In late March the YWCA announced that it had found a buyer for its building on Hennepin in Uptown. Tending the Soil, a coalition of Minnesota nonprofits and unions led by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), had secured $4.25 million in funding from various sources, including the City of Minneapolis and the Legislature, to purchase the former fitness facility and convert it into the Rise Up Center, a green job training complex for entry level workers.
At first glance, it’s a trifecta. The YWCA needs money, Uptown needs people, and people need jobs. But a second glance raises a trifecta of concerns.
Redundancy
There are many established workforce training providers in the metro area focused on serving BIPOC and low-income people. Migizi, Renewable Energy Partners, Twin Cities R!SE, Avivo, Project for Pride in Living and Summit OIC are just a few. Many of them provide paid on-the-job training.
The State of Minnesota also offers a large range of training programs and funding assistance for adults, youth and immigrants.
Minneapolis College, a public two-year community and technical college, is just around the corner at 1501 Hennepin. Minnesota State colleges and universities are in desperate need of funding for overdue maintenance and updates to stay attractive and relevant to faculty and students, yet their state funding has declined over the past ten years. These colleges may not be immediate options for the population that Tending the Soil plans to serve, but they offer accredited training programs and deserve more public support.
Instead of investing in duplicative efforts and infrastructure that will require ongoing maintenance, the legislature should adequately fund existing programs and schools.
Future funding
To create the Rise Up Center, Tending the Soil is seeking roughly half of the $18 million total cost from the Legislature, with another $2 million coming from local government grants. The rest will be raised by a capital campaign and other private funding.
This is a flush year for the state, but the surplus is dwindling, and the Legislature might flip to a less progressive-friendly majority. The city’s commercial tax base is shrinking. Though they surely exist, a cursory look at the partner organizations’ websites turned up no private donors.
Where will funding come from in future years? Will there be sufficient private support for Tending the Soil to maintain its building and offer its programs, or will it continue to depend on public funding?
Location
Before the NIMBY slings and arrows start to fly, it should be noted that Tending the Soil didn’t originally see Hennepin Avenue as a fit. They sought a location on Lake Street, stating that the Rise Up Center needed to be close to the people it serves — working-class communities of color in the area that “bears the scars of decades-long economic disinvestment.”
Obviously, they plan to make do with this location or they wouldn’t have moved ahead with the purchase. But spending $18 million to convert a fitness facility into classrooms, offices and a meeting space, in a location ill-suited to their mission, seems like a lot of money for little gain.
There’s the flipside of that coin. Anyone walking through Uptown knows that revitalization is much needed on Hennepin too. The George Floyd uprising, the pandemic and the removal of parking south of Lake Street was another sort of trifecta. Even before the chaos of the Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street construction, local businesses had closed or were hanging on by sheer determination and grit.
When the dust clears, what will be the biggest boost to help those businesses recover?
Is it a nonprofit coalition operating a job training center that relies on tax dollars and private donations to stay afloat? As an old Wellstonian Democrat, I want to say yes.
But as a pragmatic centrist Democrat, I think it’s a business. Perhaps a multiple bedroom apartment building designed for families and retirees, not studios for singles, with retail, perhaps daycare, and even a pool on the ground floor.
We would all be better served by something that generates tax dollars to pay for the progressive programs this city so generously funds — and for the public safety we so desperately need.
It’s no fun to question the dreams of those who want to do good things, but this project needs a deeper review.
