Lake Street Leaders Create a New Resource to Empower Community in Its Rebuild
REACH is an online information hub for advancing racial equity and community health in recovery efforts
By Abdi Mohamed | April 22, 2021
FEATURE
It’s been nearly a year since the Twin Cities experienced a wave of unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd, and community members are still picking up the pieces. Minneapolis’s Lake Street corridor was one of the most affected areas; it sustained upward of $250 million in damages, and more than 250 small businesses were impacted, according to the Lake Street Council. While relief from public institutions has stagnated, local leaders have formed a new initiative, called REACH (Racial Equity and Community Health), to take ownership of their recovery and address their community’s needs directly.
REACH is a part of the Lake Street Leadership Recovery Coalition (LSLRC) and serves as an information hub for recovery and redevelopment resources across the Twin Cities. According to its website, it is a collaborative effort from dozens of community-based organizations that focuses on marginalized groups. Tabitha Montgomery, executive director of the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association, worked with LSLRC to bring REACH online. “Through our conversation as a coalition, we realized that there are tons of organizations working to center equity and how we recover and heal as a community in a more equitable fashion,” she says.
Montgomery attends weekly meetings with a coalition sub-team to tackle different areas of Lake Street’s recovery, including redevelopment, business support, and community health. Alicia D. Smith, executive director of the Corcoran Neighborhood Organization, is also a part of the coalition and has coordinated with Montgomery in early recovery efforts. It became evident to the two neighborhood leaders that without the coalition’s input, the recovery would not reflect their community. “This is prime real estate over on Lake Street. If we’re not careful, what we could see is our communities being redeveloped, but not reflecting the people who live here,” says Smith.
“This is prime real estate over on Lake Street. If we’re not careful, what we could see is our communities being redeveloped, but not reflecting the people who live here.”
REACH highlights various community efforts by both public and private institutions and nonprofit organizations. The site lists initiatives and projects that readers can engage in, and community organizations, developers, and architects are invited to submit their community visioning documents and events for potential posting on the site. In this way, REACH aims to be a one-stop shop for information and resources that would otherwise be spread far and wide. “It’s so that people find it easier to plug in to support these efforts or even help call out what’s missing,” says Montgomery.
In keeping with a holistic approach to redevelopment, REACH organizers have also sought to reconstruct how they quantify racial equity and health. “It’s about the totality of the community, not about one subset,” says Smith. “We’re talking about the physical, the emotional, the economic standard of the families that make up our communities.”
Many of the recovery efforts have stemmed from private organizations as political gridlock has kept state funds from being distributed. Governor Tim Walz has proposed $150 million in redevelopment appropriation funds to rebuild areas of the Twin Cities impacted by civil unrest, but that proposal has yet to gain a consensus. In the meantime, nonprofit organizations like Urban Ventures have stepped up and distributed $5,000 checks to businesses in need. The Lake Street Council has channeled $8 million to recovery efforts for small businesses.
REACH plans to continue its grassroots approach to recovery by connecting business owners with information on loans and grants, and to promote and support BIPOC-led organizations and companies in the redevelopment work that lies ahead. “Healthy development is about changes of wealth ownership in our community,” says Montgomery.