Environmental advocates face final deadline to buy Roof Depot site in Minneapolis
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A yearslong effort to create an urban farm and community center in south Minneapolis could soon come to a halt. A neighborhood group faces a Monday deadline to buy the property, known as the Roof Depot site, from the city — but they’re millions of dollars short.
Organizers behind the project say they’ve been negotiating with the city for months to try to secure the site for less money than originally outlined. As of Thursday, the two sides said they had yet to reach a new agreement.
“This would be a devastating loss economically for the East Phillips community, as well as a loss to the potential for climate resilience,” said Daniel Colten Schmidt, the finance and development director at the East Philips Neighborhood Institute, or EPNI.
EPNI has been trying to buy the defunct warehouse from the city for a decade — a back-and-forth process that sparked protests and lawsuits over the years. The city wanted to turn the property west of Hiawatha Avenue into a new waterworks site; neighbors and environmental advocates wanted to turn it into a community hub, and they said they worried about the potential for pollution from the city’s project. They noted a history of soil pollution from an old neighboring pesticide plant and comparatively high rates of asthma in the neighborhood.
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The urban farm goal looked possible in 2023, when city officials and state legislators agreed to a deal for EPNI to buy the site. The city agreed to sell for $11.4 million. Legislators agreed to commit $7.7 million toward the purchase price over two years, and another $4.5 million to the city toward planning for an alternative waterworks facility.
But the Legislature didn’t approve all the money it promised. Deadlines came and went, and the city granted extensions to EPNI. But now, with a final deadline looming Monday, the group remains $5.7 million short of the sale price.
Partners in the project say neighborhood residents will suffer if it falls through. Eddy Olson-Enamorado works with youth at the Native nonprofit Migizi and said the urban farm would fill a gap in his community.
“Youth are starving for interesting, engaging, hands-on programs to do outside of school,” Olson-Enamorado said. “As someone who’s been trying to run an environmental education program in the neighborhood, it’s hard when there’s very few green spaces to go to.”
Supporters of the urban farm proposal point to a host of other benefits the finished project would provide, including jobs, food grown in an indoor urban farm and a solar array that would save neighbors hundreds of dollars a year on energy bills.
That plan for solar panels is another reason organizers are pushing to get the deal done. They’re banking on money from federal solar tax credits — but those are set to expire at the end of this year.
Kyle Samejima is the outreach director at Cooperative Energy Futures, a group partnering with EPNI to install the solar panels. She said they can tap about $1.5 million in federal money from those tax credits, but only if they can start the project this year.
“Time is of the essence in getting ownership into the hands of East Phillips Neighborhood Institute,” Samejima said. “Our team is working furiously to get everything in place.”
After the promised state support didn’t fully materialize, EPNI made an offer in September to buy the Roof Depot site for less money than originally proposed — but the city declined the request to adjust the deal.
Erik Hansen, director of the city’s Department of Community Planning and Economic Development, told EPNI in a letter that the city needed the full amount of money. He said the city had spent $19.1 million purchasing and maintaining the Roof Depot site and will need to spend more to build the waterworks site elsewhere.
“The City must ensure good stewardship of this parcel,” Hansen wrote.
EPNI representatives and city officials have been meeting this fall to try to negotiate a new deal. In a joint statement Thursday, representatives for EPNI and the city of Minneapolis said they don’t have a deal yet.
“It is unlikely EPNI will be able to meet the terms of the current agreement,” they said in the statement. “We have met several times and appreciate the City and EPNI’s willingness to negotiate about the future of this site. Both parties are engaged in the process to develop a possible new agreement.”
Colten Schmidt said he doesn’t want to see the decade of planning by EPNI and community partners go to waste.
“What is at stake, I believe, is a brick-and-mortar space for climate resilience here in the East Phillips community, and also a whole lot of lost trust,” Colten Schmidt said.
If EPNI and the city can’t reach a deal, a city spokesperson said the site would go up for sale. The city declined to say what would happen to the public money already allocated to the community project.
