Crichton’s passing made headlines in 2011
Thomas and Kathleen Morris of Burnsville met the media Aug. 12 at Minnesota Lottery headquarters in Roseville. Jenny Canfield, right, the acting lottery director, introduced the couple. Minnesota Lottery photo
Scoutmaster’s crimes, apartments, Walmart also made news
by John Gessner
Thisweek Newspapers
After 18 years on the Burnsville City Council, Charlie Crichton didn’t need much introduction.
To many, he was a one-word personality – just “Charlie,” said Mary Sherry, a fellow council member.
Crichton, who made fans and won elections as a strident tax hawk and frequent contrarian, died in March at age 83.
His death was perhaps Burnsville’s biggest news story of 2011, a year of progress, heartbreak and glimpses of the city’s future.
A former Boy Scout leader was sentenced for sexually victimizing boys in his troop. A Walmart store was approved for the north end of town. A long-awaited interchange project was finally approved.
City officials prepared for future development while also spending hundreds of enforcement hours at an aging and ill-kept apartment complex. An obsolete shopping center was torn down to make way for senior housing.
And a lucky Burnsville couple won the biggest prize of all.
Here are some 2011 news highlights from the pages of Burnsville-Eagan Thisweek.
Crichton
Crichton was a former council member and mayor in Arden Hills before coming to Burnsville, where he was first elected in 1992. The only Burnsville election he lost was a 2000 bid to unseat Mayor Elizabeth Kautz.
In his 18 career votes on Burnsville’s annual budget and tax levy, Crichton voted for only three. Many of the votes were 4-1 tallies on tax hikes his council colleagues considered reasonable.
He opposed creating the Heart of the City downtown redevelopment district and building the $20 million arts center.
Always visible in the community, Crichton also attended many events at the center, where he was fondly eulogized in a public memorial after his March 13 death, which followed a brief illness.
“He loved this city with everything in him, and he was so proud to be a part of it,” said Crichton’s wife, Terry.
A rare special election was held July 26 to choose Crichton’s replacement. Most of the candidates pledged to govern in his mold. One of them, Bill
Coughlin, won.
A number of options are now under consideration for establishing a permanent memorial to Crichton somewhere in the city’s park system.
Scoutmaster imprisoned
Convicted child molester Peter Stibal, one of the first Eagle Scouts in the Burnsville Boy Scout troop in which he later served as assistant scoutmaster and scoutmaster, was sentenced June 24 to 21 years in prison.
On May 3 a jury convicted Stibal, 46, of two counts each of first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving one victim, a member of Troop 650. The crimes occurred from 2003 to 2005, when the boy was 13 to 15.
On June 24 Stibal pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct for abusing three other troop members, ages 11 to 14, from 2003 to 2008.
In an interview after the sentencing, the lead detective on the case lauded the four boys who told their stories to police, particularly the first to come forward.
“I interviewed many kids from the troop,” said Burnsville police officer Jeff Pfaff. “I think we have other victims out there that just were not ready to tell us. But these guys were. They were ready to talk. Somebody broke the ice and they said, ‘Yep, it happened to me, too.’ ”
Jackpot!
Just days after a meeting with their financial advisor left them doubtful about pending retirement plans, Thomas and Kathleen Morris won the largest prize in Minnesota Lottery history.
Their $228.9 million Powerball Jackpot came courtesy of Tom, a sales engineer, who bought five tickets on Aug. 10 at the SuperAmerica store at 16161 Cedar Ave. in Lakeville. He was on his way to a work assignment in Indiana.
The Michigan natives have been married for 38 years.
“I’d like to say, we have a lot of nice friends that added that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple,” Kathleen said at an Aug. 12 news conference at Lottery headquarters in Roseville. “That was nice to hear.”
Changing city
Burnsville grew older and far more racially diverse but barely more populous in the last 10 years, according to 2010 U.S. Census data released in March.
Burnsville has the largest percentage of nonwhite residents – 22.5 percent – among Dakota County cities, the 2010 Census found. The mature suburb has been the slowest-growing among suburbs south of the river, with a gain of just 86 residents since 2000.
Burnsville’s black or African-American population rose from 4.1 percent in 2000 to 10 percent. The percentage of Hispanic or Latino residents rose from 1.4 percent to 7.9 percent. The Asian population grew from 4.1 percent to 6.5 percent, and the multiracial population from 1.4 percent to 3.7 percent.
Burnsville had people 65 or older in 13 percent of households in 2000, compared with 17 percent toward the end of the decade, Dakota County’s Office of Planning and Analysis reported.
At both times, Burnsville had more households with seniors than Apple Valley, Eagan, Farmington, Lakeville and Rosemount.
Apartments
Burnsville has dealt with problem apartment complexes before, but none like Country Village Apartments, whose chronic problems with mold, widespread disrepair and pests came to city officials’ attention when the Fire Department responded to a kitchen fire in May.
The problems came to a head on Dec. 20, when the City Council voted 4-1 to approve the complex’s 2012 rental license but give owner Lindahl Properties LP a series of deadlines for fixing dozens of fire and property code violations.
The council defeated, 3-2, a Dec. 20 motion to revoke the license, which would have had dwellers of the complex’s 101 occupied units needing new homes by Jan. 1. As of Dec. 20, only about 40 of the 138 units met code requirements for licensure, Deputy City Manager Tom Hansen said.
The nonprofit Scott Carver Dakota CAP Agency had been asked by the city to help relocate residents in the event of a mass exodus forced by a council decision to revoke.
Help is still available, but “most of them want to stay,” said Rebecca Bowers, the agency’s vice president of development. “They want their apartments to be fixed up and they want to stay.”
