This may be a bad subject for a column, because you don't care about Block E. That's obvious.
The stories don't say, "Too many customers, constant din of cash registers: How to fix Block E?"
No, it's a big, hollow folly, and it only makes the news when another tenant expires, usually from loneliness. Or when another plan to save it falls through.
It's usually described as "troubled," when it should be called "hell-cursed by Shabeb-zolab, Babylonian patron god of retail." Or it may be referred to as "struggling," which is true in the sense that a man up to his hairline in quicksand is "struggling."
The most accurate term, when you consider the nice restaurants on the ground floor and the quantity of tumbleweeds blowing around upstairs, is "Dead from the ankles up."
Recent developments: It's going to lose all its movie theaters, bringing the number of downtown movie theaters from 15 to zero in one stroke. And it's probably not going to be a casino. I mean, not any more of a casino than it already is from the city's perspective. (Hey there, City of Minneapolis, you've been playing that thing all day. Just walk away, dude. No! I've put $39 million into this. It's gonna pay off soon!)
Total cost was $132 million -- for a place that had a Chili's and a Mrs. Fields Cookies.
Seriously, cookies? Ninety-six percent of Americans are never more than 7 feet away from cookies at any given time, and they thought people would drive downtown, and pay to park, to buy cookies?