The Blue Twins, Demolished!

Post and video by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

The long-awaited demolition of Keith Reitman's "Blue Twins" at 2520 and 2522 Penn Avenue North happened last week, and fittingly, the video footage was a week in the making as well.  I won't bore readers with the technical details (okay, I will) but I used a new time-lapse program on my cell phone and it took a while to figure out how to merge all the different videos together.

Previous demolition posts have had 30-40 minutes of footage, spliced into a few different clips, with plenty of dead space in between (which I once filled by hula hooping).  This time around, we're speeding things up a bit and condensfing the good stuff into about a minute and a half of footage for easy viewing.

I spoke with the City inspector who was out watching the demo crew at work.  A keen eye will notice that the backhoe of doom employed here is kind of old and junky.  The City staffer said this particular crew didn't have the best equipment, but they get the job done pretty well.

A fitting end for Reitman's Blue Twins--they were demolished by "not the best, not the worst" demo crew.

Pre-Demo Peek Inside Reitman's Blue Twin Houses

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.

Wednesday night as I came home, the back door to 2522 Penn Avenue North was left open.  I tried yet another unsuccessful 311 mobile app report, and then waited until the morning.  On Thursday morning, the door remained off its hinges.  More accurately, the BOARD over the space where a responsible property owner would have PUT a door remained ripped off and on the ground.  So I called in the violation to 311.  Because it was already a City-owned property, my call was forwarded directly to a person responsible for handling boarded City properties.

I explained to this woman that I live right across the street from this house and that there were still things like radiators left inside the place.  So for my safety, could she pretty please get it boarded back up right away?  And if not for my sake then for that of the demo contractors, who have salvage rights to whatever the slumlord former owner left behind.  By the end of the day, the board had been nailed back on.

Before that happened, I took the opportunity to see what a Reitman-neglected (a redundant term, I know) property looked like on the inside.  I didn't cross the threshold--although oh how I wanted to.  I merely walked up to the door aperture and peered in to snap a few photos.  There were no "No Trespassing" signs posted, I didn't remain on the premises long enough to constitute "lurking," there is no expectation of privacy at a condemned, vacant property, and I stayed on the legal side of the threshold.  Are all my bases covered here?  Good enough.

I see a property that at one point was a cute little place.  Much has been stripped away, and even now it might be salvageable under the right ownership.  And although the City of Minneapolis could try and find that right owner, this one is far enough gone that I won't lament its pending demise.  That demise, by the way, is set to happen sometime early next week.  Let's hope that 2520 Penn, still owned by Reitman, comes down with it.