Kingfield Neighborhood Association

A Public History of 35W 

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MnDOT is excited to partner with the Hennepin History Museum and University of Minnesota to present A Public History of 35W on Thursday, October 10 from 6-8pm at Hope Community, 611 East Franklin Avenue.
 
Public Historians will discuss how freeway planners thought about Minneapolis transportation needs in the late 1950s and early 1960, share oral histories of people who were impacted by the freeway, and explore how the freeway displaced racially diverse communities and established a physical barrier that has contributed to the growing racial divisions in South Minneapolis that remain today.    

Kingfield Citizen Pruners Hit the Streets this Saturday!

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A handful of Kingfield residents were trained last year by the MPLS Park Board Forestry Department and the U of M on pruning trees and passed our exam to be official, card-carrying Citizen Pruners. We receive a card and can prune public trees on our own time but also join organized pruning events throughout the year, which is what we will be doing on the streets in Kingfield on Saturday. Many of us in Kingfield also care for our new public orchard located in MLK Park.

If you have a tree that needs particular attention (boulevard or public property only!) message us at info@kingfield.org and let us know the address it is located at. We will try to create a route to include it. You can also post a photo and the address of the offending “sucker-is” tree on our Facebook page.

KFNA is working to set up another Citizen Pruner Training for September; it occurs over two dates: an evening classroom session and a hands-on Saturday morning session. If you might be interested in joining the team send us a message and we will send you the dates when they are confirmed!

Happy National Night Out!

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National Night Out is Like Christmas for KFNA!

We love this night for being able to come to your street and see a so many neighbors celebrating our community! Thank you for allowing us to visit your parties. We will be scooping free ice-cream from the back of bike trailers again, made and donated by our neighborhood confectionary, Sebastian Joe’s. We are going classic—with a nod to a different construction project than the 35W one we are currently living with—and we will be bringing back Nicollet Pothole, and a new vegan edition of Joe’s Oreo!

Nicollet Pothole was created one decade ago to protest the removal of Nicollet Avenue from the upcoming Minneapolis construction budget. It might have been the very first time that ice-cream was ever used as an organizing tool, but the tagline for the BEST ice-cream created for the WORST road in Minneapolis raised some eyebrows.

Joe’s worked with KFNA to create a dark base of chocolate ice-cream with a thick, slick of caramel, deep-dark holes of fudge, a heavy gravel of toffee chunks, and of course a dash of salt (sea salt, not road salt!) On National Night Out 2009 we celebrated the fact that Sebastian Joe’s was masterful at creating a smooth flavor—and lamented the fact that they weren’t also the one’s responsible for creating a smooth roadway. Needless to say, Nicollet Avenue was put back into the City budget within three months of unveiling the flavor.

This year, besides celebrating past accomplishments, the KFNA Board wants to talk with you about the future. For the first time in over 20 years we are short of Directors on our non-profit volunteer board; we want to find out how we can connect to neighbors more personally and address issues that are potentially more relevant. We hope that this will encourage more neighbors to participate with KFNA either on the Board of Directors, on various committees or work groups, or at events. If in the midst of the festivities you miss directly connecting with a KFNA representative and don’t receive the card with a short survey link on it, and you want to share your thoughts and opinions, just email info@kingfield.org, or follow the link here.

And again, happy National Night Out!

Calling All Green-Minded, Trivia-Wonks to Help Plan Our First Green “Hoppy Hour”!

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Kingfield & Minneapolis Climate Action are set to host our first local, green-focused Trivia-based Hoppy Hour on Tuesday July 9, 5:30-7 PM at Pat’s Tap and we want your help!

Besides the parameters outlined above (place, date, time, and trivia) we have nothing figured out and this is why we need you! Are you a Trivia junkie? A Zero waste pro? A happy hour fan? A mildly interested neighbor who wants to connect and do something fun with other fun neighbors?

We need a group to plan the format, questions, timing, scoring, greeting, advertising, and fun! Let me know if you are interested and can attend a planning meeting on Wednesday June 19 from 5:30-7 PM) for a brainstorming-planning session.

Our goals for this event are:

  • To educate neighbors about composting and zero waste
  • To celebrate a local business already doing sustainable practices
  • To have fun and meet new like-minded folks
  • To start building local, green leadership who will continue to plan information/educational/environmental events focused on spreading knowledge and working to build sustainable practices one household at a time.

Sounds fun but you can’t make the planning session?  Be sure to put the event on your calendar for July 9.  We will be recruiting leaders to plan the next Green Hoppy Hour there, and we are thinking it might be based around a Jeopardy style face-off of pros…so obviously we need your clever brains to help with that one too!

Bright Lights Bumming You Out?

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Kingfield, there has been a lot of talk about the new LED street lamps owned by Xcel Energy being a wee bit bright.  KFNA is compiling a photo file to prove this point.  Please send a regular photo (jpeg) of the offending fixtures and the light they cast to info@kingfield.org. Please include a description of the location of the light fixture as well.

Thank you!

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Besides this action please also take the following 2 actions:

  1. The lights being replaced do not belong to the City they belong to Xcel. Call Xcel Energy Customer Care at 1-800-895-4999 or visit https://www.xcelenergy.com/outages_and…/report_outage (if you go to the website continue as if it is an outage and leave comments in the box at the bottom describing the issue with a new bulb on a pole.) Xcel will send a team out within 3-5 business days to try and solve the issue including changing the angle or adding a shield. I would recommend that you request a shield so that the bulb doesn’t get tilted and go across the street into your neighbor’s home.  I have heard Xcel is backordered on shields so will try and angle the light first. If it doesn’t work, please contact them again. You can include your phone number in the comments and ask that the outdoor team contact you to discuss solutions & notify you when the work is done. this would be important, especially if after they do the work you can’t see a difference.
  2. Call the 8th Ward office at 612-673.2208 and speak with staff or leave a message that you are unhappy with the new fixtures.  The City needs to know if citizens are unhappy with the “amenity” that Xcel is installing throughout the entire City.  While the fixture may meet the energy efficiency and dark sky goals of the City, we have also been told the City was not presented with an example or a menu of lighting options to select from.