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GARY EICHTEN: Well, there was a time-- and it wasn't all that long ago, really, when Minneapolis was truly the jewel of the Midwest. Hennepin Avenue was an entertainment magnet for the entire region. Lakes, theaters, sports shopping, jobs everywhere. Minneapolis was the center of the Minnesota universe.

Today on Midday, we thought we would spend some time looking back at that storied past, and take a look at what the city is today, and what the city may be tomorrow. Minneapolis is the subject. It's a subject that really affects the entire state of Minnesota, given Minneapolis's unique role in the state.

Joining us here in the studio are some folks who have watched the city of Minneapolis change over the years. Walter Dziedzic is a lifelong Minneapolitan. He's taught school in the city, served as a police officer for 16 years, and has represented Northeast Minneapolis on the city council since 1977.

Also joining us is Judith Martin, head of the urban studies program at the University of Minnesota. She moved here from Chicago 23 years ago and has written several books on city life, including the Legacy of Minneapolis and Where We Live, which is a study of neighborhoods in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Thanks to both of you for coming in today. Sure appreciate it.

WALT DZIEDZIC: A pleasure.

GARY EICHTEN: Mr. Dziedzic, I'd like to start with you. What was it like growing up in the city of Minneapolis? Was it a safe place? A good place for kids?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I thought it was really the place to be, especially in Northeast Minneapolis, where everything was laid out. We had good playgrounds in the '30s, with not a lot of money. My father passed away when I was two years old. And my younger brother and I were in a family of seven.

And they were difficult times, but I just had a great childhood, played at those parks. Minneapolis Park Board was like a home away from home. Played at Marshall Terrace Park. Went to the local Catholic school, it's a couple blocks away. I had a lot of good friends and ended up at Edison High School.

And there was a cohesiveness in that neighborhood, even though we didn't have a lot. People say today, we didn't know we were poor. But it was a nice, cohesive neighborhood.

Once in a while, you hear about somebody who's a crook. So and so was a crook. He got picked up for burglarizing. But I can remember about one of those in my whole childhood until I graduated Edison High School.

So it was really a good-- and I miss some of that today. Busing destroyed some of that cohesiveness of those neighborhoods. I had great, great sports teams at Edison High School in the late '40s and early '50s.

And that came about because of the closeness of those neighborhoods. They had parks-- Logans Park, Bottineau Park. Every part of northeast was broken down into parks. And if you got through the competition of your own neighborhood, then you went out to South Minneapolis or over to North Minneapolis. That was a long trip in those days.

GARY EICHTEN: What about downtown? Was it everything that I can remember it to be or I think I remember it to be? Hennepin Avenue, this glittering entertainment strip. And Nicollet Avenue, a great shopping area. Is that true or is that just a figment of faulty imagination?

WALT DZIEDZIC: I can remember My sister-in-law used to take me downtown once in a while to the Gopher Theater. Next door was Bridgeman's for a treat. And neither one of those are there anymore.

But we had a transportation system back then that was probably one of the finest in the country. That streetcar system stretched from-- boy, I can't tell you how far. We used to take the Polish flyer right down Second Street. That's what they called the streetcar in those days.

GARY EICHTEN: The Polish flyer?

WALT DZIEDZIC: The Polish flyer went into the Polish neighborhood. There was a Russian one that went down Monroe Street, too. Those were designated areas. There was another one went on Central. And one went on Johnson.

JUDITH MARTIN: These were not their official names. This was the local.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Yeah, I don't know what number it was, but that's what they called it. And that's the one you took. And that was a big occasion if you could go downtown. And there was a glitter downtown. Minneapolis was-- the downtown area was the place.

We'd go shop on Broadway or with some local places, especially on East Hennepin used to get crowded on Saturday going on. I remember about my first lunch bucket down there and my first suit for my first communion. My mother took me down there.

And downtown was Dayton's. I can remember at Edison High School. One year I didn't play sports, one winter. And I got a job down there in the stockroom on the ninth floor at Dayton's. And that was the place. Yeah, that was the only place really.

GARY EICHTEN: What about race relations at that time?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, it's interesting you should ask that. There were not a lot of minority people living in Minneapolis at that time. But Minneapolis, even beyond that, Jewish people were not allowed in the Minneapolis Athletic Club.

And I don't know if it was-- I don't want to get the two mixed up between the Athletic Club and the Minneapolis Club. And I don't know which one barred Jewish people.

Race relations-- if we were going over north, we didn't have any minorities on our team when going over north. There was an apprehension there simply because we'd never met them.

I can remember after I graduated high school, I went to the university for a quarter or two. And I signed a professional baseball contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization. I took a bus down south. Not a bus, a train.

And I'll be honest with you, as a 17-year-old, I didn't know when it said coloreds and whites on the fountains, and on the bathrooms, the lavatories. I didn't know what that was. I asked a guy on the train, what's that? I never seen that before.

And that came from the background where we didn't have a lot of mingling with the-- simply because there wasn't any minorities in northeast. And we'd go over north. And we'd play them, good relationships. I grew up in the Dodger organization.

When they broke the colored line-- when Jackie Robinson, and Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella broke the color line, I was there in the south. So that was quite an experience for me.

