‘Time is up’ for Minneapolis buildings left hazardous and vacant for years
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Minneapolis city leaders stood in front of a boarded-up Burger King along West Broadway Ave. Monday morning.
The former fast food restaurant with black plastic covering the old sign has been registered as vacant for almost four years, taking up space along the street as an eyesore deemed unsafe for use. But now, per an amended ordinance, the building owners could have to fork over $24,000 annually for letting it sit.
“Those who have been here for extended, prolonged periods of time, your time is up,” said Minneapolis City Council member Robin Wonsley, who authored the amendment. It was unanimously approved last Thursday in a move to reduce the number of empty buildings in the city.
About 320 vacant and hazardous buildings are logged in the Minneapolis vacant building registration, with over half concentrated in the city’s north side. Some have been seemingly abandoned for more than a decade, with nearly a hundred empty for five plus years.
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“Some of these properties were vacant homes and apartment buildings that residents were justifiably frustrated to see empty, especially knowing that we have a housing crisis,” Wonsley said. “These chronically vacant and hazardous properties were creating both public health and public safety issues for our neighborhoods, and also bringing down local property values and basically not contributing anything of value to the community.”
The change gives empty building owners two years to bring their buildings up to code. A failure to do so drops the buildings off of the registry, deeming those spots ineligible for city resources to assist with selling, demolishing or rehabilitating the property.
It also more than triples the financial penalty for letting buildings sit empty from a flat fee of $7,100 to up to $24,000 annually. Owners can apply for a third year before paying citation fees if they can prove progress toward revitalizing their buildings.
Community leaders are celebrating the change as a tool for holding property owners accountable and bringing more justice to marginalized neighborhoods.
Felicia Perry, the economic development manager at the Rondo Community Land Trust, celebrated the ordinance Monday morning. She said she’s called north Minneapolis home for more than 40 years and has witnessed the harm vacancies can bring.
“These properties are often concentrated in areas of poverty and communities of color, exacerbating existing disparities and hindering economic growth,” she said, adding that the previous system “perpetuated cycles of neglect and disinvestment.”
Housing attorney Daniel Suitor said communities of color were often hit hardest by the 2008 mortgage crisis and recessions.
“And these are the communities where absentee owners are just letting buildings sit empty, and these absentee owners are bad neighbors,” Suitor said. “I want good neighbors and I want more neighbors.”
Suitor said he lives near an empty single-family home on the city’s southside that was long owned by a Georgia-based LLC. It seems to have been empty for over a decade, he said, with squirrels and occasional people coming and going.
He’s hopeful the ordinance will help pave the way for more empty buildings to transition into housing, which Council member Wonsley said is part of the goal — along with increasing local business.
Kristel Porter, the executive director of the West Broadway Business and Area Coalition, says that’s a need. Vacancies have taken a toll on the north Minneapolis corridor, she said, deterring people from visiting.
“Because there’s no foot traffic, they’re not bringing in the money that they need,” she said. “And we really need to activate these spaces so that we can start creating more of a destination spot.”