company to do the heavy lifting. That still isn’t for us. I like my quiet porch and my old comfortable chair. Growing old in place isn’t such a bad thing.

Apple Valley was a good place for the kids to grow up and for us to grow old. Sharon has her art gallery on the walls and hallway. I have my office, my writing space, and a porch for my quiet time.

Our home is a reflection of our lives; ever changing, adapting and evolving. It’s our nest, our cocoon and a place to reflect on a life well lived. It’s our grandchildren’s second home and a wonderful gathering spot for friends. It is us and we are happy here. Isn’t that what it’s all about as this stage in our lives?