All that is needed to be done is convince the landlords of down town to upgrade their apts and turn them into higher scale condos. Immediately over time business owners will flock to downtown to accommodate them. And wham there you have it.

Good idea. You can show us the way by buying the buildings and upgrade them, of course, you have to get permits and pay the fees. I do think it is a good idea, but dealing with renters is not an easy thing. Dealing with the government regulations is not either. I appreciate the people that do have buildings to rent . I do know that not all landlords are attentive or good landlords.

Little do the landlords understand the benefit of upgrading their Apt's to condos. All they see is how much they are going to spend. Which is understandable. yet, with this current and long drawn out direction they are taking, it's just making our downtown into a part of "town" that you don't want to go "down" to. Which is why I have never seen the benefit of the downtown facelift or "putting lipstick on a pig". Thing is, I KNOW some of these landlords, not well, but enough that they know me by name because I have done work for them in the past. I think what the city should have done is offered the facelift money to the landlords in the form of a extremely low interest loan to upgrade their apts to condos. The tax base would quickly recoup the loan and build up enough money to do the facelift after condo owners or renters move in. Now, were stuck with a poor decision and have to work from scratch again.

Whats all the commotion over wierdos downtown? I always concidered the "art community" as the wierd ones and the people who frequent the downtown bars as just normal bar flys.

Yes, didn't mean to be insulting to bar flies. Every family has a few. They and the artsy types are certainly scaring each other, for fun; and each has rights, of course. But in this little downtown area, the bar flies rule and scare away customers, day and night, and at night, some are packing. Some are violent. Nobody upstairs is particularly safe. Now, it's not the artists doing this, and it's not all the bar flies, and maybe not even the regulars; but the scene downtown is known to be dangerous after hours. It doesn't matter which faction we like more. It's destroying what's left of your downtown. Not by itself; there are other factors--but this faction seals the doom of downtown. What's the solution, seriously? A general upgrade as others say, but how, in what order? All difficult, because not only money is involved, as you hint, but people's feelings too.

I've never felt that downtown is the way it is being portrayed, I am not afraid to go there, especially during the day to go to those businesses. Downtown is like a ghost town during the day! The nights? Anywhere there is a bar there is someone who cant act like a normal human being but out of the 4 years I have lived here, I haven't felt like the area was any worse than any other small town. Minneapolis was putting helicopters in the air with extra police on the streets for bar close...now tell me this town is SO bad!

Take a look around town and you can see bight everywhere. You have to many homes and older apts. that are not fit to be habitable. Calling many of the landlords, slumlords, is extremely accurate. But this also applies to many of the tenets. And our so called Housing Inspector is a joke. As for upgrading the downtown apts. into condos, I am not so sure. But as an illustration, when I lived in Durham, NC, the city took many of the tabacco warehouses and converted them into condos. Now those areas are becoming fashionable with little shops growing in the area. Couldn't they do that with the railroad buildings on 13th?

"Just how were you conceived? Vomit,felons,sex offenders,despondend's? Do you think this south chicago where our Prez is from? About the only thing I see out of the ordinairy is the colored hair,tats & all those earings in all places & I always thought they were the artists? I must have been mistaken ehh?"

I have never seen vomit on the street/sidewalks downtown, as for felons, sex offenders etc not ALL of them are centered downtown, the ones that were put in the paper telling us where they are moving I am pretty sure are not downtown anymore. There is a map you can pull up and see the crime in Brainerd, MOST assault crimes and theft are coming from the NE Brainerd area, clean that up, and a hell of a lot more would be fixed!

talking like a lib. The map shows a pretty even distribution, so leave NE alone.

Ok, so maybe this particular time it wasnt like that but at the time I looked it was primarily NE. I also worked in NE for 4 years and there was a lot of police activity over there. Like a lib? I wouldnt really define myself as anything, I dont watch, read or engage in poitics, doesnt interest me. Not a lib, just how I felt :-)

LOL no hard feelings :-)

...there was a meth lab over a storefront I was renting down on So. 7th Street. They got kicked out, but they made life miserable for everyone in the building as long as they were living there. The did a lot of property damage on their way out, as well.

For details on how to safely report suspected meth manufacture and use, this article from 2007:
http://brainerddispatch.com/stories/040407/new_20070404049.shtml

But there is a newer illegal drug in the area which is very destructive to the user: "bath salts" - you know this from Dispatch news articles--here are three from other sources on the effects, the second with some history on where the compounds originated:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/05/30/synthetic-drug-bath-...
http://www.wbur.org/2012/05/17/synthetic-marijuana-dangers
http://stopthedrugwar.org/taxonomy/term/225

Latest news on this in Brainerd from two weeks ago--you may have seen this:
http://brainerddispatch.com/news/2012-08-14/risky-business-owner-charged...

Note that it is a favorite among those on probation because it can't be detected in drug tests.

Effect on business in downtown Brainerd, with a history of manufacture, sale and use of such drugs continuing? Throw in 8 bars or so. Add the high rents to businesses, as someone mentioned, the skewed tax set-up for them, and lowest rents in town to unvetted tenants upstairs, and what do you get? Businesses that stay there bravely soldier on, but you can't blame some especially in our recent economy if they decide to try elsewhere. And the most dangerous problem, drug use, is unseen until something happens.

Stricter housing inspections for all apartments (I have witnessed some which were good, some which must have been a deal between the inspector and the landlord); minimum standards for rental properties ( so many are apallingly substandard in Brainerd!); criminal background checks that are serious for all prospective renters; big fines for landlords who try to rent out unsafe, unhealthy, substandard properties and threat of prison time: some deserve it!; isn't the Public Health Department involved in coming down hard on such property owners?; in short, this town needs to blow the whistle and not just on users and drunks. You're drawing gangs from St. Cloud and south of the border by keeping standards too low. Look around. Be much more careful who you rent to. Shape up those laws and enforce them. Please!

This all takes money to fix, I know, but meanwhile do our small Minnesota cities and towns have to put up with this very negative trend? The public can help--see contact info. for LADID in top link.

Glad to be corrected and to adjust this reader's picture of those apartments, which I have only heard about and not seen, you're right. Happy to hear they are honestly inspected, and relieved to hear background checks of prospective tenants are serious. Feeling safe or not is probably subjective and I am easily put off, a senior female who would visit a store downtown during the day but not go at night, I think it's the bars, but it's also the news; and daytime around the bars is also uncomfortable. Perhaps there's just too many.

But if the apartments have been improved and the tenants checked for felonies and "multiple misdemeanors," are they giving references too? History of previous rentals going back several years? Are the applications still too lax? Is the contributor right who suggests turning the upper floors into condos and selling the condos: that apartments in a condensed downtown with too many bars, too many incidents on the streets, too many drugs around just isn't working? I don't know, but thanks for setting us straight on the current situation regarding rental properties there.