King for a Day

 I posted this somewhere else earlier today, but I'll cross post it here too.  If only because my friend and co-worker Alex keeps whining at me about how i don't update this thing enough:


So here's a thought experiment, lets say you were named King or Queen (or Caesar or Empress or Czar or Boss of all Bosses) of Minneapolis for a day.  What would you do?  Well I got a list of things, but lets define what I'm talking about.  Being Empress for a day gives you unlimited authority, but you are only in charge for a short time, so you  can't change everything.  Nor can you get rid of a politician you don't like, being Czar means you don't have to deal with school board members or city council persons.  Heck being The Sun King means you don't even have to deal with the Board of Estimate and Taxation!  Now, I said before that I got a list, and I really do, but gah, i can only name one thing so I narrowed it down to a sort of top three--Southwest light rail, getting rid of the silly Board of Estimate and Taxation and having a regular city budget process, or dealing with all those dang parking lots in downtown...so hard to choose...okay...King John, First of His Name, Lord of the Northside and Southside, of Nordeast and Southeast, Defender of the Realm and General Nice Guy hereby issues the following decree:

"From this day forth, the acres of parking lots between downtown and the Metrodome shall be no more, forever and for all time.  They shall be replaced with mixed used development and tall buildings.  Parking accommodations will be seen to with multi-layered parking structures and underground parking garages below said buildings.  It shall be filled with office space, apartments, condos, coffee shops, restaurants, bars and boutiques.  Considerations for affordable housing should also be on the agenda.  Also a charter high school partnered with major Minneapolis corporations such as US Bank and Target that stresses career training and placement and/or another charter school partnered with the University of Minnesota that focuses on math and science.  I would also like to see a nice small park, with a small pond and some ducks.  It shall be known as "Downtown East" or possibly "Johnville."  Let all good men declare their loyalty in the war on parking lots, and let us all bask in the radiance of a nice, cool new neighborhood.  And an increase in our property tax base"

Well that's my plan.  Also I'm going to be unfair and make another ground rule, nothing about stadiums (yeah I know a lot of you guys don't like the new Vikings stadium deal, well okay but lets talk about something other than that {I mean a good majority of posts here are about not liking stadiums, that's fine, but last time I checked with was the Minneapolis Issues Forum not the Minneapolis Anti-Stadium Forum}, like you know the other 99.9% of of issues facing our city that don't involved stadiums).

So what would you do?