First Ward City Council Member Elliot Payne spoke to Windom Park Citizens in Action on Tuesday, March 19, giving a brief “state of the ward” talk and answering questions from the community. He and neighbors in attendance discussed topics ranging from new homeless camps popping up in Northeast, to various grant programs available through the neighborhood association. However, the topic on most people’s minds that night was the fate of the vacant space formerly occupied by the restaurant Half Fancy.
Half Fancy closed their doors permanently on Dec. 17, 2023, becoming the latest in a long line of restaurants to come and go from the corner of 19th and Central Ave. A rumor has been circulating that a Starbucks could come to the space, which some neighbors worry would be contrary to the ethos of the area and the numerous small businesses that line the busy corridor. At the meeting, Payne said no application to fill the space had been submitted yet; community members asserted that a chain store like Starbucks on Central would be contrary to the area’s recent designation as a cultural district by the City of Minneapolis.
What does Central Avenue being a cultural district mean? Jill Anderson, the senior marketing director for the nonprofit organization Meet Minneapolis, explained to WPCiA and assembled community members that the city has contracted with her organization to promote Minneapolis’ neighborhoods as tourist destinations in order to stimulate the local economy. Together with Meet Minneapolis, the city identified seven cultural districts across the area in September of 2022; each one is designated as a part of town that highlights the cultural identity of communities of color, Indigenous people, and immigrant populations that make the area unique.
Northeast’s cultural district encompasses the span of Central Avenue stretching from 181/2th to 26th Avenues, an area layered with the stories of several generations of immigrants from different parts of the world. Meet Minneapolis’s website describes Northeast Minneapolis as “built by working-class European immigrants who came for the railroad and warehouse jobs. It experienced a revival in the late 1990s that continues today with restaurants and shops ranging from Mexican to Ethiopian, Indian to Ecuadorian and Thai to a 1949 diner.”
Meet Minneapolis wanted the rundown of each cultural district to feel personal and organic to newcomers and visitors seeking information on what there is to do in Minneapolis, so they worked with local writers and photographers to capture the essence of the areas from a first-person perspective for their promotional material. For Central, they partnered with local writer Ali Elabbady, and photographer Asha Belk.
Elabbady starts his description of the Northeast cultural district by explaining his personal connection to Central Avenue before launching into a guided tour, shop by shop, like he’s showing you around his favorite haunts. The other six districts received similar treatments from other local authors.
More information on the seven Minneapolis cultural districts, as well as how you can make suggestions for additional districts in the future, can be found online at www.minneapolis.org/cultural-districts, and https://minneapolis2040.com/policies/cultural-districts.
The designation of cultural districts is a part of the Minneapolis 2040 plan, and functions to bring tourism and resources to the area while keeping the communities that make the district unique from getting gentrified out as the city develops. However, Payne explained that even though the cultural district initiative is meant to promote the unique local business scene, the city does not have the power to ban Starbucks from moving in. If the franchise were to buy the vacant property, submit an application to open a store, and the application met local zoning regulations, they would have as much a right to open a business there as anyone else. He did note that current zoning laws prohibit the opening of a new drive-thru in the area, alleviating some neighbors’ fears that a drive-thru restaurant would exacerbate Central Avenue traffic congestion.
Even if the possibility of a Central Avenue Starbucks is nebulous for the time being, the folks at WPCiA want to make sure whoever does come to the neighborhood is in character with the cultural district initiative. One community member suggested that the most direct way to influence the corner’s fate would be for a local entrepreneur to look into acquiring the land to open their own business there instead. Members of WPCiA have tried to make contact with the current landlord of the property, Truco, Inc. (Nora Truelson), without success so far.