Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
This Is So Not Gonna Happen
We’re not much in the business of predicting the future here at Racket, but we’re gonna give it a shot this once: The city of Minneapolis’s new proposal to overhaul The People’s Way at George Floyd Square just ain’t happening.
Yesterday the city announced its recommendation to sell the dilapidated Speedway on 38th & Chicago to violence prevention group Minnesota Agape Movement for a project that would cost an estimated $20–$35 million. Agape would oversee the development of a six-story building that would house a “museum of Civil Resilience,” an “affordable business incubator,” an “entertainment and media hub,” and an “art gallery, rooftop memorial garden, and community event space,” in addition to a theater for young people and a restaurant/bar.
Critics quickly responded to the proposal with skepticism and annoyance, offering multiple reasons why Agape, an organization built by former south Minneapolis gang members, was not right for the job. First, Agape already has a volatile relationship with the custodians of George Floyd Square, as J.D. Duggan wrote about in Racket almost five years ago. Second, Mayor Jacob Frey has a history of providing unallocated funds to the group by, uh, creative means. And finally, as Susan Du writes in her thorough piece on the matter in the Star Tribune, Agape’s “financial status is unclear.”…