He grew up next to a train track. Now Lyn Park man relives nightmare with light rail

Bernard Glover and his wife, Mary, in the living room of their Lyn Park home. Photo by David Pierini

By David Pierini, Editor

Bernard Glover grew up in a shotgun house in Jim Crow Alabama next to a railroad track with trains that ran all night long.

Now 85, he thought the heave and roll sounds from freight trains were long behind him when he settled in the tranquil Lyn Park neighborhood in a gorgeous two-story Spanish Colonial-style home he built for himself and his wife Mary in 1978.

Now transportation officials are considering building a light rail track that would essentially run through his backyard.

“This is the thing, this is what I grew up with,” Glover said. “And you want me to see this thing all over again?”

For all the benefits light rail promises, it would be a challenge to ride some stretch of track in the Twin Cities that did not cause great pain to businesses and residents. Some saw business dry up during the long construction period. Others were low-income residents displaced because of soaring rents or property values.

There’s no avoiding the transformation to a community when the light rail is built. Often though, the process comes at the expense of low-income communities of color.

Now North Minneapolis braces for a change, many here hope, will breathe new life into a part of the city that over time withered from a lack of investment.

The residents of Lyn Park, billed as a suburb in the city when lots and homes first began selling in the mid-1970s, are not against the light rail. They are fighting to change the route that would connect the downtown to West Broadway Avenue. The proposed route is currently drawn to come down Lyndale Avenue, which would need to be widened to accommodate trains going in two directions plus lanes for motorists. This would require Metro Transit to acquire parts of the lots that face Lyndale.

This includes the backyard of Bernard and Mary Glover’s home.

Noise and smoke

Bernard Glover was born in Selma, Ala., where his parents were sharecroppers. His father was one of the best farmers in the area but he was always broke because most of the money went to the landowner Glover said.

When he was 5, the family left the farm in the middle of the night with the help of a cousin, who drove them to Bessemer, some 65 miles north. His father found work in an ore mine and the family settled in a little house.

“Right behind us was a railroad track and those tracks ran through the town to a plant that was the largest plant in the south for making locomotives,” Glover said. “We heard trains all night long. They were steam engines. You talk about noise. It was non-stop.”

Glover also went to school near the locomotive factory and had to deal with sound and smoke of steel being forged as he sat through his classes. The white section of Bessemer was quiet and nowhere near where trains ran, he said.

Glover left Alabama for greater opportunities. He eventually settled in North Minneapolis, where he met Mary, had three children and created a comfortable living for his family in the insurance business.

When a new community development group formed to change the image of low-income housing, it used an area bordered by Plymouth Avenue to the South, West Broadway to the North, I-94 on the East and Dupont Avenue on the West.

Lots were $1,000, and a handful of home models were available from which to choose. The homes cost $50,000- $70,000 and Bernard Glover wanted to make Lyn Park and its cul-de-sacs home. In 1977, he bought a lot and sought special permission from the city to bring in his own design, an arched home reminiscent of a Spanish Revival home. It was the style of home Mary Glover always wanted.

Many of the first homeowners in Lyn Park remain and are now starting to pass on their homes to their grown children, the kind of generational wealth Black and Brown Americans have struggled to achieve. Homeownership among African Americans in Minnesota is around 25 percent. Nearly 77 percent of white households are owner-occupied.

“We’ve already got it set up with the kids to sell it because I don’t want any confusion,” Glover said.

In the driveway at the end of the cut-de-sac

Hennepin County and Met Council officials this summer held three driveway meetings with Lyn Park residents. The second of three, held July 27, was in the driveway of the Glover home at the end of Lyn Park Circle.

Glover talks with Dan Soler, Hennepin County’s Director of Transit and Mobility. Photo by David PIerini

A Met Council community engagement person arrives to set up a table for maps. Residents carrying lawn chairs trickle in, and Lyn Smith, who has emerged as Lyn Park’s leaders in the battle to get the route changed, rolls in on a trike motorcycle where she sits for the meeting using her smartphone to record every word said. About 40 residents are gathered, and the Glovers sit under the shade of a front yard tree.

“I won’t be able to sleep after this meeting,” Mary Glover told me earlier that day. “Every time I go into one of the meetings, I can’t sleep for two or three days because I wake up about two or three o’clock in the morning. It’s just in my mind how (light rail is) going to disrupt and mess up this whole area.”

There is a tenacious group led by Smith that go to every single meeting and their vocal presence has bought them some hope. In June, officials announced they would consider a second option to link the downtown with West Broadway Avenue, Washington Avenue which was considered when officials were looking at Lowry Avenue as the route to the north suburbs.

But the Washington option does not give Lyn Park residents a moment of peace until the little line on the Blue Line extension map that shows Lyndale Avenue is erased.

City Councilman Jeremiah Ellison has been the focus of some of the residents’ Ire for his support of light rail in North Minneapolis. Bernard Glover insists Ellison told him he was in favor of it coming down Lyndale Avenue and he has said he wanted to keep an open mind to hear all of the information.

But at this meeting, Ellison said he is starting to favor Washington Avenue as he hears the concerns of residents. His dad, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, is a Lyn Park resident.

Dan Soler, the county’s Director of Transit and Mobility, leaned into the anger and questions at each driveway meeting.

He is questioned about the width of Lyndale and what it could mean for the yards that border the avenue. The sound of bells from the train as they begin to run at 3 a.m. is of particular concern because bedroom windows face Lyndale.

Soler took questions about the crime on light rail trains. And again, he took questions about why the original proposal to go down the median of the Olson Highway, which was eventually rejected because county officials could not negotiate a deal for owning the right of way. A railroad owns the use of the median and would not sell.

“The reasons that we are looking at Washington as a choice is because of the sentiments of this neighborhood,” Soler tells the group. “We’re going to look at all of the impacts, we’re going to present the best information we can to our policy makers. So when you know this or that is a concern, when we talk about cutting trees, talking about access to emergency vehicles, we must address that. We’re here to carry that and maybe we’re not as good at carrying that as you guys.”

Soler tries to play up the benefits of light rail, like the access to education and jobs in the metro, a reduction of pollution with fewer cars needed. Some residents sigh and groan, tired of being told how light rail benefits them.

Glover challenges transportation officials during a driveway meeting at his home in July. Photo by David Pierini

Bernard Glover rises up from his chair to speak.

“Your original plan made sense because you go around and down to where you want to go, to the stadium and the airport,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the citizens in North Minneapolis. Then when you couldn’t get it, now you’re fine putting in an area we put all of our money into?”