Community Responses

Frogtown/Thomas-Dale St. Paul

Nieeta Presley's Response

Aurora St Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation (ASANDC) is a community development agency that has served the Frogtown and Rondo areas of Saint Paul for last 36 years. Our services include physical development (the construction and rehabilitation of affordable homes and retail space), economic development (an entrepreneurship training program and business retention work), and human/social and political development (political education, a resident leadership and youth development training progarams) .

Tia Williams, Tou SaiKo Lee and MK Nguyen's Response

CURA’s Gentrification research is amplifying the voices of the community who have been telling stories of displacement for years. Stories need facts and numbers to back them up, especially on an issue as amorphous as “gentrification.” Numbers and facts combined with community action might just be enough to turn the tide on this displacement tsunami we are experiencing along the Green Line.

Hamline-Midway St. Paul

Erin Pavlica's Response

So here is my concern for my neighbourhood, after living here for 18 years. Progress can be beautiful and devastating all at once. I love not having prostitutes share my bus stop corner anymore but it has been sad to see so many businesses, that I could WALK to, leave Midway (& Union Park since most of the retail is technically in their district). We are sorely lacking basic businesses that we all frequent outside of our 'hood. Bread bakery, family-friend pub, and an ice cream parlor to name a few! Rest in Peace Borders Books.

Renee Spillum's Response: Gentrification is Not Happening in Hamline Midway

This study makes a claim that Hamline Midway is experiencing gentrification – a poorly defined and even more poorly understood phenomenon that pervades public consciousness in times of economic growth, notably the 1990s and mid 2000s, and in the last few years in the Twin Cities.

North Minneapolis

Shannon Jones' Response

Gentrification – This is the word of the day.  Who controls the land?  My great grandmother, raised my grandmother who was born in 1918 in North Minneapolis, as was my mother, as was I, and now I am raising my children here.

Jeff Skrenes' Response

It seems like nobody can agree on what “gentrification” really is, but everyone knows it when they see it. The most common expression of the term is that people are forced to move directly due to rising costs of living, although I see it as a more slow and insidious change that rarely draws a direct line to people’s immediate housing choices. Gentrification can be a gradual change in demographics that is more like the anecdote of the frog in the cooking pot who does not realize the water is boiling around him.

Northeast Minneapolis

Brenda Kayzar's Response

I appreciate CURA’s invitation to respond to the blog post about gentrification in Northeast (NE). A disclaimer; I did not review the ‘Snapshot” of interviews within the context of CURA’s full gentrification study. My response focuses on the interview content and is a critique of how narratives can misshape our understanding issues such gentrification when taken out of context. 

Michael Tolan's Response

The recent growth of Northeast Minneapolis follows a familiar blueprint of neighborhood change seen across the country, including a few decades prior in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District: Artists move into a former industrial area which has experienced disinvestment; they create a sense of vibrancy attractive to outsiders; and they are eventually unable to afford the area whose success they made possible.

South Minneapolis

Jessica Lopez Lyman's Response: Bodies Who Leisure in Midtown

I was born and raised in St. Paul’s Midway and have lived on and off in South Minneapolis neighborhoods (Longfellow, Corcoran and Powderhorn) for over ten years. As an artist, previous renter now landlord, previous student now full-time academic, I can trace my personal transformation alongside the neighborhoods I have lived. When I moved back from California after attending graduate school, I was shocked by the changes in the Midway and Frogtown neighborhoods.

Anna Meyer & Roxanne Anderson's Response

The gentrification that is in process in South Minneapolis is growing and ever apparent. The building our business and community organizations we are stakeholders in are in is now on its third owner in just three months. The price of the building  increased by over $100,000 with each flip of the building ownership and now the price has gone up again. This building was listed at $250,000 at the beginning of 2017 and now less than 12 months later is being quoted at $525,000, more than doubling in price. This of course affects us directly because with each turn over, rent increases.