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From a distance, Riverside Plaza is a
gloomy-looking monolith, a clump of stern concrete towers with
fading multi-colored panels that suggest it's one of society's
failed public housing experiments.

      Up close, Riverside is something different: A lively and mostly
cheerful haven for the thousands of immigrants who have come to
Minnesota in recent years. Kids fresh off school buses giggle and
chase toy cars, their backpacks emblazoned with their favorite
cartoon characters. Mothers, graceful in long, colorful scarves,
struggle to scoop up their rowdy young. Old men in suits lean on
wooden canes as they stroll the premises.


      That vitality is why the federal government and others are
plowing $65 million into Riverside to address leaky pipes, moldy
ceilings, outdated utilities and the general battering of nearly
four decades of operation. At a time when many big public housing
complexes are being pulled down around the country, Riverside -
which is privately owned - is getting a breath of new life.


      "People are happy here; it's a dream come true," said Halima
Yusuf, 46, who came to the U.S. 14 years ago from Somalia and still
sends photos of the complex to family members in her homeland.


      The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development views
Riverside as a poster child for what they'd like to see more of,
and is loaning nearly $50 million for the renovation. Large,
multi-family complexes like Riverside are increasingly undergoing
massive rehabs nationwide, driven in part by a lack of new public
housing and deterioration in the old ones.


      "Given its size, it's at the forefront of the kind of things
we'd want to see happen," said Carol Galante, HUD's deputy
assistant secretary for multi-family housing programs. She said the
complex is ideal in that it provides its residents with resources
like a community school and a grocery store.


      Since around 1996, the federal government has paid to knock down
many big public housing complexes. Often, the sites have been
redeveloped with mixed-rate housing that usually includes fewer
subsidized properties than before. Ultimately, the demolitions
resulted in fewer public housing options nationwide, Galante said.


      Riverside's renovation is part of a $132 million refinancing
package assembled by the federal government, the city of
Minneapolis and more than 14 other public and private sources.
Sherman Associates, the company that owns the 11-building campus,
is contributing $3 million to the project. Besides the upgrades to
infrastructure, the multi-colored panels that once gave Riverside a
modern gloss will be repainted, and some replacement panels that
weren't part of the original scheme will be put right.


      It's coming at a good time. Residents often have to wait a
half-hour for water to heat up before showers. The wait for
buildings' heat or air conditioning to kick in can take a week.
Leaky ceilings and mold are common.


      "There were horrible problems," said Fredda Scobey, executive
director of the Riverside Plaza Tenants Association. "Management
was told, 'Listen, this place is about to fall apart."'


      Some money will also go to build a safety facility where
security staff and resources will be headquartered and new security
cameras.


      The 2008 shooting of a 20-year-old Augsburg College student
across the street from Riverside contributed to its image as a
high-crime location. But tenants and police downplay any safety
concerns. Data on police calls to the complex weren't available.
Neighborhood crime statistics show the area just above the citywide
average, even though the neighborhood is the city's fourth
most-populous.


      Over the past few years, Minneapolis police officer Jeanine
Brudenell said she's seen crime drop in the neighborhood following
the addition of two night patrol officers. The crimes are now
mostly thefts, whereas there used to be more violent crimes, she
said.


      Built in 1973 as Cedar Square West, the complex was backed by
the federal government with a utopian vision to house rich, poor,
young and old. Developers had originally hoped for a massive
collection of buildings to house 30,000 people, but widespread
community opposition limited it to about one-fifth that size.


      The complex was a hit when it opened, and it drew a number of
young people and University of Minnesota students. Its
architecture, inspired by the French-Swiss urban architect Le
Corbusier, was considered cutting edge at the time, as was placing
the parking garage below the residences, said Charlene Roise, who
led an effort to win historical status for Riverside.


      "To me, it really epitomizes the optimism and just the good
spirit of the 1960s," said Roise, president of Hess Roise
Historical Consultants. "It was a real social experiment."


      Mixing the market-rate and subsidized units together never
panned out, as the federal funding required the units to be
separated, and over time Riverside became something very different.
Today, about half of Riverside's 1,303 units are
government-subsidized and half are market-rate. The more than 4,500
tenants also make the complex unique: about 70 percent are Somalis,
14 percent are Ethiopians and nearly 10 percent are Vietnamese.


      Ed Goetz, a professor of urban and regional planning at the
University of Minnesota, has studied Riverside and public housing
in general. Goetz said research shows that some people who rely on
public housing don't attempt to better their situations. In
Riverside, though, the average length of stay is between three and
four years - likely illustrating "upward and outward mobility" of
tenants new to the country.


      "It shows that the housing is probably serving its purpose
pretty well," Goetz said. "Folks are using that time to get on
their feet."


      Even though its original vision didn't materialize, Riverside
has become a success in its own right, Scobey said.


      "It works really, really well as villages within a city," she
said. "If you live here, you can be with your own folks, speaking
your own language. ... And I think that's the magic of the place."

Gallery

Rapson’s Riverside Plaza gets a makeover

Social Issues

Tara Bannow

Author

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development views
Riverside Plaza as a poster child for what they'd like to see more of,
and is loaning nearly $50 million for the renovation.

For massive Mpls. housing complex, a $65M facelift

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