MINNEAPOLIS — The City of Minneapolis unveiled its new recommended street design for George Floyd Square for the first time to more than 100 community members.

City leaders showcased their concept to over 100 community members at Calvary Lutheran Church Tuesday night.

They said the area needed to be re-envisioned to honor Floyd’s memory through three projects: streets (right-of-way), Peoples’ Way and memorials.

“The murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 fundamentally changed the intersection of 38th and Chicago now known as George Floyd Square,” said Alexander Kado, senior project manager with the City of Minneapolis who is responsible for managing city-led efforts at George Floyd Square.

Through talking with thousands of people, Kado said they came up with three values that will guide all decisions at the square: repair, honor and center.

“The first one is repairing the harm this community has experienced through the murder of George Floyd. The second one is centering the needs of the community, and the third one is honoring George Floyd Square as an active and scared memorial place,” he said.

The city council will look at the final draft on Nov. 12, the climate infrastructure committee will review it on Nov. 21. If it passes, the city plans to start construction in 2025, after the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death.

They don’t have a final estimate on the project but have already allocated over $5 million in the capital program. Officials estimate construction will take at least two construction seasons.

City officials said they have invested over $5 million into the area since Floyd’s death and will continue to invest even after the project is complete.

“It’s an opportunity to really reimagine what the streets can look like,” said Public Works transportation planning manager Nathan Koster. Prior to Floyd’s murder, he said that the Public Works Department was planning to improve 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

They plan to reconstruct 38th Street from Park Avenue to 10th Avenue and Chicago Avenue from 37th Street to 39th Street in 2025.

He said 38th Street and Chicago Avenue are more than 60 years old and are no longer meeting the needs of the community. He said they used community ideas as a starting point which led them to consider three concepts: one that was open to traffic, one that prioritized transit and one that was closed to traffic.

Koster said they settled on what they’re calling a “flexible open” design that will allow them to shut the street down when necessary. He said they’ll integrate a lot of traffic calming and will add a bikeway network.

He said they have six priorities they plan to address, including environmental disparities, storm water runoff, improving access and reducing barriers to high quality transit, creating welcoming and flexible spaces for community, preserving space for art and memorials and ensuring access to businesses and residents in the area.

“There’ll be a new street, a new sidewalk that will be ADA accessible with green space, accommodating the arts, memorial active space that’s there for gatherings. But it’s also an opportunity to look at all the stuff underneath the street. This is an opportunity to not only replace really old infrastructure, but also an opportunity to remediate some of the lead pipes in the area that provide water to people in homes,” Koster said.

Koster said the traffic circle will be a key part of the design, constructing it into a raised intersection to better connect it to the memorial and the Peoples’ Way.

“One of the main themes that we heard amongst many was really trying to make this a pedestrian-friendly, pedestrian-forward space,” Koster said.

He said they are planning to restore Route 5 and the Metro Transit D line. Koster said this area is one of the region’s highest ridership lines.

The Peoples’ Way is the old gas station that sits at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. The city purchased the property in June 2023.

Erik Hansen, director of community planning and economic development for the City of Minneapolis, said they are still looking to find a community partner to take over the property. He said requests for proposals are due Nov. 22 and the city plans to select the new community owner by spring 2025.

By the end of 2025, Hansen said he hopes to have a development concept for the site.

The city plans to preserve current memorial sites at the square, even during construction.

Mary Altman, public arts administrator for the City of Minneapolis, said the site where Floyd was killed will be preserved in a new right-of-way design developed by the Floyd family and Rise and Remember.

She said “Mourning Passage” will also be preserved. Every year, community members paint the names of people who have died at the hands of police. 

Altman said the city plans to keep the traffic circle in the middle of the intersection with the large fist sculpture and medians where smaller fist sculptures are located. The city hasn’t developed a preservation plan, and Altman said city officials plan to speak with the artists before proceeding. 

The Say Their Names Cemetery will remain the same, according to Altman. 

For more information on the site and project, click here. 

MINNEAPOLIS — The state’s top elections officials, faith groups and other nonprofits are working to remind formerly incarcerated persons they can vote in Tuesday’s election, even if they’re still on probation.

This is the first presidential election since the law was changed in 2023, which instantly restored the right to vote to more than 50,000 former felony offenders still serving the community portion of their sentences.

“There was some murkiness, some confusion before this law was implemented,” Secretary of State Steve Simon told reporters Tuesday. “Now it’s real clear. If you’re in prison for a felony, you know you can’t vote. But the minute you step out in Minnesota and many other states now you can vote.”

Simon joined Brian Fullman of the interfaith nonprofit ISAIAH for a press conference at All Square, a Minneapolis café that helps people reenter society beyond prison walls. Fullman is one of several advocates in the state who’s been working to get the word out about the law change.

“A lot of my work I’ve been doing around the house meetings, from barber shop to barber shop, from business to business, from church to church has been about lifting up the news to whoever will listen,” he said. 

Fullman is a longtime barber who went to prison at the age of 19 on a drug rap. His voting rights were restored in 1994 after just one year on probation, but he didn’t know it. He said he missed voting in every election until 2008, because he had been told his voting rights were stripped for life.

