Star Tribune
Minneapolis Uptown homeless facility advances over opposition
Lakeshore Care, a company created earlier this year, has received a key city approval to establish a 24-bed medical respite center for homeless people in Minneapolis’ Uptown business district despite the vociferous protestations of neighboring business owners.
The embattled project, proposed for 918 W. Lake St., has received overwhelmingly negative public comments through two separate attempts to obtain city permits in recent months. Lakeshore Care applied first for a conditional use permit through the Planning Commission in June, with discussions delayed numerous times as community members complained about a lack of engagement. In response, city staff suggested Lakeshore Care submit a new application for an interim use permit, which would allow the center to operate for a trial period of up to five years.
Medical respite is a service for homeless people with acute health problems who have been released from the hospital but are still too sick to be on the streets. The city’s zoning code categorizes medical respite facilities as emergency overnight homeless shelters, but they are not. Lakeshore Care proposes only accepting clients discharged with doctor’s orders for stays up to 60 days. The Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan allows “emergency shelters” as a conditional use in all zones of the city including the Uptown commercial district.
Still, some Uptown business owners testified at a public hearing before City Council members earlier this month that services should be relegated to industrial zones rather than business districts because the presence of homeless people makes their customers uncomfortable. Others raised concerns about Lakeshore Care being an untested for-profit company, and whether it will be able to provide healing in small, windowless living quarters without outdoor green space.
Business owners who spoke against the facility have received one-star online reviews. In the days after a fire destroyed an apartment building immediately across from 918 W. Lake St., displacing tenants and shutting down a day spa whose owner had been critical of Lakeshore Care, panic spread among business owners who suspected the arson had been retaliatory as well. Police eventually arrested a homeless man, but the charges established no connection between his alleged motives and the raging debate over Lakeshore Care’s permitting.
Brenna Wernersbach, owner of MoonStone MPLS gift shop, said they have not appreciated how the public vetting of Lakeshore Care has devolved into an entrenched fight between people who don’t want homeless people around and advocates who find that position immoral. Wernersbach believes there are legitimate, unanswered questions about the provider.
“They say they have the experience, but they don’t elaborate,” Wernersbach said. “On the one hand, this is a safe and serene environment with proximity to medical centers, and that’s why they want to put it here, but then they’ll turn around and say it’s not even safe enough to have windows.”
Established nonprofits that have provided medical respite beds in the Twin Cities for years include the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and Union Gospel Mission.
The aptly named Type/Variant house is ever changing.
Built in 1994, the copper siding-clad home was shiny and brown. As it aged, the copper oxidized, giving the panels their own patina, some a blue-green, others a deep brown.
Client Richard Polsky and Minneapolis architect Vincent James drew inspiration from rural industrial structures in Wisconsin and Minnesota, envisioning each cubic part of the home as simple, elegant timber-like features.
“We selected copper siding after seeing one of [Polsky’s] artworks — a beautiful copper etching composing a set of plates of simple variations,” James said in an email. “They loved the evolving copper color as it weathered and that the changes were outside of their control.”
The home, which won the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture in 1998 as well as the American Institute of Architects Minnesota Honor Award in 1996, even garnered a New York Times feature for its ingenuity and modernist look. After decades of enjoying all the seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom home has to offer — from its artistic forms to fishing on the nearby lake and tapping maple trees on the property — the Polsky family recently listed the Hayward, Wis., home for $4 million and hope to find buyers who will relish it the same.
“[Us kids have] spread out quite a bit over the years. It was a place for my parents to go every summer. It was getting harder for them to get there,” said Polsky’s son Charlie Polsky. “It’s sad that the house is for sale. But it’s a house that needs to be used.”
Richard Polsky always had grander ideas for his land in Hayward, about a 2 ½-hour drive northeast from the Twin Cities. A professor at Columbia University, he interviewed artists and was interested in how they expressed their views creatively.
“My father, who is turning 93 this year, is a lifelong artist and has been interested in aesthetic and space for a long time,” Charlie Polsky said. “We started interviewing architects in the mid-90s, and he had a vision for what the house should be in terms of materials and how it is built.”
A federal judge ruled this week that a middle school principal being an ally for LGBTQ rights does not mean she gets the legal protections of someone in a marginalized group.
U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Mary Kay Thomas against the school board of Marshall, Minn.
Thomas, formerly a principal in the Marshall school system, sued in 2021 after she said she had been discriminated against because she advocated on behalf of LGBTQ students. She said she faced opposition after ordering a Pride flag hung on the walls of the school cafeteria, and after she helped students establish a Gay‐Straight Alliance.
Schiltz, in his judgment, accepted that Thomas, after her advocacy, was disciplined via suspension, asked to resign and eventually assigned to an administrative position — created just for her — in a small, windowless office.
However, Thomas, as a “straight, cisgender woman,” falls outside of the categories protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Schiltz argued. Title VII protects employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
“Thomas was discriminated against because of what she advocated, not because of her sex — because of what she said, not because of who she is,” he wrote in his judgment.
He also said that Thomas could not provide an example of a specific instance of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Her advocacy against bigotry present in broader society was not protected by Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Title IX aims to prevent discrimination in education, the judge said.
Jeremy Williams, school superintendent for Marshall, welcomed the court’s decision, calling it “well-reasoned” in an emailed statement.
Record store Electric Fetus, a mainstay of Minneapolis’ music scene since 1968, started carrying K-pop albums around 2020, said Jim Novak, the store’s music buyer. Now, nestled between R&B CDs and electronic vinyl albums, a K-pop end cap offers a few hundred physical records, less than 10% of the 3,000 physical albums offered in the store, according to Novak.
“It’s currently driving a whole different generation of people into our shop,” Novak said.
Novak appreciates the thought put into K-pop physical releases. Each album takes a different shape: a classic CD case, a thick cardboard box or even a notepad. These different forms make it fit best as its own end cap, he said.
Novak, who designed the section, said he is still learning what the genre means to its fans. When he sees a young group flip through the CDs, he can’t help but feel excited.
“It is really encouraging to see young people be so into physical media,” he said.
K-pop albums often come in different shapes, sizes and formats, encouraging a new interest in physical merchandise. (Ayrton Breckenridge/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Sweet Escape opened in 2022 in the Maplewood Mall and often brings Twin Cities K-pop fans together through events hosted at the mall’s Center Court.
