Mayor Jacobs Rebuts Freight Rail Claim in Letter

St. Louis Park mayor Jeff Jacobs penned a letter in the Star Tribune last week disputing former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew’s contention that an arrangement had been made “to move freight-rail traffic through St. Louis Park.”

Jacobs, who has been criticized in the past by neighborhood advocacy group Safety in the Park for not taking a strong enough role in opposing light rail, said that Andrews was acting in bad faith in his representation of a “preliminary agreement” made in 1998 between St. Louis Park and Hennepin County.

“The preliminary agreement referenced by Andrew and the grant funding provided by the county did not obligate the city to reroute freight traffic,” he wrote. “We have never consented or agreed to a freight-rail reroute in St. Louis Park.”

In 1998, Jacobs served as president of the St. Louis Park Economic Development Authority, which made the agreement. He argued in his piece that the preliminary agreement was, by its nature, preliminary and was predicated on the approval of a railway interconnect that never came to pass.

The Corridor Management Committee, an advisory group to the Met Council, will meet at 9:30 Wednesday at the St. Louis Park Recreation Center.