Was Lowry Bridge a span to crime?
Mike Kaszuba, Star Tribune
March 29, 2005 BRIDGE0329
As the 100-year-old Lowry Avenue Bridge reopens Wednesday to traffic traveling between north Minneapolis and Northeast, people are wondering if the year-long closure also inadvertently reduced criminal activity in the northeast neighborhoods nearest the bridge.
Between May, shortly after the bridge closed for repairs, and December, the Marshall Terrace neighborhood reported a 41 percent drop in major crime compared with the same period in 2003, including fewer auto thefts, half the larcenies and a slight drop in aggravated assaults. During the same period, serious crime also fell 5.5 percent in Bottineau, the other northeast Minneapolis neighborhood closest to the bridge.
It was the lowest figure for major crime in either neighborhood in four years and came as overall major crime in the police precinct serving northeast Minneapolis actually rose a tenth of a percent in 2004.
Businessmen Bob Marget, left, and Dan Jaros stood at one end of the Lowry Avenue Bridge, set to reopen Wednesday. Jaros of the Rivergarden bar in Northeast said “I don’t get too many cars broken into” since the bridge has been closed.
David Brewster
Star Tribune
Although they are hardly conclusive and represent a relatively small number of crimes, the findings are a touchy subject for residents and politicians, given the differences between north and northeast Minneapolis, and the recent high-profile crimes on the North Side.
Those crimes include the March 4 killings of two men in a Penn Avenue restaurant.
During the same period, crime in the two north Minneapolis neighborhoods closest to the bridge -- McKinley and Hawthorne -- rose sharply. "We had one of our worst summers ever," said Anna Dvorak, who chairs the McKinley Community neighborhood group.
Previous repairs to the Lowry Bridge, which arches over the Mississippi River, brought similar results, said Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Stenglein. "When we close that bridge," he said, "neighborhood crime drops" in Northeast.
While Northeast has enjoyed a resurgence as an old ethnic enclave that is attracting more artists and chic restaurants, north Minneapolis remains poorer and with a much higher percentage of minority residents. The North Side is bracing for a beefed-up police presence next month that will include officers on horses and bicycles.
City Council Member Don Samuels, whose ward includes the neighborhoods on both sides of the bridge, said he had not heard about a drop in Northeast neighborhood crime during the bridge's closing. But he said north Minneapolis has "more disproportionate numbers of everybody" -- including sex offenders, drug buyers and sellers, and johns and prostitutes.
Many, he said, come from other areas, including the suburbs, because north Minneapolis is "a relatively disengaged neighborhood." So, he said, "it's the real convenient place to do crime in the city."
And the Lowry Avenue Bridge connects that neighborhood to Northeast.
"Since it's been closed, for us, we really don't have too much of a shoplifting problem," said Bob Marget, whose liquor store sits at the foot of the bridge in Northeast. While Marget said shoplifting has not been a large problem at the store, which his family has owned for 59 years, he said both shoplifting and the number of customers trying to pass suspicious checks have declined.
"We've got a lot of really good customers living on the North Side," he added.
A closer look
The crime statistics for the neighborhoods are real, but also come with enough caveats to discourage broad conclusions.
"Crime did decrease in the northeast neighborhoods," said Lt. Greg Reinhardt, a Minneapolis crime statistics specialist. "But I would not say that the bridge closure is the sole or singular causal factor for decline, nor is the reversal true for the increase in crime on the North Side."
Although Marshall Terrace had a large percentage crime decrease, the actual number of crimes was never huge. Larcenies fell from 54 between May and December 2003 to 29 during the same period in 2004. County Commissioner Stenglein, who also represents neighborhoods on both sides of the bridge, said he was "quite surprised" to learn that some Northeast residents were not eager to see the bridge reopened even though businesses have lost both customers and revenue.
But some northeast Minneapolis residents are cautious about rushing to conclusions. "Simply because crime is down, you can't say it's because the Lowry Avenue Bridge is closed," said Fran Guminga, who lives five blocks from the bridge and is a four-decade resident of Northeast. "I think there's implications for some racial attitudes there that we have to be careful about."
Robin Tacheny agreed. Tacheny owns the L&M Car Wash in northeast Minneapolis right by the bridge, and said he has not noticed a difference in crime since the bridge closed. "I definitely feel it in my pocketbook," he said, however.
But Leslie Bock, an Uptown tattoo parlor owner who opened the Psycho Suzi's bar near the bridge in November 2003 and moved to Northeast two months ago, said many of her customers freely talk about the bridge and the drop in crime.
Some residents, Bock said, even suspect the bridge's reopening was purposely delayed.
But Hennepin County officials said the reopening took longer than expected because last year engineers discovered that one of the bridge's support piers had moved as much as a foot. Jim Grube, the county engineer, said it took extra time to design new steel plates for a bearing assembly and then make sure "everything fits again."
Taylor Shaver, general manager of the Sample Room, a 3-year-old Northeast restaurant near the bridge, said it may be difficult to say for sure what part the bridge plays in crime. "I don't now if the mystery will ever be revealed," he said.
"It will be interesting to see this particular summer" Shaver said, calling the reopened bridge "an open corridor to a whole different world.
Mike Kaszuba is at