Plymouth Hates Its East Side

Plymouth Hates Its East Side

Have you heard how wonderful of a city Plymouth is? How it has top-notch schools, wonderful parks and green spaces, and a thriving economy? I don’t live in that Plymouth. The Plymouth I live in, specifically the east side, has closed schools, a vacant mall, a post office that may close, and now less green space.

The Plymouth city web site and planning commission is full of references to the wonderful growth of the Northwest Corridor and Plymouth City Center. It’s so great that that area is expanding! It’s so great that their schools are at capacity! It’s great they have a new library! It’s great for Plymouth’s tax base!

 Well those of us who live more modestly, in a wonderful close-knit community known as Pilgrim Lane are wondering if the City of Plymouth cares about our area. Four years ago the Robbinsdale School District chose to close Pilgrim Lane Elementary School. The building remains vacant to this day, nestled among single-family houses, walking paths and a park. The Four Seasons Mall is blighted. It’s an eye-sore of a vacant strip-mall that is sinking. The Lost Lake Branch post office is on the chopping block of a struggling U.S. postal system. And now – do you know what Plymouth wants to do?

 They want to remove between 800-1,000 trees from a nice green space in our neighborhood.  The space in question is between Highway 169 to the east and Pilgrim Lane to the west, between Orleans Lane and 37th. On my morning drive I often see fox walking the path, and in winter my neighbors get visits from deer. We hear owls and see falcons. It’s like a little annex to nearby French Park.

 Why cut down these trees? Because a lake in New Hope is too high in phosphorous, and it needs a holding pond to catch the runoff from our neighborhood. So our barrier to the freeway noise of Highway 169 and the apartments that abut our neighborhood, our own wildlife refuge, and wonderful green walking paths will be destroyed for a lake in New Hope.  

 Listen up Plymouth! We’re really getting tired of you ignoring us. We might not be your biggest tax base, or have the newest roads and infrastructure, but we have a superb neighborhood that you keep dumping on. We’re sick of it. Do NOT allow the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Committee to pass this project!  My neighbors and I are begging for your help in maintaining some of what makes our neighborhood one of the best in Plymouth. PLEASE do not allow them to take away our trees and green space. We’ve been through enough recently.