Played hockey against a couple of Blacks out of Central High School. Charlie Logans, I forget the other hockey player. Played against Mackey and some at Central High School.

So there were good Black athletes at that time-- Glenn Pullens, Earl Bowman. Earl Bowman became president of Minneapolis College, was one of the great athletes that we played against. But there wasn't a lot of interaction there.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, Judith Martin, you came here from Chicago, a real big city.

JUDITH MARTIN: A real big city. And I thought I'd found a small town.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, I was going to say-- now, what, 1970?

JUDITH MARTIN: 1970.

GARY EICHTEN: Now, the IDS tower had not been built yet. The Foshay Tower was still the biggest building in town.

JUDITH MARTIN: When I came, some friends walked me across the Washington Avenue Bridge and pointed out the skyline of Minneapolis. They were very proud of this. The skyline was the Foshay Tower, the Northwest, or the phone company building, and city Hall. That was it.

And I'd come from a place that had 50-storey buildings. And I was, to say the least, not impressed. But the city's changed a lot in the two decades that I've been here.

GARY EICHTEN: How?

JUDITH MARTIN: Well, it's gotten to be more like other cities in the sense of-- particularly if you look at downtown. Since the middle of the 1970s, Minneapolis has done precisely what virtually every other American city has done, which is to build a corporate downtown with big symbols of corporate investment.

So you go out and you get the skyscrapers and have a business base that's being built up. Now, Minneapolis has been lucky in the sense that that build up of the business base really was very much internally generated, rather than having speculative office developers show up and plop a tower here and plop a tower there, as they did in Denver, and Houston, and a variety of other places.

So the city has gotten to look more like a big city. And I think it's gotten a lot more complicated and gotten more diverse. The economics of the city have changed some. I think the culture of the city has changed some.

And what Walter was talking about with respect to Hennepin Avenue being the downtown entertainment zone. When I came here, that was pretty much over with. I mean, the Gopher Theater was still downtown and some of those things.

But it was no longer the situation that if you wanted to go to a first run movie, you had to go downtown as you did in the 1940s and 1950s. So those kinds of things had really begun, I think, as I had arrived here.

And interestingly, I think I got to watch the change go on here, particularly since the middle of the 1970s, that were very similar to what I saw going on in Chicago when I was growing up there in the '50s and '60s.

GARY EICHTEN: I want to get to some phone calls in a minute here, but I want to get both of you on record here very briefly. Judith, do you think the city is as good a place as it was? Is it as good a place today as it was when you first came in 1970?

JUDITH MARTIN: I think it's a better place today.

GARY EICHTEN: In what ways?

JUDITH MARTIN: Well, I think that there is a sensibility about the city having to fight for the things that it wants to do as opposed to when I got here, which seemed to be a sensibility about Minneapolis already having everything and not really having to go out and battle for it.

That from a lot of perspectives might be a negative, but from my perspective, it seems to help to build community and help to build a sensibility that everybody's in it together. I think there's more connectivity between the city than there used to be. Still not a great deal, but I think that there is some cooperation.

There are linkages between Northeast Minneapolis and the north side that didn't used to exist. And those are probably healthy in the long run. I think that the sensibility that the city's got about the good things that are in it-- the lakes, the parks, the river. That's all much more in the consciousness of the city than it was 20 years ago, I think.

GARY EICHTEN: Walter Dziedzic, better or worse today you think?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I think there's some aspects of it that are better and some that are worse. Definitely, it's not as safe as it used to be. And a lot of that has come on in the last five years, I'd say. I saw the change coming when I was a police officer.

School wise, it's a toss up. I don't think the schools are as strong as they were when I went there. And for a whole lot of different reasons that I talked about earlier. I think busing really hurt us. I think the diversity in our neighborhoods has added to the strengths.

Some of the things that I was ignorant of, my youngsters were not because they went to school with minorities. And some of those items that I talked about earlier, they didn't have to go through that.

I think the shopping is much better than it was. I think that sports wise, there's no doubt that we're-- with the dome being downtown and all the sports teams being here. We're a big league town now, where when I was a youngster, we were a triple-A. We were a minor League team.

So transportation wise, I think we've slipped. I think that's really lacking. That old streetcar system, golly, I don't know who made those decisions, but that should have stayed in place.

All those lines, I mean, streetcar lines that ran out to Excelsior? I mean, that was unheard of. And they changed it to the buses. I think that was a big mistake. I think that's one of the areas that we got to get going on with the light rail.

So if you add them all up-- financially, we're way better off. Hennepin County is the cash cow that drives this whole state. If you take Hennepin County away from the state, you might as well shut the doors on the state of Minnesota because there's been a number of people who've done studies on that and will tell you that all the taxes that are collected in this area.

Just recently, we added the convention center. We became a big league convention city. So in certain aspects, we're doing much, much better. And we become a big league city. And in certain areas, we haven't.

We're going to start the Miss Saigon pretty soon down at the Orpheum Theater. I don't know how many people saw Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. My wife says that was the best production she ever saw. I enjoy it. She's got tapes. We play it every time we go on a road, anywhere we're playing those tapes.

So in a lot of ways, Hennepin Avenue is returning a little bit to the glitter of its past with the other items that have been added down there. So in certain areas we're doing better. In some, we're changing.

