Nearly three years after Minneapolis' Third Precinct police station was torched by people enraged at the murder of George Floyd, the potential sites for a new facility have been narrowed to two, the city announced Wednesday.
One option is to renovate and expand the vacant existing building at 3000 Minnehaha Av. for as much as $12 million. The second option is to build a new facility on a vacant city-owned lot at 2600 Minnehaha for roughly twice that cost, city officials said.
Community meetings are planned to discuss the options.
In May 2020, the Third Precinct station at Minnehaha and Lake Street was surrounded and overrun by people protesting Floyd's murder under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer who operated out of the facility. Several have been sentenced to prison in connection with the mayhem at the station, including a far-right activist from Texas.
The building ablaze became a symbol of the uprising that followed Floyd's killing — and the boarded-up hulk that remains stands as a constant reminder.
The lack of a replacement is also a hole in the city's ability to protect the public, police have complained. Since January 2021, Third Precinct officers have operated out of a building downtown, hampering their response times to the southeastern quadrant of the city they serve. Residents in the area, meanwhile, have no nearby police station to seek help, and business owners complain that the vacant building is a blight on the neighborhood.
The city identified the two locations after a survey of suitable sites that began in July 2020 and continued through December 2022.
"Identifying two viable locations for the 3rd Precinct building has been an enterprise-wide effort, and I'm grateful to our staff who have worked around the clock to produce a thorough analysis for neighbors to consider," Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement.
