In an attempt to garner buy-in from the Minneapolis City Council around a proposed site plan for the former Third Precinct building at 3000 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and his administration tried something new.

The administration asked council for its stamp of approval on a site plan proposal before taking it out into neighborhoods for community engagement. The city’s proposal would turn the former police precinct into a “democracy center” with 8,000 square feet of community use space on the ground floor. 

Over the past month, many council members said they felt blindsided by the city’s ask for a vote. They felt more community engagement had to be done before a council vote, with some expressing they believed the entire building should be used for community use, or that the city should consider uses for the building outside of a democracy center. 

After hours of debate over two meetings of the Committee of the Whole, council ultimately balked on the city’s site plan proposal, voting 7 to 6 against. 

At the Tuesday committee meeting, Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury asked the question many came back to as they considered the vote: “What is the point of this vote?” 

“We were told by staff that our vote was not necessary multiple times and that this was a unique thing that was occurring,” Chowdhury said at the Thursday meeting. “I just felt like it was out of order … to ask for council approval. I didn’t feel like it was a mechanism for us to come together because at neither of the briefings were there any opportunities offered to council members to definitively weigh in on the project.”

It’s true, an affirmative vote by council is not necessary for the city to move forward with its proposed work. So why was Frey asking for council action? 

Looking for a ‘We like the direction you’re going’

Frey issued a statement Tuesday stating that the city will move forward with its plan for 3000 Minnehaha regardless of council’s vote. 

“Independent of the confusion and discord on the council, we are moving forward with a realistic plan to establish a voting center with a large space designated for community use,” Frey said. “We gave the council an opportunity to weigh in, and instead, they punted.”

Frey’s ask for an early vote by council is atypical, City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher said last week. The property is city-owned and doesn’t need council approval for anything outside of contracts. 

“Normally in this process, we would go out with community engagement,” she said. “We might have given just a presentation to the council at this point with a receiving file.”

Frey, via his staff, asked for council’s vote in part because there have been a couple of instances where projects get through the architectural planning process, which can be expensive, only to have the City Council say no to the project bid, Anderson Kelliher said. 

“So a good example is the Hiawatha water yard expansion,” she said. “We went through 10 years of planning; a lot of architectural design. We were ready to break ground and the previous council halted us.” 

Additionally, the city knows the former Third Precinct is a significant reminder of the murder of George Floyd and the civil unrest that followed. For four years the site has been barricaded and fenced in with barbed wire. Council decided last year police would not return to the site, but memories of what it was remain. 

“Knowing how high profile this is, knowing how much people care – I think it’s a fair question of us to ask for, not necessarily a blessing or vote that says ‘this is it,’ but a vote that says, ‘Yes, we like the direction you’re going in. Go out and talk to the community about it.’ That’s what we were asking for,” Anderson Kelliher said. 

The proposed future for the former Third Precinct 

Regardless of what happens to the building in the long-term, cleanup will begin this spring on the site. 

If turned into a democracy center, the building would permanently house the city’s election and voter services department in its second floor office space. 

The basement of 3000 Minnehaha would be dedicated to storing ballots and election materials. On the ground floor, 8,000 square feet would be dedicated to community use, with the rest used by the voting center.

One alternative idea brought by community members was to turn the space into a Black cultural center. State Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura has penned a bill asking for $500,000 for such a center, which would cost an estimated $80 million to develop. The bill has no Senate companion. 

For now, the city is moving forward with community engagement on its democracy center site plan. This summer, the city plans to begin information sessions and start engagement about how the space could be used. A revised concept plan will be tentatively brought to council by fall of this year.

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