If I could just, for a moment, add to what Judith talked about, the change not only in the building, but in the people to become a big city. And some of that change has been good and some of it has been bad.

With regard to the types of people we get and the behavioral level of certain people, especially in the downtown area. We never used to see that. When people are coming from these other Cities, bigger Cities than ours, they bring that big city behavioral level, a lawless attitude that really--

JUDITH MARTIN: I don't think I have a lawless attitude.

WALT DZIEDZIC: No, no. Not you.

GARY EICHTEN: What do you think about that, Judith?

JUDITH MARTIN: Well, I think one of the-- I mean, I think about this a lot. And I think it's a very complex issue. And there are lots of things that are happening in downtown in particular. I don't think it's just downtown because the same things are happening at the mega mall, thankfully.

But the sorts of behaviors that you see in downtown Minneapolis, which you literally did not see 15 or 20 years ago because we had a lack of a street culture here. Northern European types don't hang out on the streets. And southern European types do. And other sorts of folks do.

I think one of the difficult issues is sort of separating out who are the people that are the troublemakers and what are the issues that are causing that because, in fact, the kinds of changes that Minneapolis has gone through in the last 15 years have come along at a time when there have been massive cultural changes in the entire country that have added to different sorts of behaviors.

So when you look at the fact that you have kids hanging out in downtown who are basically kids who have children and that causes some difficulty for people. And say, well, 20 years ago we didn't-- 20 years ago, we didn't have very much of that. But that's not just a local change, that's a national change.

And there are lots of ways in which the things that are perceived by many people to be negative about Minneapolis are things that are much more connected to larger, social and cultural transformations and not just what's happening in the city of Minneapolis.

GARY EICHTEN: I want to get some listeners involved in our conversation. Our subject today is Minneapolis, big subject. But we thought it would be interesting, given the city's unique place in this region, certainly in this state. Thought it would be interesting to take a look back at where the city has been, where it is today, and where it's headed.

Our guests today are Walter Dziedzic, who is on the Minneapolis City Council, has lived here all his life. And Judith Martin, who is the head of the urban studies program at the University of Minnesota. And she's been here for 23 years now, came here from Chicago. Let's go to our first caller. And hello, you're on Minnesota Public Radio. Well, I guess we lost that caller. Let's go to a second caller here. Hello?

SPEAKER 1: Hello. Yes, I had a comment and a question. My understanding of why streetcars were replaced by buses, not only in Minneapolis but elsewhere, is that the auto companies which manufacture buses and the oil companies jointly lobbied to various bodies to make that change.

And this actually leads into my question. Actually, it's a two-part question. Council Member Dziedzic has often referred to The Power Elite in Minneapolis, a famous title by a book by C. Wright Mills, and certainly a research tradition, elite studies reformulated by Domhoff and so on.

And I guess my question would be, to what extent-- and in fact, there was a paper called "Blueprint". And they outlined the economic networks of influence in Minneapolis, I think, in their last issue in 1980.

My question would be to both Professor Martin and Council Member Dziedzic. To what extent do these informal economic networks influence the decision, for example, to turn downtown Minneapolis into a corporate showplace?

And on the move to have city workers be residents of Minneapolis, how would Council Member Dziedzic and Professor Martin see that as affecting the future of Minneapolis, having the people live in the city who work here, instead of coming in to occupy the city from the suburbs?

GARY EICHTEN: OK, first question, the power elite, the influence of the power elite and their role in shaping the face of the city, really.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I think the gentleman is absolutely right. And I can remember that being a textbook back at St. Thomas College, when it was a college. The power elite in this city actually laid the city out.

They're the ones that decided-- and I think the reader or somebody's writing about Lake Sandy and different folklore of the city of Minneapolis. Lake Sandy was a lake in Northeast Minneapolis.

The power elite in the city decided that mostly immigrants lived in northeast. We're going to fill that lake with the dredging of Lake of the Isles. Good way to get rid of them. We'll expand the Soo Line Railroad.

That's why you'll find most industrial land is in northeast, southeast Minneapolis because the power elite, the city decided that around the lakes is where they're going to live. And they don't want the industry there to wake them up.

You can look at the liquor is another that is all in one part of the city. And why? It was decided by the power elite. So they had a role in not only land use and everything else, but what schools and what was taught in those schools.

Edison High School, that was an Industrial school because those kids weren't going to go to college. My Lord, that would be a waste for those immigrant children.

When I talk about that, I use that as emphasis on the city council to try to mock some of my colleagues into additional funding or into an additional program to make up for past mistakes that this city has made, that the power elite in the city has made.

GARY EICHTEN: Judith, what's your reading?

JUDITH MARTIN: Well, I have a sense that the arguments about the power elite, both nationally and in Minneapolis, are very accurate. And historically, if you look at the development of Minneapolis and look at the influence of families like the Washburns, and Crosbys, and the Pillsburys, and those people, you find that not only were they founding businesses and building up big enterprises, but they were serving as mayor and serving as governor. I mean, they were the people that made the decisions about pretty much everything.

I think that that's diminished to some degree. And there's been some concern over the last decade, in particular, about the fact that many fewer of the people that are running corporations in downtown Minneapolis are natives of this area and have come up through the traditions that have grown up in this community.

