Roof Depot secures win from legislature

By H. Jiahong Pan

Contributing Writer

upporters of the East Phillips Urban Farm and the city of Minneapolis will get some serious funding from the Minnesota Legislature that will allow the urban farm to roll out their vision and the city to expand their water yard plan at another location.

The legislature will allocate $6.5 million to the City of Minneapolis to abandon plans to expand their water yard at the Roof Depot site, and instead develop it elsewhere. The legislature also allocated an additional $5.7 million to the city if East Phillips organizers can raise an additional $3.7 million needed to buy the land from the city by Labor Day weekend.

The funding will allow the city to replenish $16.7 million in funds that it expended to plan an expansion of its existing water yard site in East Phil- lips, which is roughly bounded by Longfellow and Hiawatha Avenues and 26th and 28th Streets.

The city began planning for a new, consolidated facility for its water operations in the early 1990s, identifying and securing the Roof Depot site for expansion in 2016. However, in 2014, East Phillips neighbors convened and developed a vision for the site, which would include afford- able housing and communitybased business incubators.

In addition, they opposed the city’s expansion plans because they worried that demolishing a building sitting atop toxic arsenic waste, which could be dispersed, and replacing it with a facility to accommodate increased truck traffic would increase pollution and exacerbate the already poor health outcomes that residents face.

Dean Dovolis, president of East Phillips Neighborhood Initiative (EPNI), thanked the Minneapolis delegation to the state legislature for securing the funding needed to secure the Roof Depot site. “This is a win for both the community and for Minneapolis,” said Dovolis in a statement. “We deeply appreciate the Minneapolis delegation’s assistance in reaching this historical deal to invest in a visionary model for public health and economic development.”

In a statement, Mayor Jacob Frey lauded the development. “The City’s goal since the start of this process has been to build a facility that allows us to continue to provide clean water to the people of Minneapolis,” said Mayor Frey in a press release. “This agreement would move us closer to that goal, address community wishes, and avoid double charging Minneapolis property taxpayers.

East Phillips currently has a