Koenig Court Proceedings: Affidavits and Answers

Post and photo by the Hawthorne Hawkman

When we last touched on Paul Koenig's court proceedings, he had just transferred at least a half-dozen properties to his name, and then shifted title to a new LLC, Komo Group.  Minnwest alleges, and I agree, that such a purchase and transfer didn't even satisfy the basics of title transfers and foreclosures in Minnesota.  Koenig and at least one anonymous commenter here feel otherwise.

Last week I had some spare time and was able to swing by the Government Center again to peruse more docs.  We start with the affidavit of Toni Warren, who states for the record that...

New City Website to Hold Slumlords Accountable!

Remember this garage?

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.  Stock photos are of Gregge Johnson properties, as he was a north Minneapolis slumlord who is listed on this website.  Another Johnson link can be found here.

Several months ago, city officials had spoken both privately and at Councilmember Hofstede's 3rd Ward CARE meetings about the prospect of creating a "Slumlord Hall of Shame" on the Minneapolis city website.  Even though the plan was discussed openly, northside bloggers held off on announcing anything prematurely due to the fact that the city attorney's office and others were reviewing exactly what kind of content would be there.

Well, the link is live now.

In all honesty, this so far seems too dry.  I was hoping for something closer to the Allentown,  PA website, which goes right to the point and calls it a Hall of Shame.  In one instance, the Allentown mayor took a sledgehammer to a slumlord's building as part of a ceremonial start to the demolition process.  Their website shows the dilapidated buildings of slumlords and also posts pictures of the ritzy houses where they either live or receive mail. 

Here's what Mayor Pawlowski said about a recent inductee: “Mr. Miller is not being a good neighbor nor is he meeting his financial obligations to the city,” said Pawlowski. “At last check, he owes water and sewer bills on three properties in the city totaling more than $32,000. He owes more than $4,000 in fines for code violation cases. He owes more than $1600 in SWEEP violations on his three properties. He does not have an active rental license.”

It sure would be nice if our mayor went on record and publicly shamed slumlords who were costing our city over $35,000 in unpaid fines. Northside bloggers could focus our efforts on other things then.  But this site for Minneapolis is a good beginning.  For one thing, it starts to come up with empirical, standardized ways to classify someone as a slumlord.  Hopefully its features are expanded, and that one day we'll be able to search the city database using property owner names as criteria.

Hawkman's Holy Grail for Buying Into NoMi

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman

When I first decided to track my purchases to a NoMi connection, the main item I worried about was where I would find comic books, graphic novels, and other geeky paraphernalia.  I searched and searched for this connection until, like the Hawkman as he found Shelia Saunders and knew she was the reincarnation of his immortal soulmate Chay-Ara...too nerdy?  Blame Wikipedia.

The Hot Comics stores - one in New Hope, another in Burnsville, are owned in part by a fellow active NoMi citizen, Duane Atter.  Duane also runs The Warren, an artists' habitat near Victory 44.  We've been friends on Facebook for a while, and I saw him check in at Hot Comics several times a week.  I just thought he was a huge geek.  Up until a few weeks ago, I mainly knew him as the guy who photographed NoMi gatherings, but was not Pat Carney.  That all changed when I managed to completely stick my foot in my mouth by...

Riverfront Design #3 is a Win-Win-Win for Hawthorne!

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman. Photo of Tom Leader Studio team from an email sent on the Upper Willard-Homewood (U-WHO) listserv.

Earlier today, The RiverFIRST proposal for the Minneapolis Riverfront Design was named as the winner out of four proposals.  But in reviewing their video, which can be found here, the real winner is the Hawthorne neighborhood.  The video is about eight and a half minutes long, but the first five minutes are dedicated to our side of the Mississippi.  Northeast gets a measly 3:30, so there.  Maybe we won't charge a toll for Nordeasters to come across Lowry and visit our spiffy new land bridge.

Oh yes, a land bridge.  The big issue that this proposal caught (perhaps the others did too; I haven't watched all of them yet) is that there is a disconnect between north Minneapolis neighborhoods and the River.  Here I was, asking pretty please for maybe a 50-foot strip of a bike path connecting 26th to nearby parkland.  And what gets proposed instead?  Let's take dirt from the bottom of the Mississippi and use that to help make a bridge several blocks long that spans Highway 94, expands park land, and connects Hawthorne to the River through walkable venues.  I'm blown away here.

There are at least three wins here for my neighborhood the first and obvious one is...

100 Abandoned Homes - a Pictorial

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, video from the Youtube channel of Craig Stellmacher.

This video popped up from a friend's Facebook feed this morning. I don't know the artist or which houses he was in. But it's well done and serves as a reminder of the effects of foreclosures in Minneapolis.

More on Don Allen

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, screenshot image from an ibnnnews post dated 9/13/10.

As the tempest in a teacup over NoMi blog wars builds up, I felt that my own experience should be part of the discussion.  In the fall of last year, the Irving Inquisition did a series of posts about what he alleged as Don Allen's criminal background.  (Don Allen has disputed much of that content.)  The day after one of those blog entries, which did not involve me in any personal or professional manner, Don Allen made numerous calls to the Hawthorne office and threatened to sue me in relation to one or more posts on that site.  He also threatened to sue Eric Johnson, John Hoff, and Michael "Kip" Browne.

The day after that, I saw the post above on Don Allen's website.  In the opening paragraph, he claims:  "...The Hawthorne Neighborhood Group's housing director who once told a fellow blogger, 'I wouldn't give a house to a Black person if my life depended on it.'"

That statement is of course categorically untrue, and so laughably fabricated that I felt no need to respond at the time.  But as the veracity of some of Mr. Allen's blog posts and comments regarding north Minneapolis bloggers is called into question, this incident has to be added to the mix.

One final note:  Given the propensity lately for identities of well-known NoMi-ites to be "borrowed" for blog comments, I will only publish comments here from people who use verifiable email addresses and/or internet profiles.  If you want to comment anonymously, there are plenty of other sites discussing this topic where that can happen.

Paul Koenig's Dollar House Program

After foreclosure, Paul Koenig paid $1 for this.

After foreclosure, Paul Koenig paid $1 for this.

After foreclosure, Paul Koenig paid $1 for this.

After foreclosure...well, you get the idea.

$1

Should Paul Koenig buy a cheeseburger at McDonald's, or a house?  With $2, he can have BOTH!

Post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.  Photos originally appeared on the JNS story, "Pamiko Property Photo Tour."

I'll give Paul Koenig this much:  he's got chutzpah.  What he is trying to do to retain ownership of "his" properties in NoMi (and a few in south) is nothing short of astonishing.  Koenig bought dozens of houses in Minneapolis, and at least one commercial building in St. Paul with four loans from Minnwest Bank totaling roughly five million dollars, and another half-million from Aspen Financial.  These commercial loans were cross-collateralized, a procedure that looked awfully suspicious to many, but may have been at least somewhat of a solid business practice.

Cross collateral means that several properties were the collateral on more than one of the million-dollar lines of credit.  The reason for this is so that if some properties go vacant, in need of repair, or otherwise stop producing income streams to support loan payments, spreading them out this way creates an intermixed income stream to support several lines of credit simultaneously.  In the business world, this model apparently works rather well, provided your borrower isn't a flat-out lying scumbag.

Which, in my opinion, sums up Koenig quite nicely in light of his recent actions.  Minnwest foreclosed on the Bryant property above, to the tune of $2.5 million, along with a bevy of other houses attached to that loan.  They did the same with the $1.1 million foreclosure of a commercial building in St. Paul.  Where it gets tricky is...