There's been a fair amount of research on Joe Galaskiewicz, who's a sociologist at the university, has done some research on this over the last 15 years, looking at what are the motivations of people who are giving corporate money away to arts organizations or social service organizations.

And this is a very vast simplification but basically, what it comes down to is that there's still peer pressure among the power elite in the Twin Cities and in Minneapolis in particular to get folks to get behind the programs that have always been supported.

So it's still there. It's still active. I think it's much less visible than it used to be. It used to be that the power elite were the names of the people whose buildings were standing on the corner.

And because of the corporate reorganization, and mergers, and all of that sort of thing, it's not so easy to know who the people are, but the organizations that they represent are still, I think, very visible, and very powerful, and have been an important actor in the remaking and reshaping of downtown Minneapolis in particular.

GARY EICHTEN: What about this residency requirement business now, is that a good way to help shape the future of the city?

WALT DZIEDZIC: I think for the time being, it is sure-- up until about 1972, I believe it was that we had a residency requirement. Let me put the residency in a way Judith was just talking about, corporate leaders.

Al Hofstede was mayor for a couple of terms back in the late '70s. And Al Hofstede used to say that what makes Minneapolis strong is that the corporate leaders grew up here. That's not happening anymore.

The corporate leaders now are bottom line people. And we see that in every one of-- there was a First Bank Grundhofer report that he enjoys firing people. He's a bottom line leader. I don't mean in any way to criticize him. It's just that he didn't grow up here. He's not from here.

And I think the old line Daytons, the Pillsburys, the Washburns, I mean, they grew up here. They lived there. They made their money here. And they cared about this area.

And that's why this area donated more for charity than anywhere else. These people were residents. And residents care about where they live. You can translate that same thing into city workers. What do you care about the city if you're a fireman and you live in Duluth or Grand Marais, like two of our firefighters do?

And the gentleman, when he asked the question, he talked about an occupation army. And that does happen when 75% or 80% of your police officers are from out of the city.

And police officers get frustrated because some of those questions that they're asked have no answers. And they get frustrated. And they'll say things like, well, what do you expect? Look where you live.

And those kinds of things-- right away, those people call their council members and say, what kind of city employee you have when that happens? I think you take more pride in your job when you live there.

GARY EICHTEN: What about the notion, though, that the city really does need to reach out and somehow improve relations with the suburbs? I mean, that's become a real bone of contention. And it seems like these-- a residency requirement, although in the face of it makes good sense, is just another roadblock in trying to improve those relations.

JUDITH MARTIN: There's no doubt that there are issues around the relationship that Minneapolis has to surrounding communities. And I think the bridge building between Minneapolis and St. Paul has actually been pretty effective.

100 years ago, Minneapolis used to be battling St. Paul for everything. That doesn't happen anymore. Minneapolis and St. Paul are battling Eden Prairie and Maple Grove for things.

The idea of everybody being, basically, in the same ship at the same time, I think, is an important one to think about from a Metropolitan perspective and from the perspective of lots of things that Minneapolis and St. Paul are both trying to do.

But I think with respect to the residency thing, it's a tough issue. But I think that there really is something important about people who are working for the city being significantly attached to the places that they're employed.

The thing that gets a little difficult here is if you have a residency requirement for new city employees in Minneapolis and you say they have to live in Minneapolis, I could very easily construct a scenario that would say, well, why not Minneapolis and St. Paul? Because St. Paul is in much the same shape.

And then you can extend it out and say, well, maybe Richfield, or maybe Brooklyn Center, or something like that. And it's a question of where you draw the lines of who's on the same boat at the same time.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's take another caller. Hello, you're on Minnesota Public Radio.

SPEAKER 2: Hello?

GARY EICHTEN: Yes,

SPEAKER 2: Hi. I'm actually from New Orleans. I came here five years ago. And I'm a student here at the University of Minnesota. I mean, five years ago, when I came here, things were much, much better than they are right now.

I mean, there has been such a big change, especially being a minority living in this environment with the police. There's been such a very big racial polarization to the point where a minority actually shot a police officer.

Now, what caused this? Why has there been such this big change just in the last five years? When I came here five years ago, I mean, there was no problem. After, there was no problem. I mean, I had Minnesota nice and all that.

But when I came up here, I mean, things just changed so fast. What happened? Why was the-- I mean, how did he get to the point where an officer was shot? Why is the racial--

GARY EICHTEN: OK, what happened?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Gangs, drugs. He's absolutely right. And he's right about the same time, too, about 1988. Actually, the gang phenomenon probably started about 1985 when gangs discovered this was virgin territory and they started moving in here.

And we had a police department that had blinders on and didn't recognize that there was a gang problem here. The chief of police said, no, we don't have a gang problem. The late Dan White brought it to our attention in a lot of different ways.

That plus a police department probably that wasn't sensitized properly, didn't have enough minorities. Donna Harris, the director of neighborhood services in Minneapolis and I in the late '70s tried to add minorities to the police department because women and minorities were needed.

And that eliminated the charge of racism right away when the squad got there. If you have one Black officer and one white officer in the same squad car, one man or one woman in the same squad car, there's just a whole lot of advantage they have to get to the base of the problem and solve the problem rather than these other things.

But this gentleman is right on about the big change that occurred. Some of the polarization that's taking place even today. Tycel Nelson, we just settled with him. And people said, why did you settle that one? I think it's better than going to court and reopening the whole thing.

