I’m kinda jealous, I always thought my neighborhood liquor store in McKennan Flats was the best place to get cheap beer, until now;
Prices for alcohol are a lot cheaper in Pettigrew Heights. For instance, a 30-pack of beer costs $2 less than other liquor stores in Sioux Falls.  The results also show parents’ and grandparents’ drinking habits as a big influence on the neighborhood trend.
No shit! People drink in Pettigrew Heights? When I drive thru in the summer, I always thought they were drinking Arizona tea not Camo. Wow! I’m shocked!
While I think trying to curb teen drinking is a good thing, I almost kinda of chuckle at ignoring the bigger picture. Rich or poor, trailer park or association, kids drink in Sioux Falls. They act like drinking in Pettigrew Heights happens more frequently. Poppycock.
When I went to HS in a suburb of Seattle some 20 years ago, everyone partied together, rich, poor, black and white. Kids don’t give a shit about semantics. As a past long time resident of Pettigrew Heights I almost feel bad for all the crappy press they get. It actually is not that bad, NOISY, but not bad.
You wanna know why people live in that hood? The same reason I did, cheap rent. I lived a block from the best coffee house in town, and the best C-Store in town (cheap beer).
Enough of demonizing Pettigrew Heights. Put out an olive branch not a night stick for once and you don’t need a study to determine that.
The Munson Slums are an eyesore. They don’t need olive branches, they need bulldozers.
I wonder how the beer distributors feel about this area. I’d guess it’s a bittersweet paycheck they collect from their sales there, much like WhiteClay, NE.
I guess the way I look at it there is other ways to curb drinking besides telling businesses what prices they can sell beer at. The biggest problem in PH is not beer prices and teen drinking, it is like you said, bad property owners and slum lords. I think they have given a lot of them to many chances.
You have bad property owners and slum lords because the public investments in the neighborhood LOWER property values. the 10th / 11th street one-way pair is basically treated like a divided highway, and why not? 3 lanes each way, no stop lights, straight as an arrow – no wonder people drive 50 on it.
If you invest in the PEOPLE of the neighborhood, rather than the CARS, you might see something turn around. Enhance the streetscape, calm the traffic, build beautiful public spaces and watch the neighborhood flourish. Or we can continue the current strategy – prioritizing traffic volumes, micro-managing with absurd zoning, “code enforcement” – but don’t expect anything to change.
P.S. this is a good example of the poor urban planning so rampant in SF:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/11/29/understanding-roads.html
Bad property owners don’t make people alcoholics who don’t care about their neighbourhood. I would also like to think that cleaning the place up (crime & aesthetics) would encourage the residents to take pride in their homes, but who knows.
DLewis is right. People live there because it’s cheap and convenient. I lived in what is now call “the PH” area twice in my life. Once in the ’60s whole in grade shcool and JR. High (15th and Prairie) and again when I was in College (on Duluth between 11th/12th). It’s cheap because the homes are old, and those owned by landlords are just that – investment properties. Their goals for the community have nothing to do with anything other to $$$ into their own pockets.
Tom, there is more to that neighborhood than just the strip between 11th/12th. It stretches to the South to 16th and West to Grange. Off that one block wide strip it’s a pretty calm historic-style residential area, with some mixed uses thrown in here and there. The landlords with properties along 11th and 12th don’t even think of them as residences – they are simply profit centers for them. My landlord there did “just enough” to meet housing codes – not one dime more. His hope was that the whole strip would eventually get zoned and built out as commercial. He wasn’t REALLY interested in having people live there, we were just a way to get the property paid for.
And then we pay people to do ‘studies’ about the area. How about spending that money on employing people to clean up that area?