“I was told in my neighborhood that I couldn’t vote. But I was told by somebody else who was a felon in my community, unfortunately, so misinformation travels. It’s like cancer,” he said. “It just continues to travel and it decays.”

Fullman was part of the citizen lobbying effort at the State Capitol to get the law changed and was there for the joyous celebration at the State Capitol on a cold night in February of 2023, when the Minnesota Senate took the final vote on the Restore the Vote bill.

That came after two decades of failed attempts by the Second Chance Coalition and allies, who couldn’t get past Republican opposition. Most GOP lawmakers asserted the ban on voting should apply to the full sentence handed down by the courts, including time served in the community, commonly known as probation.

Governor Walz signed the bill in early March of 2023, making Minnesota the 22nd state to allow former felony offenders living outside of prison to vote regardless of probation status. Opponents have launched multiple legal challenges, but none of them have succeeded thus far.

“And the national trends are all in this direction,” Simon said. “I know of no other state looking to be more punitive or go in the other direction. Minnesota is really riding the wave of a national trend.”

Advocates asserted that Minnesota’s judicial system traditionally leaned towards shorter time in prison but longer probation sentences that could stretch for decades. One of the advocates who came to the Capitol several times had a check writing felony in her 30s but would’nt be able to vote until she reached her 70s.

The other argument made by supporters was that regaining the right to vote can reduce recidivism because it makes released offenders feel more like they’re part of a community and have more of a voice in local elections.

“I understood that I was a first-class citizen, and not somebody that needed to be patted on the head and told ‘Wait your turn, your voice is not valuable yet.’  So. I just really appreciate what the state of Minnesota has done,” Fullman remarked.

Steve Simon has visited every state prison speaking to inmates who are nearing release. He asserts the Minnesota Dept. of Corrections is doing a good job getting the word out to inmates on the verge of heading home.

“For folks who are about to get out, say within five or six weeks, there’s typically a class of some kind, that helps reorient folks. This is a part of that curriculum. Then they get written information upon actual release,” Simon explained. “And they’ve connected not just us, but nonprofits, faith groups and others with the county corrections system. They’re typically the ones who run the probation system.”

But Fullman is also hoping to reach people who’ve been out of custody for a long time, who may still be operating in the dark when it comes to their voting rights, the way he once was.

“So, yes, this is about our brothers and sisters who are now reentering society right away, but it’s also about our brothers and sisters who’ve been walking around with the wrong messaging, misinformation about how they can use their voices publicly, so I’m very passionate about this work,” he said. 

Removing the voting ban for felony offenders eliminated the most common form of election law violations in Minnesota in recent history.

Double voting, non-citizen voting, ID fraud are extremely rare here, but in 2008 dozens of people were prosecuted for voting -— or just registering to vote — before they were off probation.

The system of cross-checks between the judiciary and election officials was tightened after that. Under the new law, it’s much easier to track. Incarcerated inmates don’t have access to voting booths or absentee ballots.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Even before noon, the lunch line was long at Gyropolis on Tuesday. The Greek restaurant was closed for renovations for several months but returned this week under a soft opening.

Dino Contolatis first opened Gyropolis in Bloomington in 2005, following in his parents’ footsteps. They opened a deli in the city in 1996 after emigrating from a picturesque but poor Greek village in 1971.

“My customers, I want to thank them for getting us to this point,” Contolatis said. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”

One such customer, Chuck Pittman, says he’s eaten at the restaurant for at about 10 years now.

“There are lines that would go out the door,” said Pittman, who lives in St. Paul but works in Bloomington. “The parking lot was always super full.”

There have been so many customers, Contolatis decided in 2022 it was time to expand. Only, there was an abandoned gas station next door.

“It got broken into many times,” Pittman said. “It was just kind of an eyesore on the corner.”

The restaurant is located on 90th Street W and Penn Avenue S, which lead to places including City Hall and I-494. It’s considered a busy area, though not as busy as the Mall of America. Still, the city was eager to get involved in the restaurant’s expansion plans.

Economic development analyst Michael Palermo says the city helped demolish the gas station.

“This was a way to kind of redevelop a site that was kind of difficult to develop on its own,” Palermo said.

Palermo says city staff helped secure $58,400 in grant funds from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, making the demolition possible in Fall 2023. Tax increment financing also made the project possible.

“This just speaks to the greater effort we have to support our local commercial nodes,” Palermo said. “We have these big prominent regional destinations but we also want to support our small businesses.”

Gyropolis employees worked from a food truck over the last few months as the restaurant building nearly tripled in size.

The expansion includes a larger kitchen, more parking spaces, more indoor seating and a new patio for outdoor seating.

Pittman joked that gyros are somewhat challenging to eat in the car or on the go.

“I’ve done it, but it’s one of those things that you really want to sit down and enjoy it fresh because they make it perfectly,” he said.

Unlike before, there’s also enough room indoors to wait in line. There’s a pick-up window now, too.

“We used to be 10 employees and now we’re 14 and probably gonna need more, as we can see today,” Contolatis said. “My team are the best people I could possibly work with and the city has been great in helping me navigate this process and to help create a self-determining business on a very important corner in Bloomington that I hope has a bright future.”

Contolatis said a grand opening will take place next week.