Northfield Council Roundup: Historic Depot, Downtown Post Office, Jefferson Road, Division Tobacco

Within 30 days, activists fighting to preserve Northfield's will get their wish in paper.

City Councilors voted 6-1 at Tuesday’s meeting—Councilor Kris Vohs dissented—to issue a draft transfer of the depot's title to the Save the Northfield Depot group, which lobbied to move the structure to a city-owned property near the west of downtown. The resolution makes the city responsible for inspections and legal and consulting advice up to $11,000.

Post office update

In an effort to bolster another preservation group's efforts, councilors voted unanimously to support goals presented by the Save Our Post Office task force, which is trying to prevent the U.S. Postal Service from .

The goals, presented by SOPO member Keith Covey, reaffirmed the council's support to participate in potential transfer of the property to private ownership. USPS officials say the multi-level post office is too expensive to run, as are hundreds of other locations throughout the country. A 60-day comment period on the impending closure expired in early June, but while activists look for alternatives for the building, built in 1936.

Jefferson Road plans chosen

After a discussion on the merits of different road styles and the safety trade-offs of each, councilors voted to , a collector street in the near south of the city, to be organized into two traffic lanes with a striped bicycle lane on its east side. Other options included a scheme with a single stripe parking lane and another with bike lanes on each side of the road.

Mayor Mary Rossing dissented, worrying that the 11-foot lanes would be too narrow, that bicycle lane stripes would cause confusion, and that the design did not allow easy reconstruction if the approved plan failed.

Now approved, construction of the 3/4-mile street, left unrepaired for two decades, will start in August and is scheduled to end in October.

Legal restrictions force councilors to allow downtown tobacco shop

In a near legally mandated vote, councilors approved 5-2 to allow a business owner with a history of criminal disputes and stores that sold drug paraphernalia to open a .

Councilors Rhonda Pownell and Kris Vohs voted against the measure despite city attorney Chris Hood's claim that Northfield "[does not] have sufficient basis to deny" a license and risked legal action if it denied the license.

At the request of public safety director Mark Taylor, the approval of the license was embedded with restrictions on Division Tobacco including requirements for store video surveillance, cooperation with city inspections and the barring of all minors from the premises.

Haider Alnomani, proprietor of Division Tobacco, owned a convenience and tobacco store in Minneapolis until 2006. 4-You Food Market was forced to close when that Minneapolis officials revoked its license for failure to address drug dealing outside the store and the store's sale of products usable as drug paraphernalia.

In late 2010, a Crystal, MN, property owner from whom Alnomani rented commercial space filed a felony theft complaint against him; the dispute over who owned stored hardware Alnomani took was later changed to a civil dispute.