MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A legal challenge has forced the state to delay a $468 million bond sale to finance the new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings, state officials announced Sunday, saying the lawsuit jeopardizes plans to open the facility for the 2016 season as well as plans for a nearby $400 million development.
The bond sale had been scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Showalter said Sunday that he hoped the delay would be brief but that officials decided it was “appropriate and prudent” to postpone the sale until the Minnesota Supreme Court can sort out the legal issues.
“This is not a long-term delay. This is a decision not to offer bonds on Monday,” Showalter said. Federal law requires that any pending legal actions be disclosed when bonds are sold, he explained.
Former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Doug Mann filed the challenge with the Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday. He and two other citizens asked the high court for a restraining order to block the bond sale, saying the financing arrangements were designed to circumvent a city charter provision that would have triggered a referendum.
Mann told The Associated Press on Sunday he believes that Minneapolis voters should have been allowed to decide whether to finance the stadium and that the bond sale violates the state constitution because city sales tax money would be used to finance a state debt. A Hennepin County judge dismissed an earlier challenge from Mann in November.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - It’s a well-preserved gem of boreal forest, around 350 acres fronting two lakes on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It long belonged to a wealthy Chicago family with a deep love of the wilderness. Now the land and its tall pines near Ely are under the control and ownership of the University of Minnesota, which plans to use it for research on climate change’s effects on northern forests and for teaching classes.
The Hubachek Wilderness Research Center is primitive and needs some work, such as a new septic system, before it can host classes or small conferences. The laboratory is basically just a cabin. And none of the cabins dotting the property is insulated, so it’s mainly a three-season facility. But it has a rich history, and the university hopes to build its capacity slowly but surely.
“It’s a wonderful place for people to come and study and reflect and experience the wilderness,” said Linda Nagel, director of operations at the university’s Cloquet Forestry Center and the overseer of the Ely facility.
The Hubachek center sits on Fall Lake, a popular spot for entering the BWCA, and has a spectacular view over Browns Lake, which is just outside the wilderness area. It’s dotted with rustic but meticulously maintained little log cabins that Frank B. Hubachek Sr. moved from a larger property he owned on Basswood Lake before it was incorporated into the BWCA and turned back into wilderness.
“It feels like you’re at an up-north family resort. It’s very lovely,” said Peter Reich, who has held the university’s Hubachek chair in forest ecology and tree physiology since the early 1990s and has been the lead researcher using the facility in recent decades. He said it gives researchers ready access to the Boundary Waters but also permits them to conduct more manipulative experiments that aren’t possible within the BWCA.
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DULUTH, Minn. (AP) - Police in Duluth are urging residents to stay home because of freezing rain that has created dangerous driving conditions.
Authorities say roadways have become covered with ice, so citizens should avoid unnecessary travel in the Duluth area.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation says driving conditions are difficult across a large area of northeastern Minnesota, and no travel is also advised in parts of central Minnesota including the Brainerd and Little Falls areas.
The National Weather Service issued freezing rain advisories for parts of central Minnesota and a winter weather advisory for northeastern and north-central Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin on Sunday because of the slick conditions.
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A St. Paul townhome fire has left one man dead.
Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard says a passerby and a tenant on the second floor of the two-story townhome reported the fire shortly before 4:30 a.m. Sunday. He says the tenant reported flames were coming out of the first-story windows.
According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press (https://bit.ly/1aTxcMqhttps://bit.ly/1aTxcMq ), Zaccard says the victim, who lived on the first floor, was already dead when crews arrived, but firefighters were able prevent the flames from spreading to the second floor. Nobody else was injured.
He says two of the 11 units are uninhabitable, but most tenants were able to return to their units after about an hour and a half.
The cause is under investigation.
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