Look what happened in LA the last few days with the sentencing of those officers. I think we did the right thing. And for a whole lot of reasons, we didn't want to reopen that wound. My friend Jerry Haaf was killed for no reason at all.

Just the whole issue of we're going to take on the cops has been dramatically lifted in the last few years. I think Chief [INAUDIBLE] community orientated as he is, he's on the right track to solve some of these kinds of situations by retraining police officers.

The last couple of years, I've been thinking-- I think we need to change the kind of police officer we recruit, the kind of person we look for. I think we need to have maybe a little softer, a little more-- I came from St. Thomas with a social science degree and a teaching background.

And I think that's the kind of background we should look for. And I think we need more of-- when we test for police officers, check more of that in there. I don't think you need to be-- you need to have all-- like my Timmy is 6 foot 2 and 225 pounds and lifting weights every day. I don't think you need that. I think you need a little softer approach.

JUDITH MARTIN: Community relations kinds of things. I mean, one observation about that when Walter was describing the neighborhood that he grew up in and what it was like, it was very similar to the neighborhood that I grew up in Chicago, except it was a different ethnic base.

And I went to a grade school reunion a number of years ago. And it was very interesting to observe that many of the kids, many of the people, now adults, that I had been in grade school with who were the juvenile delinquents were all now policemen. That made me really think a little bit about who was being tracked into these kinds of jobs.

GARY EICHTEN: Do we have any sense-- are people still coming from all around the region specifically to Minneapolis? Or when people drive in from, name it, Moorhead, or Brainerd, or St. Cloud, or Jackson, Minnesota or whatever.

Are they coming to the Twin Cities and probably maybe never make it to Minneapolis? They end up at the mega mall or whatever. Do we know anything about what's happening in that regard?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I think they come here for the Viking games, and the Twin games, and the Timberwolves. We are a sports Mecca of the area.

GARY EICHTEN: But to see Minneapolis or just to go in and see the ball club and then get out of town as fast as possible before they get beat up or that being their perception.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, all those conventioneers are staying and using our defined restaurants we have. They look around the city. Minneapolis is known for its fine restaurants. I think people stay and look around. They come into city hall, rub the big toe of the father water statue, bring you that seven years of good luck. There's all those kinds of things that you do in the city. So if I could just comment--

GARY EICHTEN: Very briefly. Then I want to get back--

WALT DZIEDZIC: We didn't comment on jobs because I think the key to some of the problems we have in the city with the gangs is the lack of jobs for youngsters.

And I think that we need to explore that further. The government needs to create jobs. I was hoping that the Clinton stimulus package would have passed early in the spring because we're lacking those jobs.

GARY EICHTEN: Has the city lost a lot of what it used to have in terms of industry. Do we know that?

JUDITH MARTIN: It's lost industrial base. St. Paul has also lost industrial base. Every large American city in the last 20 years has lost industrial base.

GARY EICHTEN: Any way to get that back? I mean, those are the good jobs.

JUDITH MARTIN: Those are the good jobs. And those are the ones that are toughest to get back because they've gone to places that are non-unionized and out of the country. And unless you have a different kind of mindset among the corporations that are making decisions, who are producing things, it's very hard to retrieve those kinds of jobs.

WALT DZIEDZIC: And jobs are the key. And as you say, some of those jobs might not be paying as well. But that's one of the reasons we're going to announce tomorrow the largest shopping center in Minneapolis is going to be built in Northeast Minneapolis on 19.

And Johnson is going to be a Target store. And probably a rainbow and Toys "R" US, and Kohl's department store, all those kind of things will be the largest department store in-- the largest shopping center in Minneapolis. 1,000 jobs besides the construction jobs. And right now, we don't have a crane up in Minneapolis.

Until the Federal Reserve gets going and until the Federal Reserve Board builds its building, those are the two next-- the big ones. We're overbuilt a little bit by three to five years, probably. So those kinds of people are sitting on the bench right now. Hopefully we'll get them up and working. Jobs is the key.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's get some more listeners on the line. Hi, you're on Minnesota Public Radio.

SPEAKER 3: Yeah, my question is for Walt. My family's five generations of Northeast Minneapolis, much like yours is Walt. And the city, the northeast part of the city has always been sort of a safe and nice place to live until lately.

I mean, it's never been so much crime, and so much fear, and so many people just afraid. Old time residents of northeast afraid in their houses and certainly afraid to go out in the street. And just a couple of questions.

First one, on that is, do you see any prospect for change? The next thing is we always talk about downtown versus the neighborhoods. And downtown lately-- downtown being the city hall and MCDA. And those people have been talking about more of a focus on the neighborhood.

Is there some hope on neighborhoods and neighborhood problems and turning away from the downtown core and rebuilding the neighborhoods? And is there any hope on that?

And I guess my third question relates to the last statement you made about the biggest shopping center and jobs in northeast. One of the big problems in northeast is the unholy mix that we have of industrial scattered site throughout the residential areas. And what prospects do you see for cleaning that up? And I'll hang up and listen.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, you filled my plate pretty full there, but I'll try to run them down real quick. You're absolutely right about crime and crime in Northeast. But I'll just point out that statistics came out yesterday. And once again, they show that northeast Minneapolis, everything east of the river is in that second police precinct, which we just built the finest police precinct for.

