Star Tribune
North Minneapolis aquatics center begins construction while seeking $15M in state aid
On a construction site in north Minneapolis, signs of a future aquatic center are starting to take shape after crews poured concrete for a 25-yard swimming pool.
V3 Sports is building a $97 million aquatics and sports center that the nonprofit’s leaders hope will be a regional destination and boost equity in sports.
“It’s a space built for and by our community that we can have ownership over and be proud of,” said Malik Rucker, V3’s director of strategic partnerships and community engagement and a fifth-generation North Sider. “I hope it sparks further community investments [in north Minneapolis].”
The small nonprofit has big plans to wrap up the first phase of the project, which will have a five-lane teaching pool and other amenities, by next April while launching fundraising now for a second phase that will eventually feature a bigger 50-meter Olympic-sized indoor competition pool — only the third of its kind in Minnesota.
V3 Sports is one of the many nonprofits seeking state funding at the Legislature before lawmakers adjourn next month, hoping it will help pay for projects that serve the public — from food shelves to homeless shelters.
Bills introduced in the House and Senate would allocate $15 million to V3’s project. That’s less than a quarter of the $70 million price tag for the second phase of the project, which will have four courts to host basketball games and other sports or events, and the pool used in the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha in 2021. The pool was disassembled and will be rebuilt in Minneapolis.
DFL Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, who introduced the Senate bill, said V3’s center, which is in his Minneapolis district, will increase access to swimming lessons for children of color in their own neighborhood. Drowning rates are higher among children of color nationwide. The V3 Center will also be a statewide asset, he said, and hopefully a catalyst for other redevelopment projects.
“I want people to see north Minneapolis is a great place to work, live and play,” Champion said. “This will be a clear shot in the arm so people know that, in a community that has been traditionally disinvested in, there’s an intentional strategy to invest in it.”
V3’s funding request was part of last year’s failed bonding bill and it has widespread support again this year, Champion said. Already, he added, the first phase of the project is employing many contractors and architects from north Minneapolis.
“It’s much more than just a pool,” he said. “We want others to come into north Minneapolis and for them to be able to see the assets and not just the deficits.”
Rucker and Erika Binger, V3’s founding director, are relying on city, county and state money for about a quarter of the project’s costs while seeking private donations, grants and even naming rights of the center to fund the rest of the redevelopment.
“We’re just creating access for youth and families to have a space for them to belong,” said Binger, a former triathlete and a philanthropist whose great-grandfather, 3M executive William McKnight, started the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis, one of the largest private foundations in the state. “I don’t believe economics should play a role in what you have access to in your life.”
She started V3 in 2007 while volunteering as a swim coach and seeing that kids had no public access to indoor pools designed for competition.
V3 began as an all-volunteer nonprofit, hosting summer triathlon programs for about 50 kids at Minneapolis parks each year, addressing health disparities and boosting access to what’s long been a racially segregated sport. Binger envisioned building a state-of-the art facility that could be a regional destination in north Minneapolis, hosting year-round programs and serving more families.
In 2017, V3 Sports bought a former bookbinding warehouse at the prominent intersection of Plymouth Avenue N. and Lyndale Avenue, with a view of the downtown skyline. Once complete, the center will hire about 60 employees and is expected to draw up to 1,000 people a day — from swimmers competing or learning how to swim, to community members working out or hosting graduation parties and other events.
Rucker said the center was specifically designed with input from North Side kids, who encouraged developers to add more indoor basketball courts.
The pandemic delayed construction, which finally began in November. Besides a 25-yard pool, the first phase also includes drop-in child care, a fitness facility and a hydrotherapy pool. The 40,000-square-foot building is slated to open next spring.
Binger said the start of construction on the three-story building in the second phase will depend on fundraising. But the Italian-made Olympic trials pool, which V3 bought at a substantial discount, is sitting in a warehouse ready to be installed.
“We were intentional about getting the best,” Binger said about the much-sought-after pool. “Our community deserves the best.”
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings