For years, the small staff of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force has offered culturally based medical, social, wellness and economic services in an outdated south Minneapolis community center where patients sometimes have to stand outside because the waiting room is too small.
Several of its youth and theater programs need to be housed in a nearby church. Even with logistical constraints, the group started a company that makes baby food with Native American-cultivated heirloom crops and foods grown and harvested using sustainable practices. Plants are grown by people learning agricultural skills on a few acres just south of the Twin Cities.
The task force's tiny, hodgepodge workplace will soon be replaced with the Mikwanedun Audisookon Center for Art and Wellness. The effort consolidates and expands its existing services and adds a theater, a commercial kitchen with a cafe for people to sell their food and spaces to jump-start other new businesses.
To help build its new facility, the task force received nearly $1 million from a $10 million grant funding effort that Hennepin County recently approved for 18 mostly minority-focused organizations and nonprofits. The goal is to promote affordable commercial space and provide a place for entrepreneurs to develop restaurants, event and training centers, offices and other assets for communities who often face barriers to economic growth.
In all, the county-backed projects will create more than 400,000 square feet of commercial and nonprofit space, support more than 550 local business owners and employ more than 1,000 people. The total cost of the projects is more than $270 million, including city and state funding beyond the county grants.
"The county has been focused on ways to assist businesses recover during the pandemic and this is just an extension of that goal," said County Board chair Marion Greene. "This is a very targeted way to spend pandemic relief money, which has a high impact in communities."
The one-time program, called the Community Investment Initiative, sought applicants focusing on economic recovery strategies for minority entrepreneurs, developers of affordable commercial space and nonprofits. Proposals were sought in March and drew 46 applications.
Many of the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pandemic funding received by Hennepin County has been used for COVID-19 issues and short-term business and housing financial relief. Commissioners wanted this initiative to have long-term transformation in cities and specific communities and to reduce disparities, said Patricia Fitzgerald, director of community and economic development.