They have one half the crime of out by the lakes. So if there's 2,000 crimes committed northeast, the fifth precinct has 4. And the third and the fourth over North probably have 5 and 6,000 crimes. So it has half the crime, but it's the perception.

And we have an older population northeast. And if that little old lady perceives that she's in some kind of a terror zone, that's bad. We have that perception.

GARY EICHTEN: But as you pointed out earlier, I mean, the fact is when you were growing up, it was unusual to hear of anybody who got in any kind of trouble at all. And so although the crime rate in any part of the city might be relatively low or relatively high, the fact is, in pure numbers, it's substantially higher than it used to be when these people were younger.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I think crime all over the country is raised.

JUDITH MARTIN: That's another one of those things. It's a national issue that's having a local manifestation. It's not just happening here.

GARY EICHTEN: What about the Downtown and neighborhood issue?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, downtown really-- they pay about 40% of the tax rate base of Minneapolis. And that tax base is down a little bit for a whole lot of reasons. But the neighborhood revitalization program is up and running. And that's going to help the neighborhoods.

I just made a proposal to Congress, Congressman Sabo. And hopefully as soon as he gets done with the budget, which is before him right now, he's going to attempt to get Cisneros or Latimer into northeast to look at this project renew because we've got to renew our housing, not only northeast, not only Minneapolis, all over this country.

The government's got to put some more money into housing. And what the gentleman talked about, the third part of that question was the mix of industry and housing.

And that's what I talked about earlier when a power elite said, oh, those were just immigrants up there at the turn of the century. We'll put all the industry up there. And you've got plants right next door, 40 feet away from residents. And we're trying to separate that.

And I fought those all along. I had a couple bad decisions go against me when the late Judge Susan Sedgwick put Minnesota metal refinishing in next to a house in north in a Beltrami neighborhood.

If I could just comment one more item about crime is that we've addressed some of these things with innovative staffing of our personnel. The east side station, we went to 10 hour days, which means between 9:00 at night and 3:00 in the morning, we double shift.

We've got twice the personnel on duty, which is an innovative and creative way that chief [INAUDIBLE] and Inspector Trahan have used to solve getting more people on the street when crime rate is highest.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's go back to the phones for another caller. Hello.

SPEAKER 4: Hi, my name is Mike. I'm calling from Ely, Minnesota. I moved here about a year ago. And I moved from the Minneapolis area. Walt, this is basically directed towards you. I lived in Minneapolis, where I was born for approximately 30 years.

After having my two children, one who is 2 and 1/2 now. And the other one seven months old. I realized that I could not allow myself to raise those children in that kind of a hostile environment.

When I was a child growing up in the Minneapolis area, I grew up in the South Minneapolis area, a short distance from Lake Harriet. Beautiful neighborhood, there was no crime problems. You left your doors unlocked. You didn't think anything about what was in the car overnight or anything like that. And that is dramatically changed.

Nobody goes outside and walks around, even around the lakes late at night like we used to be able to do because of the fear of the crime. I think that the real issue here has been skirted.

I think that when you're mentioning it's been about five years, I'd say it's more like 10 years. And the problem seems to be mostly gang related. You're getting a big influx of gang members coming from cities like Detroit, and Chicago, and LA.

Mostly, I think that the big problem was they were coming for welfare benefits, which were, I believe, to be too easily available. You'd get them to come in. And they'd soak up the welfare money from the area and then form up with larger gangs-- the Bloods, the Crips, the Disciples and so on.

And I think the real problem became one of, hey, it's easier to sell crack cocaine here because it's a larger market for bigger bucks, where you can maybe get $5 a rock in LA, you can probably get $10 or $15 or $20 a rock here.

And I want to know, Walt, if there's anything going on for welfare reforms or anything like that or any other programs that might be working to stem the tide of that and what are your comments might be on that?

GARY EICHTEN: Is it just the outsiders, people come for welfare?

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I don't think that's the entire answer to why crime rate has gone up. There's a whole gamut of it. I think that if you look at any kind of surveys, you'll see that crime increases as poverty increases.

So as the city gets poorer, you're going to find more and more pockets of crime. But the gangs have come into the city and drove for a whole lot of reasons. Up until Jerry Haaf's killing, there was three gang unit officers in the Minneapolis Police Department.

And after some of us saw what happened, we started to yell. We now have 15 full time gang officers in Minneapolis. And they can call on up to 45 or 50 personnel. So they're attacking that problem. But I understand what the gentleman is talking about. Nobody likes to get mugged.

JUDITH MARTIN: Can I say something?

GARY EICHTEN: Sure, do you think this is an issue of outsiders who have stirred up--

JUDITH MARTIN: I think it's partly an issue, but I think it's as much perception as reality. The Star Tribune did a story in the last couple of months that actually looked at the number of people who have come here from the code places-- Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, St. Louis. And it's a total of 5,000 people.

If 5,000 people can discombobulate an entire city, that doesn't say much about what's going on in terms of the stability of the city to begin with. But the other point that-- two other things. The caller mentioned how it used to be able to go out and walk around the lake.