The number of vacancies rose from 21 on Oct. 18, when the council barred Lindahl from accepting new tenants, to 37 on Dec. 20.
Occupants of at least two units at Country Village moved to another west Burnsville complex, River Ridge, which had been cited for numerous code violations when it was called Charleswood Apartments.
Pine Ridge Capital, a firm specializing in turning around distressed real estate and other assets, bought the property early this year and launched unit-by-unit renovations.
Interchange
After years of prodding and persuading, Burnsville officials were able to take a victory lap Dec. 6 with a key vote on the Highway 13/County Road 5 interchange project.
The City Council approved a joint-powers agreement with Dakota County that serves as the official launch of the long-awaited, $44.23 million project.
The interchange will replace a traffic-numbing signalized intersection with a section of County Road 5 rebuilt over a stretch of four-lane state highway that will be lowered by 20 feet.
“The City Council in Burnsville was the voice in the wilderness here,” City Manager Craig Ebeling said. “In the ’90s, no one was talking about this project other than you.”
Redevelopment
Valley Ridge Shopping Center, part of which dates back to 1963, was demolished in late summer and fall, making way for senior housing.
The Dakota County Community Development Agency, in partnership with Presbyterian Homes, is redeveloping the site at Burnsville Parkway and County Road 5.
There will be 140 units on the 13.4-acre property – 80 affordable, independent-living units owned and managed by the CDA, and 60 assisted-living and memory-care units managed by Presbyterian Homes. There’s land left over for possible office and retail development on the east side of the property.
Burnsville’s biggest redevelopment opportunity is in the 1,700-acre area west of Interstate 35W and north of Highway 13 known as the Minnesota River Quadrant.
In July, city officials unveiled proposed projects to grease redevelopment of the mostly industrial area, which includes a landfill and limestone mine.
They include improvements to the I-35W/Cliff Road interchange, at a cost of up to $5.3 million, and $4.9 million in road improvements, utilities and turn lanes on 126th Street and Dupont Avenue. The city is already committed to spending up to $6.4 million on the 5/13 interchange project, which will improve access to the area.
CVS Pharmacy won City Council approval in October to build a store on the TCF Bank site, a prime corner in the Heart of the City. Plans also include an outlot for future development – possibly a 5,000-square-foot retail and office building. Property owner Wellington Management Group would keep the outlot and sell 1.6 acres of the 2.45-acre site to CVS.
Walmart
Walmart will make its Burnsville debut this fall. In May the City Council approved plans for a 155,000-square-foot store on the southwest corner of River Ridge Boulevard and Cliff Road.
Officials hope the project will spur redevelopment at the city’s northern entrance, including the Minnesota River Quadrant west of the freeway.
Arts center
In October, Brian Luther was named executive director of the Burnsville Performing Arts Center. Luther replaced Jon Elbaum, who resigned in August to become executive director of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, N.Y.
Luther, of Eagan, recently served as general manager at the 10,000-seat MetroCentre in Rockford, Ill. He’s also worked as an event manager with Minnesota Sports and Entertainment, which operates the Xcel Energy Center and Roy Wilkins Auditorium.
The center, which relies mostly on shows that rent its two performance spaces, established an “angel fund” with which to stage its own shows. It announced its first performance series – five shows that began with the Duluth Festival Opera’s “Pocahontas” on Oct. 1 and will conclude with a performance by Celtic Crossroads on March 29.
In October, PAC officials forecast a 2011 year-end operating loss of $386,000, compared with $368,000 in 2010. The loss was $526,000 in 2009, the PAC’s maiden year. Officials in October projected a $366,000 operating loss for 2012.
Freshman legislators
Sen. Dan Hall and Rep. Pam Myhra of Burnsville, freshman Republicans who ousted DFLers John Doll and Will Morgan, respectively, in 2010, took office last year.
Hall was noted for sponsoring “Hannah’s Law,” which requires CPR training for all teachers and assistant teachers in child care centers, and a bill to toughen penalties for harming a police dog.
Myhra was chief House author of education-reform measures to boost literacy in the early elementary grades, with the goal of having all students reading by the end of third grade, and develop an A-F system of grading the performance of individual schools.
Crime and punishment
• Robert Michael Thomas, 47, of Burnsville, was sentenced to four years in prison Oct. 27 for fatally shooting James Edward Koenig, 38, also of Burnsville, during a Sunday-afternoon football gathering at Thomas’ townhouse at 14046 Plymouth Ave. S. on Jan. 23. Thomas had pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
• A 22-year-old Apple Valley man was charged with fatally shooting a friend and former classmate while both were handling firearms July 23 at a home in Burnsville.
Derrick Wallace Dahl was charged July 26 with second-degree manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm in a municipality, both felonies, in the death of Benjamin Allen Hanson, 22, of Welch, Minn.
He’s accused of shooting Hanson in the head with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun that he thought wasn’t loaded.
• Joel Munt, 35, of Burnsville, was sentenced to life in prison Sept. 26 for shooting and killing his ex-wife, 32-year-old Svetlana Munt of Mankato, on March 28, 2010, in a Mankato park.
• Leah Christina Graeber, charged with criminal vehicular homicide in a crash that killed an 11-year-old Burnsville boy in July 2010, was in March found incompetent to proceed with her own defense.
Graeber, of Savage, Graeber was driving southbound on Highway 13 when her vehicle crossed the grassy median and vaulted into northbound traffic, striking a van near Washburn Avenue in Burnsville.
The crash killed 11-year-old Joel Michael Balistreri, who was riding in the van with his family. His parents and sister were injured.
John Gessner is at john.gessner@ecm-inc.com.
