Star Tribune
Minneapolis City Hall is getting renovated and the mayor and City Council are moving out for a while
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the City Council have moved out of City Hall.
For a year, at least.
The temporary move, to a nearby city building downtown, creates logistical challenges for the highest levels of city government, and might lead to confusion for people seeking to attend public meetings or visit their elected officials.
Much of City Hall will remain open to the public, including the spacious rotunda with its distinctive “Father of Waters” sculpture. But key areas, including the third floor and council chambers, will be closed for renovations.
During the winter holiday break, Frey, the 13 council members and scores of public servants packed up offices on two floors of the rose granite seat of city government. Then, movers shuttled boxes across the intersection of S. 4th Street and 3rd Avenue S. to a city-owned building known as the “old Public Service Center” — not to be confused with the new Public Service Building.
But it’s easy to get confused. Even Google is confused.
Which building?
Here’s what most members of the public need to know.
For most of next year, the offices of the mayor, City Council and city clerk, as well as a temporary council chambers, will be located in a tired 1950s-era building — the “old Public Service Center” at 250 S. 4th St. Put that address — but just that address — into into any mapping software, and it will get you there.
Temporary offices for the City Council and city clerk will be on the first floor, council chambers on the third, and the mayor and most of his cabinet on the fifth floor.
The confusion comes when you use the phrase “Public Service Center.” Search engines, mapping programs, and even some parts of the city’s own website think you’re looking for the Public Service Building, a glass-walled building at 505 4th Av. S. that opened to the public in 2021. That’s where members of the public can meet with city staff in person to review permits, pay fees, pull police reports and navigate other parts of the city bureaucracy in the same place. (And the name of that place inside that building: the “Service Center.”) Nothing is changing with that facility.
Another potential bit of confusion: If you want to mail something to folks traditionally housed in City Hall, such as your council member or the mayor, keep using the City Hall mailing address: 350 S. 5th St., Minneapolis, MN 55415. Phone numbers and email addresses are unchanged.
And yet one more possible pitfall: Not every public meeting will be held in the 1950s building, at least not at first. Because work on the makeshift council chambers isn’t expected to be completed right away, the City Council’s first meeting of 2024, on Jan. 8, will actually be held in the Public Service Building (that’s the new glass-facaded one). To be sure where a public meeting is being held, check the city’s Legislative Information Management System online.
What renovations?
The renovations to various parts of City Hall, which was built between 1887 and 1906 and houses some Hennepin County operations as well, have been going on for several years, mostly out of public view.
The outward appearance and essence of the Romanesque revival building, which sits on the National Register of Historic Places, has remained unchanged. But inside the hollow-square-shaped structure, interior office areas have been gutted, fitted with updated infrastructure and redesigned on several lower floors, providing modern accommodations for workers in departments ranging from fire to public works. In 2021, all phases of the renovations were projected to cost about $32.5 million, paid for by the Municipal Building Commission, an entity that operates City Hall and is overseen by elected officials from the city and county.
The current phase of work will cover the third floor and a mezzanine level constructed over a portion of the third floor in the 1940s and 1950s.
The floor plan of the third floor will change. The mayor’s office will move to the opposite corner of the building from council chambers, allowing the offices of council members and the city clerk to flank the chambers.
The full reconstruction of the council offices will also eliminate a quirk that has subtly plagued the council for years: The current offices aren’t the same size, creating the potential for office-space envy among equally elected council members. The new footprint will eliminate those disparities, several council members have said, although their offices will be physically split into two clusters by the council chambers, potentially making it less convenient to collaborate.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
