Hopkins & St. Louis Park--Blake Corridor Crime

[uptown_urbanist]

Seriously, Lyndale and 32nd is seen as a sketchy neighborhood?!? I suppose if one considers that location bad, then Blake is going to seem really scary. Although it is true that when that Pizza Luce first opened, Lyn-Lake wasn't trendy or particularly thriving, while today Lyn-Lake is no longer living in Uptown's shadow, and is both trendy (in an artsy/hipster way) and a hot location for new restaurants and bars (and home to a lot of really upscale, luxury apartments). Maybe they envision Hopkins developing that way down the road. Or maybe they simply know that a lot of their customers live out that direction. And it's location delivers to a fairly big area out that direction, saving Minnetonka and Hopkins PL lovers a drive into the city (and there are a lot of them out there -- every time PL opens a new location my Facebook feed is buzzing). I haven't been to the Hopkins Pizza Luce, but it's right on a popular bike trail; no idea what how many of their patrons come via bike, but I could well imagine that they could benefit from that, at least during the warm weather months. I think it does seem to be the case that PL does cater a lot to the hipster-leaning crowd, and they do like their bikes. And they do like suburbs like Hopkins.

I asked a relative who had done some work with the Blake Road area a year or so ago, and he said that there was a one block or so stretch there that accounted for about a quarter of all Hopkins police calls. He also said that it was because that's where the drug dealers lived, so it was a destination place for buyers. So unless you lived in the immediate area or were going there to buy drugs, it wouldn't have any impact on you. He also said that even within that area, it was not "that bad," although of course that's not really a glowing endorsement. And I certainly wouldn't worry that it's going to negatively impact your housing value if you're living in a different area in St. Louis Park.

[northsub]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

Seriously, Lyndale and 32nd is seen as a sketchy neighborhood?!?

The way some talk around here you'd expect there is no crime in Minneapolis at all.

You can look at the crime maps yourself if you like:
Precinct 5 Crime Maps - City of Minneapolis

If you start looking in June (roughly summer) you get the following:
May 29-June 4: 2 of 3 robberies in the precinct within a few blocks.
June 5-June 11: incidents within 5 blocks in 3 directions, relatively clean though
June 12-June 18: again relatively clean
June 19-June 25: another robbery within a few blocks
June 26-July 2: aggravated assault and a couple of robberies within a few blocks
July 3-July 9: a robbery and 4 aggravated assaults within blocks
July 10-July 16: rape within a few blocks
July 17-July 23: a couple more robberies within a few blocks
July 24-July 30: another rape within a few blocks

[uptown_urbanist]

I know the 5th precinct well. I know CARAG well. I read the CARAG crime reports regularly. I know there is crime there. I also know it well enough to realize that things change pretty drastically as you move east, towards the freeway. 32nd and Lyndale is a very nice location. Certainly not sketchy in the least. That doesn't mean there's no crime -- Lyn-Lake is a busy commercial destination, and it's a very dense (for the TC) area with a lot of residents (as well as a LOT of visitors). But really, when it comes to urban neighborhoods there can be invisible lines that people who don't know the area don't understand. Stuff happening on, say, Blaisdell are not relevant to life for those on Lyndale. Things can change pretty quickly as you head east along Lake, past, say, Grand (there ARE some sketchy blocks within a half mile of the Pizza Luce Lyn-Lake site). It's also important to remember that there are a ton of people in this area every single day; it's unfortunate that there's crime, of course, but per capita it's not necessarily all that high. Of course as a busy commercial district with a lot of nightlife (bars, restaurants, theaters, etc.) it's going to be higher than some sleepy residential-only neighborhood where there's only 500 residents, but Pizza Luce's Lyn-Lake location is hardly known for being high-crime (not a crime-free urban utopia, either, but no one has claimed that to be the case). Although of course for those who think it is, then they probably will definitely want to avoid the Blake Road location, too, as the Blake area is decidedly more downscale. The way some people talk you wonder how they're willing to leave the house during the day. Odds are probably much higher than you'll get in a traffic accident than you will getting mugged going to Pizza Luce (any of them).

I don't think there's really much at all in common between the Blake area and Lyn-Lake, or Seward, or the Warehouse District (PL locations), but I suppose it's a valid point that if one is really concerned about crime, living in a densely populated area with a lot of commercial activity will bring with it higher crime levels than many (but not all) residential-only neighborhoods. The Blake area really doesn't have that many businesses (some, but not all that many, and is heavy on stuff I wouldn't use), so right now, anyway, I would assume that the primary benefit of living there is that it's cheap. Or for those buying, the fact that it's cheap and the hope that it's going to be much nicer in the future. (which may be a decent gamble; crime rates have gone down a lot in the past few years, so perhaps it really is on its way back up after hitting rock-bottom.)