Good fences, good neighbors?

This is Minnesota. We're supposed to be nice and friendly. Maybe that's why there's only been one gated community here. Until now.

Jason Budzynski trusts people. But trust isn't always good for business.

His new gated community — the second in the state — will be based largely on people not trusting each other. Residents of his 60-unit Blaine community will rely on gates and fences to keep criminals — and everyone else — out.

Sales are booming, said Budzynski, a manager with project developer TJB Homes. "We haven't started building yet, and I have holds on five lots," he said.

But when it comes to gates, Minnesota is on the fence.

This state has been slow to adopt the fenced-in lifestyle. Critics of gated communities see them as neighborhoods in cages, a sign of fearful societies split along racial and economic lines.

"I wish they weren't here," said David Lanegran, a geography professor at Macalester College. "You see a lot of them in South Africa."

If so, America is looking more like Capetown every day. USA Today reported that 40 percent of new homes in California are in gated communities. About 6 percent of America's households are now behind walls and fences.

"Every damn community in Florida is gated. Even trailer parks are gated," Lanegran said. "It's nauseating."

Fences are not unheard of in Minnesota. Many individual mansions are gated, and the metro area has several small clusters of houses or apartments that limit public access. But the national phenomenon of a large group of single-family homes fenced in with a private pool, clubhouse or golf course has blown past Minnesota.

North Oaks, one of the state's wealthiest communities, had gates and guards for about 25 years before removing them in 1981. In 1995, Bearpath Golf and Country Club in Eden Prairie became the state's only such community, and it has taken 11 years for another developer to follow its lead.

That's because of the state's attitudes about neighborhoods, said Remi Stone, public policy director of the Twin Cities Builders Association. "We trust each other. It's Minnesota Nice," Stone said.

Lanegran said the gated communities weren't even status symbols. "The real high-income areas are not gated. Look at Dellwood, Sunfish Lake, Summit Avenue. That is where the real wealth is," Lanegran said.

In fact, the hottest trend in Minnesota suburbs is "amenity-rich" communities that offer the private pools and clubhouses of a gated community — without the gates.

Fear of crime, even in low-crime suburbs, is the main selling point for gated communities, Lanegran said. "What do these gates actually prevent?" he asked.

"Ask that family that was walking in Uptown to dinner," responded Greg Olson, who lives and sells real estate in Bearpath, referring to a 25-year-old student killed by a stranger in March while walking with his mother in Minneapolis.

"Can that happen here? Absolutely. But it's a lot less likely."

Olson especially enjoys giving his kids the freedom to ride their bikes to the pool — something he said wouldn't happen as often in an ungated community. "I want to protect my family as much as I can," Olson said.

At Bearpath, his family and the multimillion-dollar homes, golf course, pool and clubhouse are protected 24 hours a day by a guard at the entrance.

The Blaine project will be different. Called St. Andrews Village, it will require homeowners to punch something akin to a garage door opener to raise the unmanned gate.

Letter carriers, garbage collectors and firefighters will be equipped with electronic gear to get through. Pizza delivery people will have to be given a code to punch into a keypad, Budzynski said.

For homes selling for more than $600,000, they will be relatively small — ramblers with 1,800 square feet on the main level, on 60-foot-wide lots. Budzynski said the extras would be lavish: a private pool, park, and a putting green in a pond, accessible by a replica of the famous Swilken Bridge at St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.

It will cater to people older than 50 who are willing to pay $300 a month for snow removal, yard maintenance and other services, he said.

"We will be setting a precedent for the whole metro area."

That's exactly what bothers the enemies of the gates.

"People in the Midwest never thought of them as necessary," said Lanegran.

And Stone questioned the need to separate people with gates. "We do it with windy streets," she said, "and with psyche."

She said Minnesota culture abhors confrontation. "You know Scandinavians are being aggressive when they look at your shoes," joked Stone.

Minnesota's neighborliness has been documented.

The seminal book "Bowling Alone" measured how close people feel to their communities — as seen by voter turnout rates, meetings with friends and the numbers who join churches and community groups.

States with few gated communities had the highest amount of "social capital" — Minnesota was ranked fourth, behind the Dakotas and Vermont. States with the most fragmented cultures were Southern states — the hottest areas for gated communities.

But Budzynski said it's wrong to blame gates for alienation. Social connections, he said, no longer depend on neighborhoods.

"How many of your neighbors do you really know?" he said. "Most people know maybe four people around them. You don't walk around to find your friends."

The experience of North Oaks shows why Minnesota isn't jumping on the gate-wagon.

Mayor Tom Watson said that after the 4,500-person community tore out its gates, it didn't see an increase in crime, just a reduction in expenses.

"The joke was that more kids in schools knew the code (to get past the gates) than adults," he said.

Watson said the gates slowed fire trucks and ambulances and cost too much for what they delivered. And the North Oaks golf course is open to the public — so many nonresidents pass through the gates daily. "How would you control that?" he asked.

"We don't have any significant crime. We have the usual misdemeanor issues, minor vandalism and toilet papering trees in May or June," said Watson. "Folks just don't see a need."

But other folks will, predicted Budzynski.

"People have been coming to me saying, 'I've been looking for something like this for years.' This is just a different niche, that's all."

Bob Shaw can be reached at bshaw@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5433.

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