I recently attended a community gathering billed as the Uptown People’s Assembly, and I left thinking about how much I share with the people in that room.
We all love Uptown. We all want it to be safe, vibrant and welcoming. We are all troubled by empty storefronts and by neighbors living on the street. Where we part ways is on what will actually fix it.
The way to revive Uptown is to fill it — pairing compassion with accountability, not punishing the owners working hardest to bring it back.
Much of the evening centered on two ideas: that the way to address our vacant buildings is to report property owners and fine them, and that the way to address homelessness is to keep it visible and leave it be.
I understand the impulse behind both. When you see a boarded-up window, or someone suffering in the cold, you want to do something right now. That instinct comes from a good place.
But good intentions and good outcomes are not the same thing.
As president of the Uptown Association, I know many of our building owners personally, and the notion that they are sitting on empty spaces for a tax write-off is simply not true.
They are desperate to fill those spaces. Many are practically giving them away and still cannot find tenants. Fining them for a problem they fight every single day would punish the very people working hardest to bring Uptown back.
The honest question is not why owners won’t lease their buildings. It is why businesses hesitate to come here at all, when they sign leases without a second thought in Edina or St. Louis Park.
Here is the encouraging part, and the reason I remain optimistic: the solution is within reach, and it is the opposite of chaos.
The way to revive Uptown is to fill it.
When storefronts are occupied and sidewalks are busy, the whole neighborhood feels different. It is safer, friendlier and alive. Crime falls not because we wished it away, but because there are people, lights, commerce and community on every block.
That is exactly what the Uptown Association exists to do.
We want to be an incubator for small businesses. If you have ever dreamed of opening a shop, a cafe or a studio, come see me.
There are county programs for downpayment assistance. I can connect you with lenders, with resources and with people who have done it before. Honestly, there has rarely been a better time to put down roots in Uptown. Rents are low, opportunity is high, and the neighborhood is ready for builders.
On homelessness, I will say plainly that compassion and accountability belong together. I have leaned on public help myself. I am a single mother of four. Food stamps and housing assistance carried my family through a hard stretch, and I will always be grateful those programs were there.
But telling people that they have no choice, that living and using drugs on the sidewalk is simply who they are, is not kindness. It writes human beings off.
Real compassion means meeting someone where they are and then helping them to get somewhere better, into treatment, into housing, into stability, humanely and with respect. A neighborhood can hold a high standard and a soft heart at the same time.
I also want to be candid about the larger philosophy I heard that night. The belief that we should undermine the businesses and institutions around us in order to clear the way for something better has been tried in many places and many forms, and time and again it has left people poorer and less free, not more secure.
I do not doubt the sincerity of the people who hold it. I simply do not believe Uptown should be the next experiment. We have a far more reliable path in front of us: small businesses, good jobs, safe streets and neighbors who look out for one another.
So let’s get to work, together.
I would love to host a community conversation with our building and business owners about what they are truly up against and how we can help more entrepreneurs say yes to Uptown. If you want to be part of building something real here, my door is open.
Andrea Corbin is president of the Uptown Association.