I was walking around Lake Calhoun at 11:30 on Friday night. There were people out. It wasn't a terrorized environment at all. And the final point is that it seems to me-- and this is-- I realize a very radical thing to say, but it seems to me that there's a very simple way to do away with much of the crime, and gang, and drug problem.

And that is if as a nation we legalize the sale of drugs. I'd like to see the crack dealers out doing Fuller Brush sales in the suburbs where the clients come from, rather than bringing all of that into the city. I know that's an argument.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Judith, don't put me down for that one. I don't think we should legalize drugs.

GARY EICHTEN: All right, let's move on here. Let's take another caller. Hi, you're on Minnesota Public Radio.

SPEAKER 5: Yeah, I'm concerned about some of the same things that the last caller is concerned about. And I guess I'd be particularly interested in Ms. Martin's view of what's happened in Milwaukee, which is a city that had a murder rate. So I'm guessing 15 years ago ran 57 to 60 murders a year. And that was consistently in the 180 to 200 murder a year range with massive white flight.

And my view, I guess, in Minneapolis is that it's poised pretty much on the same fate, unless something is done almost immediately to stop it. I've been stunned at the extent of the suburban development, now 15 to 20 miles beyond, say, the Fish Lake interchange, which is, I think, directly related to people bailing out of the city. Number one for the crime reason. Number two, I think, for the policies of the school board.

And I think in Milwaukee, the study, the general sense is that in-migration from northwest Indiana is directly related to the deterioration of the quality of life, which is directly related to the differential in welfare benefits. I'm just wondering if she's familiar with the situation in Milwaukee and would have any comment on it.

JUDITH MARTIN: I've not followed Milwaukee closely. I'm a little more familiar with Chicago, but my sense is that much of what we're dealing with in Minneapolis right now is similar to things that Milwaukee and Chicago and a variety of other cities have been dealing with for a much longer period of time. And that's massive transformation in both the economic and social base of the city.

And the fact is the United States of America is a democracy and people have the right to move. And you don't have the right to keep people out. That poses problems for us because we have a sense in our heads of the good old days and how it used to be.

But we also come up against the fact that we are a country that values freedom in a lot of different respects. And those sometimes collide against one another.

GARY EICHTEN: How did the city in many, many years ago, when the city was being developed in early days of growth, how did it manage to assimilate these continuing waves of immigrants, new people without these problems developing? Or did these problems develop at that time?

WALT DZIEDZIC: There were gangs of Minneapolis in the '30s.

JUDITH MARTIN: There were Jewish gangs.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, there were Italian gangs, and probably Polish gangs, and Russian gangs, and different-- but I think that the new level here is the drugs that puts it on a whole different plateau that back there, there wasn't the narcotic trafficking that you have now.

JUDITH MARTIN: I think that's part of it, but I think another part of it really is the racial issue. And the fact is that although there were different groups of people in Minneapolis in the early 20th century, they were fundamentally all northern or Eastern European.

And you didn't have large numbers of people from other parts of the world. There wasn't a large Asian population. There wasn't a large African-American population. And I think the layering on of different groups of people makes all of the complexity of everybody working together just that much more difficult.

You can look at south Minneapolis. There are places in south Minneapolis where there's a Swedish Lutheran Church on one corner, a Norwegian Lutheran Church on another corner, and a Danish Lutheran Church on another corner.

That says to me race relations they weren't race relations. They were ethnic group relations in the late 19th century weren't all that great because all those people were going to their own churches. They weren't collaborating and creating one.

WALT DZIEDZIC: As a result of the Haaf murder, we had a gang seminar for city council and staff of the city hall. And we had Matthew Rodriguez, Chief of Police Chicago came up and talked to us.

And he talked about there's a route from-- and the freeways have enhanced that. You got the drugstore-- you got the drugstore murder in Minneapolis. They were in Chicago before you even get the broadcast out because they jump right on the freeway to commit the crime near the freeway.

But Chief Rodriguez talked about going from LA to Chicago, Chicago to Milwaukee, Milwaukee to Minneapolis. Those are routes that those gangs travel.

So when this gentleman talked about Milwaukee and what's happening there, that's on the route from Gary or Chicago to Milwaukee to Minneapolis. And you're going to find that the crimes are committed on those.

And that's why the Highway Patrol and those kinds of people are doing a lot more stops out there attempting to fight crime before it gets to some of these places by picking up some of these people, especially those that fit the profile for drug running.

GARY EICHTEN: Our subject today is Minneapolis. Another caller on the line with a question or comment. Hello.

SPEAKER 5: Yes, hi. My question is in regard to downtown shopping. I'm thinking of the suburban mega malls or suburban malls and the mega mall with lots and plenty of parking and free parking. What effect is this having on downtown merchants such as Dayton's downtown, [INAUDIBLE] and so forth.

GARY EICHTEN: Judith Martin.

JUDITH MARTIN: My observation is really an anecdotal one there. I spend a lot of time in downtown Minneapolis just watching out what's going on. There seem to be less people shopping at night than there used to be.

The Saturday and lunchtime shopping seems to be hanging in there, but the fact is that the marketing mix in downtown Minneapolis has changed dramatically in the last 10 years in terms of loss of mid-price and lower price shopping. And the city's working real hard to try and get that back so that there's more of a range for everybody.

