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🌻 May miscellanea

Longfellow Whatever
— 10 min read
🌻 May miscellanea

🏗️ Alley rework emerges as sticking point for 3000 Minnehaha renovation

The plan to rebuild the former MPD Third Precinct into a voting services headquarters hit a snag last week, when the city's Planning Commission withheld approval of the project over concerns that the current design could unfairly impact the neighboring Hook and Ladder Theater.

At issue is a little-publicized aspect of the plan to rework the public alley that currently connects Snelling Avenue to the Hook and Ladder Theater's private driveway. The alley currently meets the driveway directly to create a straight shot between Minnehaha and Snelling. The city's plan would move the public alley 60 feet south, creating a pair of 90-degree turns. The move makes room for a small garage planned for the back of the building.

The current alley flow (top) and proposed change (bottom)

The city says the new alley arrangement would still meet its technical requirements of allowing a garbage truck, snowplow, or 30-foot box truck to navigate through. Representatives from the Hook and Ladder say the delivery trucks and tour buses they routinely receive would no longer be able to use the driveway, which they also use as their primary entrance and handicap parking area.

At the hearing, Kristine Smith, who purchased the historic fire station building in 1999 to accommodate the opening of Patrick's Cabaret and later the Hook and Ladder Theater, told the commission that the change could be the "death knell" for the theater, which incurred $400,000 in damage during the 2020 unrest and in September issued an emergency fundraiser to avoid closure. The venue's executive director, Chris Mozena, says he believes there could be a workable alternative, but that he only recently learned about the plan. Lisa Boyd, who represents a group of organizations in the area called Longfellow Rising, and Anna Tsantir, who owns Two Betty's Green Cleaning across the street, both urged the city to rework the plan to prevent harm to the theater. Boyd also encouraged designers to reconsider the decision to restrict access to the southern parking lot, which belongs to the city but has been used and maintained by the surrounding businesses since MPD vacated the building.

The Planning Commission ultimately chose to delay a decision on the application until June 8 to allow time for city project officials to meet with Hook and Ladder staff about the plan. City project manager Artur Maia agreed to pursue a compromise. The group is reportedly meeting today.

Besides the alley, the commission expressed general support for the project, which would renovate the former police precinct into the "Minneapolis Democracy Center." The center would house the city's election services department and act as a centralized early voting site, while reserving the corner ground-floor space to lease to a business or nonprofit. If approved, the $15 million renovation is scheduled to begin construction in the fall.

The application also included an updated set of renderings of the planned building:

📚 Key vote on Anishinabe Academy coming

Speaking of decisive votes: The school board will take an important vote on the plan to relocate Anishinabe Academy to the site of the former Cooper School at its June 9 meeting.

The vote would direct staff to proceed with designing the project with the hopes of opening in time for the 2028-29 school year. And it would answer two lingering questions: 1) Whether to tear down the Cooper School and build a new facility in its place, or renovate it and add on; 2) whether to make the new school K-5, as it currently is, or K-8, as it was until 2018.

The project team recommends the largest option — tearing down the existing school and rebuilding as a K-8 school — which they estimate could cost between $90 million and $105 million and say would best serve the long-term needs of the school population.

Board members generally expressed enthusiasm for that idea during a presentation earlier this month. However, the plan has received a recent boost of public scrutiny from a pair of skeptically-headlined Star Tribune reports, "Minneapolis considers building a new school while others sit half-empty" and "Minneapolis voters may have no say when it comes to approving a new $105 million school." The Longfellow-Nokomis Messenger also published a critical editorial this week.

It's likely the beginning of more significant organizing, both for and against the plan. Though there is general support for reactivating the school site and providing Anishinabe Academy with a long-promised site of its own, neighborhood detractors are raising concerns about the much larger footprint of the new building, the traffic impact of a larger student body, and the likelihood that the newly rebuilt Cooper Playground would be removed. Supporters cite the difficulty of repurposing the oft-trespassed and vandalized current building, the cultural benefits of keeping Native American students in one school, and the neighborhood benefits of new green space and play areas.

Both perspectives will likely be well represented at the June 9 meeting, when board members will vote on whether to approve the general K-8 concept and dedicate another $2.3 million to design the project, setting up a vote on the actual construction later this year. The meeting will be held from 5:30-9:30 at the Davis Center in North Minneapolis.

📚 Speaking of schools: The Sahan Journal profiled the budget cuts coming for Longfellow Alternative High School, a small high school for teen parents that serves about 40 students in the former Longfellow Elementary building. The school could lose a third of its budget in the next round of MPS cuts, which would eliminate six positions and move art and gym class online.