What should be at ‘gateway to Downtown Longfellow’?

City proposes election center and warehouse, citizen groups call for 100% community control

  • What should be at ‘gateway to Downtown Longfellow’_Cam Gordon.mp3

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Despite serious community concerns, Mayor Jacob Frey and the Minneapolis City Council appear to be moving forward with a plan to use the former 3rd precinct police station at Minnehaha Ave. and E Lake St. as a election center and warehouse.
“We are disappointed that the city has repeatedly ignored community and stakeholder input that called for the entire site to be developed for a community use, such as affordable housing, nonprofit social services, a Black cultural center and/or a memorial and place for healing,” wrote the Longfellow Rising Board of Directors in a letter to the city council. It was signed by Meena Natarajan and Jamie Schwesnedl, co-chairs of the group that includes people who lost buildings and businesses due to fire and civil unrest, and who have been working to rebuild Downtown Longfellow since.
They were particularly concerned about the proposed warehouse that would be built on Lake Street, and the concrete barricades and razor wire that is still there. “No private citizen or organization could keep a property in this state for so long, or plan the kind of development that the city has proposed,” they said.
They also called into question the proposal’s appropriateness within the city’s own zoning rules. “This flat, uninspired structure barely fits within the Corridor 6 zoning for the area under the city’s own 2040 Plan,” they wrote. “What is needed along East Lake Street, at the gateway to our welcoming neighborhood, is more housing, small business and community space, amenities and activation for an area in the midst of rebuilding and revitalizing.”

CITY STAFF VISION FOR SITE
On Oct. 15, 2024, Minneapolis City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson-Kelliher outlined a plan to relocate the election and voter services, now in northeast Minneapolis, into part of the building. The department has 16 full-time staff members.
The staff plan also calls for a new warehouse to store voting equipment to be built on part of the current surface parking lot. The presentation did not include a cost for the addition.
The city will issue a request for proposals for a partner to manage operations in 8,000 square feet that would be designated “community space.”
Anderson-Kelliher said there is community support for the proposal, pointing to an online survey that 1,148 residents responded to. She did not specify how citizens found the online survey. Of those that responded, 63% supported the election services center proposal.
There are about 150,000 people living in Seward, Longfellow, Nokomis East, Powderhorn Park, and Phillips neighborhoods. The sample of residents surveyed is less than 1%.
The city held smaller meetings with a sampling of citizens, aimed at hearing from those who speak Spanish and Somali, the Indigenous community, and adjacent neighbors to the site.

CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES
“Minneapolis residents have said loud and clear that they support a democracy center at Minnehaha 3000, and we’re listening to them,” said Frey. “Progress requires action, and my administration is committed to moving forward. In the future, I hope council will put the politics aside and join us in supporting the development our residents want without delay.”
“This proposal was not based on the outcomes of any community engagement, nor was it accompanied by any commitment to truth and reconciliation or racial healing,” said Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez. “Due to the unique history of racial trauma at the site, my office and Council Member [Robin] Wonsley brought forward a resolution to designate 3000 Minnehaha for 100% public ownership and operation under the guidance of local residents and impacted communities. This would finally fulfill the city’s stated values of meaningful community engagement and empowerment, particularly in the area of racial healing.”
That resolution failed to pass on a 7-6 vote. Southside council members were also divided on the issue, with council members Chavez, Wonsley and Jamal Osman voting for public ownership, and Andrea Jenkins, Emily Koski and Aurin Chowdhury voting against it in support of the election services proposal.
“City staff did their due diligence in preparing and bringing a proposal to the community, and the engagement shows that the community resoundingly supports the proposal,” said Ward 11 Council Member Koski. “I recognize that previous proposals and processes regarding this site have been cause for community disappointment, frustration, and mistrust, but it’s clear that with this proposal and process city staff worked hard to right those wrongs, and to listen to and learn from the community.”

VOTE AGAINST WAREHOUSE
At the following council meeting on Oct. 17, the council voted against constructing of the warehouse. They support using the space for community development, and call for it to be used for “racial healing and reckoning with past acts of racism, misogyny, and violence by 3rd precinct officers” and the “immediate clean-up, remediation, and beautification” of the site. Southside council members Jenkins and Koski were two of the three votes against this resolution.
“There is broad agreement that any development at the site should not include any type of warehouse structure,” said Chavez. “This component could be used for community development (ways to address homelessness, the opioid epidemic, economic development) and racial healing while still having the Elections and Voter Services part of the building. This would help us make the best use of the site, as well as the unique historic and social meaning of the area.”
“I am proud to have pushed the administration to make solid commitments in bringing down the barbed wire, fencing, and addressing the blight on the corner,” said Ward 12 Council Member Chowdhury. “It is my hope and ask to the mayor’s administration as a supporter of the democracy center that we see an expansion of the amount of space allocated for community development and use, and we avoid the gateway of Downtown Longfellow having an inactive warehouse and consider other ways to store election equipment in line with the small area plan.”
Another group, the Minnehaha 3000 Coalition, questioned the survey results and urged that the mayor’s proposal be reconsidered. They identify themselves as a “grassroots group of Third Precinct neighbors, business owners, and creative professionals in urban and social design practices.”
“The Mayor’s survey had an opportunity to better center racial and gender marginalized neighbors, and to engage with the atrocious history of the former Third Precinct site, but it abdicated that responsibility in favor of a ‘balance’ that misrepresents the history of the site in question and the continued realities facing Black, Brown, and Native individuals in the surrounding area,” the said in a letter to the council.
They urged the council to block the mayor’s proposal and said that insisting on “an authentically democratic framework be established for the redevelopment of the former Third Precinct” would “allow us to reimagine the site in a manner that addresses its past history so that we might collectively imagine a future, more just path forward for Minneapolis and the Southside, and quite possibly provide a working model for the Nation on methods to positively and proactively confront past and current systems of racialized violence.”
“I am not going to dig in my heels on this, and I’m willing to find a compromise for the betterment of our community,” said Chavez. “I love this community. And I believe this community deserves more than a warehouse on Lake St. I would be okay with the elections and voter services component as long as the issues outlined in the second resolution [opposing the warehouse] are addressed.”
“My goal,” said Chowdhury, “is to ensure that the community feels an ownership of the space and have themselves reflected at this critical site.”
While Frey did not veto the council’s compromise of community space and voting services center without a warehouse, neither he, nor Anderson-Kelliher, have agreed to any changes to their proposal so far.

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