thomaslowrysghost:

Finance & Commerce:

Less than three hours after the National Park Service issued a request for proposals to contractors for a $2 million to $2.6 million job at a Minneapolis site known as Bureau of Mines, 21 responses poured in Tuesday morning.

In these lean times, even a modest federal contract for a project at a site that has whipped up some controversy over the years creates a bit of a frenzy.

After more than five years of debate, the demolition and restoration at the Bureau of Mines site, near East 54^th Street and Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis, is moving forward.

The site has long been controversial, as numerous folks use the Coldwater Spring at the site as a place to collect spring water for personal consumption.

In addition, the American Indian people of the Dakota tribe consider Coldwater Spring to be the sacred place where their tribe was born.

The deadline for responding to the RFP for is August 2; the NPS plans to announce the winning contractor firm by the end of August, said Alan Robbins-Fenger, NPS project manager for the Bureau of Mines work.

The project has a November 1 start date, with the contract lasting until Nov. 1, 2012—but the NPS doesn’t expect the demolition and restoration project to take that long.

“A contractor will get favorable consideration when they submit their schedule for finishing more quickly than that,” Robbins-Fenger said. “There is intense interest in this site, so we’d like to get it back open as soon as we can.”

Most of the interest in the site is the result of Coldwater Spring, usually identified as the last freshwater spring along the Mississippi River remaining in the Twin Cities metro.

The most vocal of those groups is called Friends of Coldwater. In a recent letter about the restoration plan to Paul Labovitz, superintendent of the NPS (Mississippi National River and Recreation Area), and John Anfinson, chief of resource management for NPS, the group wrote that it feels “sidelined so all we can do is kvetch. We want to be cheerleaders for the water, the trees, the land and the future.”

I’m sure most of you remember the whole stop the reroute of Hwy. 55 bit back in the late 90s. I had gone down there a few times during the occupation (or squatting, depending on your view) of the houses that were slated to be razed. It was always neat to venture down to the Coldwater Spring and drink from it.

(image via MHS Visual Resources Database)

Gorgeous old photo of one of one of my most favorite places in the Twin Cities, a real secret gem.