MINNEAPOLIS — To fill vacant properties in the downtown corridor, the city of Minneapolis is currently reviewing applications for the Vibrant Storefronts Initiative, which will provide subsidized rent to artists in the Loring Park area over the course of two years.
Three of the buildings with available space are located on Harmon Place, a city-designated historic district that was once home to a thriving automotive industry.
Katie Cashman, the Ward 7 Council Member and one of the leading advocates for the initiative, said potential tenants could include artists, arts organizations and arts businesses.
"It's open to a wide range of media, not just visual arts but theater, dance, music, you name it. Certainly, it's a huge benefit to the artists themselves, being able to work in a brick-and-mortar space," Cashman said. "Also, for the property owners, they haven't been able to find retail tenants to fill their space. They'll greatly benefit, and it allows us to get at this issue of our property tax base falling in the city of Minneapolis."
The city council has allocated an initial $250,000 this year for the storefront program in Loring Park, but Mayor Frey has proposed more than $1 million in the 2025 budget for an expansion of the program into Uptown.
Cashman said she hopes Minneapolis can ultimately follow the model of Berlin, Germany — the city where she received her master's degree — by establishing an art hub.
"After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the city heavily invested in artists and you see the impact of that today, with Berlin being worldwide recognized for being an artistic city. Let's put Minneapolis on the map in that way as well," Cashman said. "You felt that spirit while you were there, that creatives were welcome there, creatives can thrive there."
Rod Morabito, an employee at the longtime company Anderson Crane on Harmon Place, said he's noticed a lot of artists in the neighborhood lately scoping out the properties involved in the Vibrant Storefronts initiative. The city will notify applicants about funding awards next month, and if selected, those artists would sign two-year leases with up to $50,000 available each year.
"It would be nice to see some of these buildings that have been unused for so long, to get renovated and see more traffic in the area," Morabito said. "I think we can really help pick up our city."
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mayor Frey made a brief mention of the arts program as a part of the city's wider downtown revitalization efforts.
Frey also signed a separate ordinance — co-sponsored by Cashman and fellow council member Michael Rainville — to streamline the process for developers to convert empty office spaces into housing.
One such project, at the Northstar Center, is already underway to create more than 200 lofts in a building once used for Wells Fargo and Hennepin County dispatch.
"It means activating underutilized space so it's not just a bunch of a desks in a vacant office," Frey said. "It means adding art, it means adding residents, and a big part of adding residents, was this ordinance that just passed."