Wells Fargo destroyed during Floyd unrest will be reborn as housing, small business and job center

A Minneapolis nonprofit housing developer broke ground Thursday on a six-story mixed-use building on the site of a Wells Fargo branch destroyed in the unrest following George Floyd’s murder.

The new Opportunity Crossing complex is another piece of the redevelopment of the Nicollet Avenue intersection that saw multiple businesses damaged or destroyed, including an aging Kmart.

Nonprofit Project for Pride in Living (PPL) led the $61.6 million development, which will include 85 apartment units for large families, as well as a Wells Fargo branch, Afro Deli, Dominic’s Tax Service, a quinceanera dress shop and a career opportunity center. Local business owners will own, rather than rent, their commercial space.

Developers expect to complete the 110-unit complex in 18 months. Funding came from federal and local sources, and from Wells Fargo and Xcel Energy.

“Communities that have no sense of agency and no ownership in their place, in their future, have very few options and so little to lose,” Paul Williams, PPL’s president and CEO, said at the groundbreaking. “The lesson is that community ownership and community voice, particularly in communities of color, is important to all of us.”

He also said involving the community in the process is part of “equitable” development. The Wells Fargo bank was often busy, which will be rebuilt to serve as an asset again, he added.

In March 2021, the Minneapolis-based Cultural Wellness Center began gathering neighborhood input to incorporate into the project. Anthony Taylor, CWC’s development lead, said the community was involved early in the process and participants were told they had influence on the development.

“Many marginal communities don’t trust cities, they don’t believe that things are being built for them. They think they’re being built to move them out,” Taylor said. “We developed a process that always focused on the artists, talked about culture, and gave people information they needed to understand the development process itself.”

The project site is located in a neighborhood with a “highly dense” Somali population and a big Latino community nearby, Taylor said.

Community members who attended listening sessions said they wanted the project to incorporate local businesses. In addition, many immigrant families are larger, so they wanted units to have more bedrooms, Taylor said.

The upper floors of the building will have 110 units in total. Eighty-five of them are two-, three-and four-bedroom units designed for larger families. All apartment rents are designated for very low-income families in the area, who earn about 30 to 50% of median income. Twelve of the units will have a voucher from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority to cover most of the rent.

“Affordable housing can be beautiful. It can be community-oriented. It can be mixed-use. It can have a beautiful diversity of people and a beautiful diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds,” Frey said at the groundbreaking. “We’re reinventing how we’re thinking about things in the city of Minneapolis, and I think we’re doing it in a beautiful phoenix rising way.”

Project for Pride in Living has more information on eligibility and the process of applying for an apartment.

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