The unused Roof Depot warehouse in the heart of the Minneapolis Southside Green Zone sits atop an arsenic plume from a pesticide plant that operated in the East Phillips neighborhood a century ago.
The neighborhood was declared a Superfund site and most of the arsenic was cleaned up – except under the Roof Depot warehouse, where a parking lot and concrete flooring contained the pollution. But now Minneapolis Mayor Frey and some members of the City Council want to demolish the building to expand an adjacent public works facility to add a parking garage for employees and diesel trucks.
In 2017, Minneapolis launched its Green Zone initiative to support the health and economic development of its most marginalized communities, including East Phillips. But the city’s controversial plan for the warehouse site would do the opposite, exposing the neighborhood to underground arsenic and even more vehicle pollution. This is a big deal: a recent study found that air pollution kills far more people in the Twin Cities than homicide, as reported by the Minnesota Reformer. East Phillips has some of the worst air quality in Minneapolis. Those deaths are disproportionately concentrated in the Minneapolis Green Zones.
Meanwhile, neighborhood leaders have an alternate plan for the site that would meet the goals of the Green Zone; they want to turn the Roof Depot into an indoor urban farm that would bring green jobs, generational wealth, and affordable housing to one of the most polluted and impoverished parts of Minneapolis.
East Phillips community leaders have a dream: To increase the livability of their notoriously polluted neighborhood. And they have a plan: Renovate the former Roof Depot and Sears warehouse site into a community-owned multi-use resource. It would include an indoor Urban Farm – producing healthy foods in what is now a food desert – space for small businesses, jobs training programs, low-income housing, and a large solar array.
Six years ago, the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) was negotiating to buy the Roof Depot site, but the city of Minneapolis intervened and bought the property. The city wants the land to consolidate its Water Works Maintenance Facility, currently in Southeast Minneapolis, with Public Works operations already on Hiawatha Avenue next to the Roof Depot site.
The city is blocking what would be a community asset and replacing it with a project that harms neighborhood livability.
The city is breaking multiple promises it has made, and policies it has passed, to address the kinds of racial injustice that exist in East Phillips.
A neighborhood beset by pollution
East Phillips is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, with 30 percent of residents living below poverty. Residents are disproportionately BIPOC: 40 percent are Hispanic/Latino; 23 percent Black; 20 percent white; and 10 percent Native American. East Phillips includes Little Earth, a 212-unit federally subsidized housing complex with preference given to Native American renters.
East Phillips already is one of the city’s most polluted neighborhoods. The nearby facilities, Smith Foundry and Bituminous Roadways – and the heavy traffic on Hiawatha Avenue – add to the air pollution.
As a result, residents living near the Roof Depot site “experience much higher levels of cumulative pollution than residents from majority white city neighborhoods … leading to [higher] levels of asthma and hospitalization for children and adults living in the surrounding neighborhoods,” according to the city’s Aug. 6, 2021 Racial Equity Impact Analysis.
In addition, a five-acre area around 28th and Hiawatha was a Superfund site, known as the “arsenic triangle.”
From 1938 to 1963, CMC Heartland Partners used the site to produce and store arsenic-based pesticides. In 1994, workers found high arsenic contamination in the soil and groundwater during Hiawatha Avenue’s reconstruction.
Cleanup took place in 2005, but the Roof Depot building still “sits atop an arsenic plume, and its continued presence helps keep the arsenic in the ground,” according to a MinnPost Community Voices column.
Residents are worried that if the city demolishes the buildings and starts other construction, it could again release arsenic into the neighborhood.
More pollution for East Phillips
Public Works’ Hiawatha yard expansion plans include building a three-story parking garage. Overall, the plan would expand the yard’s current 350 outdoor surface parking spaces to 888 parking spaces.
Peak morning traffic, currently 165 vehicle trips, would increase to 365 trips. At full occupancy, the new facility would have 1,800 vehicle trips daily, “including City fleet vehicles (674), heavy fleet vehicles (202) and employee vehicles (924).”
“We are getting a big truck stop,” EPNI Board President Dean Dovolis said. “A big Flying J’s Truck stop except that it’s owned by the city. That’s the last thing we need.”
Former state Rep. Karen Clark, an EPNI Board member, said: “Over and over, we have made it clear: It’s not just a fight about land and a building, it’s about public health.”
Broken promises
The City of Minneapolis seems more enamored with writing racial equity plans than following them. City officials know expanding the Hiawatha Public Works yard in East Phillips is going against the city’s stated values. By moving forward with it, the city is embracing the kind of project it pretends to reject.
In fact, the Public Works expansion violates the City of Minneapolis’ own mission statement, which reads: “Our City government takes strategic action to address climate change, dismantle institutional injustice and close disparities in health, housing, public safety and economic opportunities.” It would also fly in the face of the City’s Green Zone Initiative, the Council’s declaring racism “a public health emergency”, and the 84 page Racial Equity Framework for Transportation.
A flawed environmental review
The city patted itself on the back for voluntarily doing an Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) on the Public Work proposal, even though it wasn’t legally required to do so. (The EAW determines whether the project requires a more detailed environmental impact statement (EIS).)
The city had a vested interest in the outcome. City staff wrote the EAW. It concluded the project didn’t need an EIS. The City Council agreed.
EPNI, with Board member Cassandra Holmes, turned to the courts. They are suing the city of Minneapolis, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB). (Holmes is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe and lives in Little Earth.)
The lawsuit argues Minneapolis can’t do an impartial environmental analysis of its own project. It asked the EQB to assign a different unit of government to do the environmental assessment. The EQB denied the request. The lawsuit is trying to force an independent review.
A suppressed report
An unpublished Public Works report, leaked to the public, analyzed an alternative proposal: Rebuilding and expanding the Water Works yard at its current site in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood instead of moving it to Hiawatha Avenue.
That plan was consistent with the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood’s Master Plan, the report said. It would preserve historic buildings. It would be less expensive.
It also avoided the health risks of expanding the city’s Hiawatha yard, which the report called “problematic.”
Public Works issued a statement downplaying the leaked report, saying it was no more than “an informal, internally drafted report for contingency planning purposes only.”
However, it didn’t say the report’s conclusions were wrong.
Demolition could start soon
EPNI spent years trying to find a mutually acceptable compromise, but could bargain away the community’s fundamental health and well-being only so far.
Dovolis said the city would likely start demolishing the warehouse buildings in October. EPNI plans to seek a court injunction to block it.
“If this [Public Works] project is allowed to commence, it will cause irreparable harm to the East Phillips Community and residents’ health,” the EPNI lawsuit said.
EPNI’s Call for Action
The East Phillips Urban Farm is a visionary model. EPNI is asking for community support for a livable and healthy East Phillips community.
Ways to help:
- Sign the petition now to add to public pressure from across the nation!
- Learn more and donate to help with the legal expense of taking the city to court.