But the shopping malls are out there. The shopping malls are continually improving themselves. At the same time, the downtown is improving itself. And the fact is-- and again, there's perception versus reality.

The perception is that you drive to a suburban shopping mall and you park for free. That is a reality. But you can come to downtown Minneapolis and park for free as well. If you're shopping at certain times, there are now parking programs in place.

It amazes me. It absolutely amazes me that people will park in a suburban shopping mall lot and walk effectively a quarter of a mile or something from where they park their car to where they are actually shopping and then talk about how far away things are in downtown Minneapolis. I mean, these perceptual problems are really curious.

GARY EICHTEN: What's your sense, Mr. Dziedzic? Minneapolis shopping, holding its own.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Yes, it is. Somewhat we've gone to a validated parking system, which [INAUDIBLE] championed. And it's done real well. Let me just comment that everybody talks about LSGI and a lawsuit.

But if LSGI had been built, I doubt very much, with Nordstrom's and Neiman Marcus being in that project, whether or not the mega mall would have ever been built. And that that's a discussion item that people like you and Judith should talk about in some of those classes that you have over there because it's a reality.

JUDITH MARTIN: You'd be surprised what we talk about.

WALT DZIEDZIC: It's a reality. We need a middle income store, one of those kinds of things. And you're right. If you were on the outer edge at the old Met center and you walked to the Met, that's like walking from Hennepin Avenue. And people say, oh, golly, I got to walk that. But the downtown dome has proved that you can maneuver those streets real, really real easy. And we had a company come in to--

GARY EICHTEN: It is tough, though, for people, especially who come from outside the Twin City Metropolitan area to find where you're going.

JUDITH MARTIN: It's gotten an awful-- it's gotten an awful lot better. One of the things that's happened in the last couple of years is that there's a signage system in place in downtown Minneapolis that points people in the direction of where they might want to know something about-- and that's on every corner.

It's also spread over many blocks. It's not just on Nicollet Mall so that if you're over in the warehouse district, there's something that will say the dome is in that direction or Nicollet Mall is in that direction.

So I think we've gotten a lot better about giving information to people who don't know the city and making it more user friendly. There's no doubt that five or 10 years ago, it was a lot less user friendly than it is now.

GARY EICHTEN: Let's get one more caller on while we have time here. Hello.

SPEAKER 6: Thank you. Ms. Martin, I'm interested that you apparently equate the ethnic conflict reflected by going to different churches with being stomped into unconsciousness in Minnehaha Park, but that's a rhetorical.

Do you think that the data that the Star Tribune used to conclude that there were 5,000-- in-migration of 5,00 are pretty reliable data? I mean, people show up here from Gary and say, I'm here. Jot me down. I mean, that's absurd.

JUDITH MARTIN: The data that they're using is census data. So it's 1990 census data. And the census asks people where they lived five years ago.

SPEAKER 6: All right, to Mr. Dziedzic. Two questions.

GARY EICHTEN: Very briefly.

SPEAKER 6: I think I'll just have one. If you say that the city should have paid the Nelson family $250,000 in order to not open that wound, can anyone show up at city hall and pick up a quarter million just for not bitching?

WALT DZIEDZIC: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. You have to take-- you're taking it out of context. I'd have to sit down and explain the whole situation. But you're absolutely right about your earlier question to Judith.

I think since 1990, we've had a large immigration of people from outside into the city. From talking to police officers, from talking to mailmen, those are a couple of good sources on what's happening in your neighborhoods besides going out and driving and taking a look yourself. There's been certain neighborhoods of Minneapolis have been huge changes.

GARY EICHTEN: We only have a couple of minutes left. And I know you're a politician, Mr. Dziedzic, but I'm going to ask you for--

WALT DZIEDZIC: I'm a cop.

GARY EICHTEN: I'm going to ask you for an unbiased opinion on this. And Judith Martin, you're not a politician, so you don't have to worry about this. Are the mayoral candidates addressing the future of the city, issues that are-- without naming names, endorsing candidates, all of that. Is the kind of mayoral debate that we're getting-- is it addressing the future of the city at all? Got about a minute.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Well, I think that some of them are. I think the main issue is money and how you're going to treat the budget. What are you going to do about crime? Are you going to stay on the sidelines and watch what's happening in the schools?

And I think that that's happening. I think a couple of my colleagues that are running would hit the ground running. They know what's going on. So I think those two especially would really, really help. I think John [INAUDIBLE] jumping in at the last minute was a tragic error. And I think it's going to upset the apple cart.

JUDITH MARTIN: My sense is that there's some of that discussion going on, but there are far too many candidates for the discussion to surface very far. And we may get there after the primary, but at the moment there are just a whole bunch of people talking about a whole bunch of things. And I think that it's getting out to regular folks yet.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks for coming in. We are out of time, unfortunately. And it's a big subject. We could be here for a long time. A lot of people want to get in. We sure appreciate it.

WALT DZIEDZIC: Gary, when you're talking about the finest city in the country, it's pretty easy to talk about it. And it does take a lot of time. But it is, it is a fine city.

GARY EICHTEN: Thank you, Walter Dziedzic, I appreciate it. Minneapolis City Council member Walter Dziedzic and also joining us today, Judith Martin, who's head of the urban studies program at the University of Minnesota.