Star Tribune
Upper Harbor Terminal project announces new partnerships for performance center
Planners behind a future performing arts center with an outdoor amphitheater along the Mississippi River north of downtown Minneapolis have lined up two major groups to help lead its public programming and raise private funds.
The African American Community Development Corp. (AACDC) and the Minnesota Orchestra have signed on to help establish and operate the Community Performing Arts Center, organizers announced this week. They join the First Ave. group of music venues as development partners.
Upper Harbor Terminal is a 48-acre site on the Mississippi River in north Minneapolis. It formerly housed a barge shipping terminal that ceased operations in 2014, and is largely unused. United Properties, another partner in the development, first responded to a request for proposal for the project in 2016.
The Minnesota Orchestra will serve as the center’s strategic business partner, handling private fundraising, according to the Thursday news release from First Avenue.
The orchestra will remain at its current location in downtown Minneapolis, but could perform at a new, completed amphitheater. The orchestra will receive a portion of the revenue when the project is operational, the release states.
The design work has not been completed, but the operators anticipate the center will be completed by spring 2025.
The AACDC will serve as the “community entity” for the project, overseeing public programming. It also will manage economic development opportunityfunds that would accumulate from a $3 fee on every ticket sold at performances. It’s estimated that will come to about $500,000 annually.
AACDC, created in 2021, works to convert African American ideas, capital and action into lasting benefits for the community. The hope is that partnering with AACDC will help to engage with the area’s African American community and get Black Minnesotans involved with the center’s future.
“They are going to make sure there’s meaningful programming for the community and African American community,” said Ashley Ryan, First Ave.’s vice president of marketing. “There have been hundreds of community outreach meetings, and the groups behind the project are very explicitly seeking input from the neighborhood.”
The funds also will go to exploring local vendor and entrepreneur opportunities and a youth jobs program, the release states. Mayor Jacob Frey called the project a “game-changer for the North Side” in the release.
“The local partnerships forming around this development project will prove to be good, not only for the Northside, but for the entire arts community in Minneapolis, leading to a final, community-minded space,” he said.
More about the Upper Harbor Terminal development can be found at upperharbormpls.com.
A 63-year-old Eveleth man died from injuries suffered in a house fire in the northern Minnesota city Friday morning.
Dale Wallander of rural Eveleth was found with burns covering most of his body at the end of the driveway to his house in the 7100 block of Antoinette Road in Eveleth at about 11:26 a.m. Friday, according to a press release from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office.
Law enforcement arrived to find his house engulfed in flames. Wallander was transported to a metro area hospital by Life Link air medical service, but died of his injuries, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Sheriff’s Office and the State Fire Marshal.
Brooklyn Park police arrested two people Saturday in connection with an early-morning shooting that left one man dead.
Police responded to a shooting in the 7900 block of Lee Avenue North at about 4:36 a.m. Saturday, and found a man with a gunshot wound, according to a Brooklyn Park Police Department press release. The man was pronounced dead at the scene and hasn’t yet been identified.
Later Saturday, Brooklyn Park detectives arrested two suspects who are being held at the Hennepin County Jail, according to police.
“We passed three of them and we did it [in a] bipartisan [way],” said Walz, who represented southern Minnesota in Congress for a dozen years before running for governor.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz holds Matt Kucharski’s dog, Libby, a 6-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer, to give her a drink during the annual Minnesota Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener. (Anthony Souffle)
Following the event, Walz’s motorcade wound its way north and east across farm country, past combines in fields harvesting corn, to downtown Sleepy Eye, where he slipped into a crowded brewery. In many ways, the trip resembled any year for a pheasant opener, save this time the motorcade, a dozen vehicles long, stretched out the back side of a downtown Sleepy Eye alleyway.
One patron, who declined to give her name but said she grew up in Madelia and lived in New Ulm, was purchasing a six-pack of beers when she told the bartender, “Is that Walz? I don’t got time for that guy.”
Later, when Walz briefly emerged from a side room, a chorus of cheers reached him from the balcony, before he hustled out to the motorcade.
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