After delays, Minneapolis is set to replace Third Precinct barriers

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The city of Minneapolis doesn’t own or use razor wire, yet it still wraps around the former Third Precinct police station.

“Most public-facing agencies don’t use razor wire,” City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher said. “It’s very unsafe. It’s meant to be a real barrier and could cause some real harm both to the people putting it up and people if they came over it.”

The razor wire securing the badly damaged Third Precinct building is a remnant left by the National Guard, which came into the city following the civil unrest that broke out after the murder of George Floyd. It’s also become a backdrop in the 2024 campaign as Republicans portray it as a symbol of the mayhem they blame on Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

During the unrest after Floyd’s murder, the Guard placed barbed coils around most city police precincts, Anderson Kelliher said. In most cases, it has been removed since.

Meanwhile, remediation efforts at the former Third Precinct building in south Minneapolis began this spring. So why hasn’t the exterior changed over the last several months?

When city staff set out to clean up the site, making the interior of the building safe was their first priority, Anderson Kelliher said. The idea was that the exterior barriers to the building could come down completely once the interior was safe and secure.

But there were delays in finding qualified vendors from the city’s target market list to do smoke remediation work. Two firms eventually responded to the bid, but it was eventually determined that they could not do the work. There also were delays in obtaining custom glass and extruded steel needed for the building’s doorways and window frames.

Meanwhile, the razor wire, j-barrier and fencing around the property has become political fodder for Republican politicians. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, used the site for an appearance to paint Minneapolis as a dangerous place to live. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson also used the site as a backdrop for an August news conference.

Last week, just days after Vance appeared in front of the precinct, the City Council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution for the “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”

This cleanup was already happening, Anderson Kelliher noted. But with the council’s action, the city operations office will now change its order of operations. Within the next two weeks, the razor wire, J barriers and fencing will come down, she said.

However, it will not look completely remediated after this phase, Anderson Kelliher noted. The razor wire will be replaced by construction fencing that will be pushed back closer to the building. This is a “compromise solution,” she said, as the city is not yet able to fully remove all the exterior barriers until the interior of the building can be fully secured.

The goal of the next two weeks is to make it look more like a construction site and “less of what it’s looked like for the last four-plus years,” she said.

Anderson Kelliher said the action did not come in response to the Vance visit.

“It’s more that we are listening to our elected policy makers here and the community about how that razor wire, j-barrier and fencing feels, and really trying to find a solution that’s going to be more welcoming,” she said.

If JD Vance had turned the cameras to look down Lake Street, the shot would have captured the recently remodeled and reopened century-old Coliseum Building at the corner of East Lake Street and 27th Ave. S. The 85,000-square-foot, mixed-use building reopened after a $28 million rehab. The project looks to make the location a hub for people-of-color-owned businesses.

Chris Montana, co-owner of the Du Nord Cocktail Room and the new Lagniappe restaurant in the Coliseum Building, was one of the first to open a business in the building. The Du Nord Cocktail Room is the “spiritual successor” to the original Du Nord distillery, the nation’s first Black-owned distillery, which closed because of the pandemic in 2020 and stayed closed after it was damaged during the civil unrest after Floyd’s murder.

Now, Montana can see the former Third Precinct building when he walks out of his newly reopened cocktail room and newly opened restaurant. He called the building a “large monument to our most recent time.”

As for the razor wire, Montana said: “I don’t know what we’re protecting with that barbed wire. We want the area to be inviting. We want businesses to come back, and I think they’re less likely to do that when we have barbed wire and fencing.”

At the same time, the building is a part of history, and the business owner said it will take time to figure out what it will become.

“I think that it makes sense for it to be a public space,” he said. “I also think that it makes sense for it to be a public space that is inclusive and not just about one group of people and their experience, particularly one group of people and their experience with the Minneapolis police. I say that as a Black man.”

Council decided last year police would not return to the site. This year, the city proposed that the former site become a “democracy center” with 8,000 square feet of community use space on the ground floor. This proposal garnered backlash from some council members earlier this year, but the city has moved forward with community engagement on its proposed plan.

“I really don’t mind what they’re proposing,” Montana said. “I think that there is something empowering about it being a space that helps people in the city vote. And I kind of love that. And if there’s going to be some other spaces for people to use it and gather and all discuss I mean personally from a business perspective, we’ve always taken the angle that more discussion is better. Creating public spaces where people can get together is always a better solution than something that’s walled off or you turn into some sort of museum exhibit where you walk through and don’t talk. I’d like to see it be used.”

While the former Third Precinct building remains in the remediation and planning phase, Montana noted that the Coliseum Building stands as an example of what can be accomplished through community and partnership.

Funding for the building’s $28 million rehab and remodel came from a mix of private and public players including New Markets Tax Credits, historic tax credits, a Property Assessed Clean Energy loan, philanthropic donations and a variety of grants. Nonprofit Redesign Inc. managed the project with a range of community partners.

“In the time frame that this election is going to happen, we’re not going to be able to turn the Third Precinct from what it has been for the past four years into some beautiful monument to progress,” Montana said. “But I think if JD Vance had turned around, he would have looked across the street, he would have seen that buildings have been rebuilt, economic activity is coming back. And the reason for that — we’re a perfect example, I think — of how government and private organizations can come together to make something happen… That is a story I’d rather tell.”

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at [email protected].

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