Colonial Villa Burnsville

Other problem properties came before Country Village complex

by newspapers Thisweek John Gessner

While a Burnsville apartment complex made headlines this month for mold, parasites and decay, the city has a history of pressure on owners to deal with problem properties.

As buildings age, there may be more to come.

After a disgusted City Council voted Oct. 18 to suspend the rental license for Country Village Apartments in 3809, Sibley Street, Fire Department officials suggested to reporters that the other properties are in their sights.

The city isn’t naming names, Deputy City Manager Tom Hansen said.

“Do we get complaints about other properties? Absolutely,” he said. “Are we looking at other properties? All the time. That’s what we’ve got a building inspections department for and a fire marshal for.”

Millpond (now Willow Pond), Horizon Heights, Chancellor Manor, Connelly Estates (now Colonial Villa) and Charleswood (now River Ridge) are examples of properties that have come under city scrutiny and been turned around, some under new ownership, Hansen said.

“Every one of those we’ve just mentioned has turned around and become a success story,” he said.

But none faced the level of sanction imposed on Country Village owner Lindahl Properties LP. The council action forbids any new rentals at the 138-unit complex for two months or until the complex is brought up to city code. All rental licenses in Burnsville are up for renewal in December.

City officials found dozens of property and fire code violations they packaged into 129 cases. Inspectors found 80 instances of mold and water damage; 98 instances of damaged doors, windows and tile, and holes in walls; 28 instances of faulty plumbing work and repairs; 28 instances of faulty electrical work and repairs, as well as nonworking fans, air conditioners, stoves and a refrigerator; and multiple instances of  peeling paint, rotting wood and other exterior problems.

Burnsville isn’t alone. Lindahl’s Hunter’s Ridge Apartments in Shakopee have been a major headache for that city.

Owner Delores Lindahl was charged this spring with permitting a public nuisance, a misdemeanor, said Vince Stahl, the Shakopee police crime-free multihousing officer.

She agreed to one year of probation with the condition she contract with a professional  exterminator during that time, Stahl said.

Dakota County Criminal Complaints Mapped | Bill Roehl

Following a recent post about a fight/robbery taking place following a minor motor vehicle accident along Highway 13 in Burnsville, I posted a link to my text based archive of Dakota County Criminal Complaints that I have been compiling automatically since sometime last year. bb stacker commented saying he was surprised of the ages of those accused in the crime. I was intrigued to find out exactly how old the general Dakota County offender is and wrote a couple of quick scripts which I thought would be able to pull the information down that I needed.

Well, while I was able to get some of the birthdates with my quick and dirty attempts, I wasn’t able to effectively pull them all. In fact, I only got about a 1/3 of them and I really don’t care to spend much more time on it. With the data I did retrieve the median age is about 28 which isn’t all that young I suppose but again, that data is from a small and error prone sample and is more or less useless.

Looking over the data that I had available to me, I did notice that I would be able to easily obtain the address information provided. So, I first pulled out the hometown city, state, and zipcode of each of the criminal complaints going back as far as I could (12/17/2007). Numerous complaints exist which do not include any valid address information at all and as such, any of those incomplete complaints were dropped. In the end I had over 1450 addresses to work from and have mapped them out for your viewing pleasure. Make sure you check out the regional view as well as the national . Please be aware that these aren’t 100% and shouldn’t be used for homework assignments, letters to your mother, or anything else of even moderate importance as this was only a fun exercise for me to do after I finished up my work this afternoon. Cool? Good.

In addition to the maps I have provided, I took the top 20 zip codes’ raw data and have pasted them here just to give you a more exact idea of where people live who are being arrested most often in the South Metro.

You can continue to read the Dakota County Criminal Complaint text archive which I maintain and update daily at 1PM CST. There are some really interesting reads there (as some of you have undoubtedly noticed) and I encourage you to keep up with the happenings in the South Metro either there or through the official Dakota County interface available here which provides you with the information for the last year in PDF format only.

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