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The Minnesota Daily

Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

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North side a place for both home and family

North Minneapolis is dynamic, diverse, full of recreation and close to downtown.

My husband and I bought a house on the north side three years ago when I was pregnant with my son. Now, with our son and our 1-year-old daughter, we feel established on the north side and blessed to have found a gem of a neighborhood in the Homewood area.

We moved from southwest Minneapolis in the hopes of finding a home where we can raise our family with space to grow and where we are not pulling change and lint out of our pockets to squeeze out a monthly mortgage. We wanted the freedom to have one of us stay home with our kids instead of having to put them in day care, and we wanted to live in the city so we could commute on our bikes or take the bus.

We race mountain bikes and cross country skis, and Theodore Wirth Park provides amazingly for both of these hobbies. We have a network of women in the neighborhood who run trails through Eloise Butler and the Quaking Bog, which is a sublime change from the busy traffic around the lakes. Our neighbors are nothing less than phenomenal. We cross the streets to talk daily, and we feel like we are a part of a growing and healing community, part of change, part of advocacy for residents of this part of Minneapolis.

In our neighborhood, which is between Plymouth Avenue to the north and Olson Memorial Highway to the south, Penn Avenue to the east and Theodore Wirth Parkway to the west, we enjoy gorgeous historic homes inhabited by neighbors who have lived here for decades. As neighbors move, young families who feel the same way as we do about living an active, activist lifestyle are moving in with their families.

Furthermore, this is exactly where the University will be building their north side campus. The students who decide to move here will not regret their move to a dynamic and diverse neighborhood full of outdoor recreation just minutes from downtown.

Opinions such as John Hoff’s “Don’t all stampede at once,” printed in Monday’s Daily, are a dime a dozen and are often void of the viewpoints of people actually living in this part of the city. I can point you to hundreds of north side residents who can give you a wildly refreshing perspective of what it is like living on the north side.

Janna Krawczyk is a Minneapolis resident. Please send comments to [email protected].

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