Star Tribune
New homeless camp growing at planned Minneapolis affordable housing site
The owner of a corner lot in the Lyndale neighborhood of Minneapolis wants to redevelop it into affordable housing, but needs the city and county’s help housing dozens of people who have established a new homeless encampment on site.
The sky-blue Casablanca Foods building, once a neighborhood grocery, has been empty and partially boarded up since the 2020 riots. New owner Traphie Slocum and developer Victoria Yepez want to transform the lot at 3246 S. Nicollet Av. into mixed-use affordable housing for seniors with a restaurant on the ground floor, but a growing homeless encampment stands in the way, creating friction with neighbors.
The camp formed about a week and a half ago with the sudden appearance of three tents, said Yepez, a member of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. Twin Cities’ Developers of Color Initiative Cohort. The tents have since doubled, some containing groups of people living together for warmth. They have no bathroom facilities. Trash is beginning to accrue.
Yepez said neighbors are complaining, but the situation is beyond her expertise. She has reached out to the city for help moving the camp’s occupants out of the cold.
“So far we’re still in very preliminary stages of working with the city. You send an email, you finally get a call back two days later,” she said. “Their first thing was, ‘Just put up a no-trespassing sign.’ I guess that’s the process, but they didn’t mention anything about bathrooms, and I’m just very unclear about what we should be doing..”
The city is still “exploring the level of assistance needed and next steps,” city spokesperson Sarah McKenzie said.
Across the street is a shiny chrome apartment building that Alliance Housing built this winter for homeless families and others in need of deeply affordable housing. About half of its 64 units are leased; the remainder are filling up fast.
The units are designated through Hennepin County’s Coordinated Entry system, which prioritizes veterans, people with disabilities and medical conditions experiencing long-term homelessness, said Jessie Hendel Alliance Housing executive director. “So, we would assist people living in that encampment if we received their name from Coordinated Entry.”
Carolyn Marinan, Hennepin County spokesperson, said outreach workers intend to visit the camp next week, at which point they’ll be able to tell if they’ve made contact with the people living there before or not.
Nick S., a man who lives in a tent pitched against the east wall of Casablanca Foods, said he has been outside all winter. The floor of his tent is soggy from the recent rain. A wood-burning stove made out of a portable grill keeps him warm. Nick requested anonymity out of concern for his children, who live in Bloomington with their mother.
“If we had a place to go home to, I think we’d all be there. I’m ready to be there. I don’t really know what to do,” he said. “So I just sit back and wait.”
Nick estimates about 25 people come and go from the camp. Private groups of donors visit with hot food, clean needles and Narcan, he said. Occasionally friends living at Alliance Housing invite him over to clean up and charge his phone.
Slocum, the Liberian American owner of the African Market on 18th and Nicollet, bought the Casablanca Foods lot to fulfill a dream of building a new restaurant and affordable senior housing. Doing that with a growing homeless encampment on the property is unlike anything she’s experienced before.
“It’s very sorrowful. It’s winter and I can’t imagine being outside in the cold with the snow on the ground,” he said. “… I think everybody in Minnesota should come together and find a solution to this because it’s getting really excessive.”
DULUTH – The Minnesota and Wisconsin transportation departments will make upgrades to the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge in the summer of 2025, in preparation for the structure to become the premiere route between this city and Superior during reconstruction of the Blatnik Bridge.
Built in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day along Interstate 535 and Hwy. 53. It will be entirely rebuilt, starting in 2027, with the help of $1 billion in federal funding announced earlier this year. MnDOT and WisDOT are splitting the remaining costs of the project, about $4 million each.
According to MnDOT, projects on the Bong Bridge will include spot painting, concrete surface repairs to the bridge abutments, concrete sealer on the deck, replacing rubber strip seal membranes on the main span’s joints and replacing light poles on the bridge and its points of entry. It’s expected to take two months, transportation officials said during a recent meeting at the Superior Public Library.
During this time there will be occasional lane closures, detours at the off-ramps, and for about three weeks the sidewalk path alongside the bridge will be closed.
The Bong Bridge, which crosses the St. Louis River, opened to traffic in 1985 and is the lesser-used of the two bridges. Officials said they want to keep maintenance to a minimum on the span during the Blatnik project, which is expected to take four years.
Red Wing will celebrate the grand opening of its first permanent set of pickleball courts next week with an “inaugural play” on the six courts at Colvill Park on the banks of the Mississippi, between a couple of marinas and next to the aquatic center.
Among the first to get to play on the new courts will be David Anderson, who brought pickleball to the local YMCA in 2008, before the nationwide pickleball craze took hold, and Denny Yecke, at 92 the oldest pickleball player in Red Wing.
The inaugural play begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a rain date of the next day. Afterward will be food and celebration at the Colvill Park Courtyard building.
Tim Sletten, the city’s former police chief, discovered America’s fastest-growing sport a decade ago after he retired. With fellow members of the Red Wing Pickleball Group, he’d play indoors at the local YMCA or outdoors at a local school, on courts made for other sports. But they didn’t have a permanent place, so they approached the city about building one.
When a city feasibility study came up with a high cost, about $350,000, Sletten’s group got together to raise money.
The courts are even opening ahead of schedule, originally set for 2025.
REDWOOD FALLS, MINN. – A truck crashing into a school bus left nine with minor injuries Wednesday morning in rural Redwood County, a statement from the Redwood County Sheriff’s office said.
The bus driver, serving the Wabasso Public School District, failed to yield when entering the intersection of County Road 7 and 280th Street, the statement said.
Deputies received word of the crash around 8:15 a.m. and identified the bus driver as Edward Aslesen, 72, of Milroy.
The nine injured passengers on the bus were transported to local hospitals, the statement said.
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