Star Tribune
Redevelopment of George Floyd Square won’t happen until 2026 or later
George Floyd will have been dead for more than half a decade before the city of Minneapolis decides what will ultimately become of the site of his murder.
And it will be at least another year after that — 2026 or beyond — before George Floyd Square and the area surrounding E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue is actually developed into an as-yet-undetermined vision.
That’s according to a timeline presented to the City Council on Tuesday as part of what has become a delicate and deliberative process to maintain a functioning city thoroughfare and business district while still recognizing the weight of Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
“I’m sitting here, and I’m heartbroken,” City Council President Andrea Jenkins said after the presentation. “We’re talking six years before we even think about redesigning this intersection. I’ve got to go tell my constituents, ‘No, we won’t have a Third Precinct (police station). No, we won’t have any action at George Floyd Square.’ “
Alexander Kado, senior project manager for the Office of Public Service, acknowledged the city has been soliciting public feedback for several years about the area, which was slated for a new intersection before Floyd’s killing. He summarized the dilemma: “We started out with an infrastructure project, and it’s very obvious that a broader vision is essential.”
The area became the epicenter for demonstrations, memorials and other forms of expression in the immediate aftermath, when it was closed to traffic and flooded with crowds.
Today, the streets are open, and the intersection functions as a traffic circle. Much of the artwork remains. The city has bought the former Speedway gas station at 3744 Chicago Av. and pledged to remove garbage, keep the buildings secure and ensure that no threats to public safety arise from the site, which has become known as “Peoples Way” and serves as a gathering place for visitors.
Questions
The city has announced plans to improve lighting in the area, but much of the location’s current layout has been the result of organic evolution and improvisation. Many questions remain, such as:
- What will become of the artwork and memorials? Who will ensure they’re protected, who will allow for future works, and who will determine what is an accepted display and what is graffiti or vandalism?
- What will become of Peoples Way, which is generally foreseen as a likely site for a center for racial healing — although specifics are unclear?
- What will the infrastructure — streets and sidewalks — look like and how will they be designed to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and crowds while not being an impediment to traffic, bus routes, snowplows and emergency vehicles?
Timeline
Tuesday’s presentation by city officials sketched out a general timeline, which doesn’t actually answer those questions but describes several years of next steps as part of a “community engagement framework” for George Floyd Square, which is now referred to in many city documents as “GFS.”
Here are some of the highlights:
- Late 2023-early 2024 (Phase I): Hire a consultant for the next steps.
- 2024 (Phase II): “Develop GFS Community Priorities and Vision,” which solicit ideas and foster discussions from the questions above and begin a “process to identify future community-centered owner for the Peoples Way.”
- 2025 (Phase III/”Design”): Answer the questions listed above, including laying out how the infrastructure will work.
- 2026 and beyond (Phase IV/”Develop”): Build what’s been designed.
That hasn’t ebbed with Simpli-Fi. The startup incorporated in 2018 as a company based out of Florida that integrated technology systems together in commercial buildings to work as a single unit. But business sputtered when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and Campbell had to make staff cuts to his team of 16 employees. He called it one of “the worst times” of his life.
“But during that time is where we made a pivot,” Campbell said.
He set out to find a new technology, eventually spotting NASA’s electronic nose thanks to Brown Venture Group, a St. Paul based firm that supports Black, Latino and Indigenous tech startups. Campbell’s brother, Paul Campbell, is a partner at the firm but said he recused himself from the investment decision.
Chris Campbell was skeptical of the electronic nose’s capabilities at first but sprung for a commercialization license after spending a year researching the technology. By this past summer, he had moved the company to Minnesota and specifically the Osborne building because both are “known for device creation,” he said.
Simpli-Fi’s sensor packs some of the science of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry — which require huge machines — into a sensor the size of a dime, Campbell said. Using nanotubes, the sensor picks up metabolic qualities in the air and breath, he said.
For now, the company is focused on the C. diff-sensing Provectus Canary device, which scans the air around a hospital patient to detect the bacteria that causes the infection, which has gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhea. The company is working toward the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval for using the sensor to detect various diseases.
A Minneapolis man was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for murdering his neighbor in their North Side apartment building last year.
Walter Lee Hill, 59, had pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree intentional murder. He will get credit for having served nearly a year in jail.
Police were called to the Gateway Lofts on W. Broadway Avenue last November on a report that someone was shot. Officers found Donald Edmondson, 60, dead on the floor of his apartment with a gunshot wound to the chest.
A video camera in the hallway showed Hill knocking on Edmondson’s door, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket and firing his gun once. Hill then left in his Lexus, which officers found near Elliot Park downtown.
They spotted Hill walking nearby, asked for his ID and arrested him when he said something to the effect that they had the right guy.
A witness told police they saw Hill shoot Edmondson, and another said there had been an ongoing dispute between the two. Two days before the murder, Hill had called police because he believed neighbors were breaking into his apartment.
In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Edmondson “should still be alive. A violent act committed with such disregard by Mr. Hill has taken him from his family. This sentence delivers accountability and protects our community, and I hope it brings some measure of peace to Mr. Edmondson’s loved ones as they attempt to move forward with their lives.”
ROCHESTER – Buoyed by strong growth in the health care industry, Minnesota’s third-largest city continues to outpace the rest of the state in job creation.
The Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area added about 7,000 jobs over the past year, a 6.3% year-to-year increase, according to the September jobs report from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). By comparison, Minnesota as a whole was up 1.2% during the same time period. The next closest region to Rochester was Mankato, which grew 1.6% year to year.
Much of the growth in Rochester MSA, which includes Dodge, Fillmore, Olmsted and Wabasha counties, was driven by a 15% year-to-year increase in the education and health services sector. The sector employed 62,435 people in the region in September, nearly half the overall workforce.
The strong job numbers come as Mayo Clinic breaks ground on the first phases of “Bold. Forward. Unbound. In Rochester.” The $5 billion project — the largest investment in Minnesota history — is expected to bring about 2,000 construction workers to Rochester in the coming years.
While Mayo has not said how many employees it plans to hire once the new facilities open, local economic development officials expect the impacts of the expansion to reverberate across the region.
“As their growth goes up, the rest of the economy grows as well,” said John Wade, president of the Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. (RAEDI). “If you think about neighboring communities, too, there will be more housing opportunities and job opportunities and businesses looking to expand.”
Wade said he also sees potential for growth in other sectors tied to Mayo, such as hospitality, which makes up more than 8% of the region’s workforce. Precision manufacturing and medical technology were also identified as potential growth sectors.
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