ABOUT US: RESOURCE CENTER OF THE AMERICAS
INTRODUCTION–PROGRAMS–MISSION–HISTORY–FINANCES
PERSONNEL–OUR HOME–2000 HIGHLIGHTS–CONTACT US
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Creating a New Home

In 1999, after 16 years housed in church basements near the University of Minnesota, the Resource Center acquired and renovated a 15,000-square-foot building at 3019 Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis. The neighborhoods near our new location include tens of thousands of recent Latino immigrants.

The story of our new home began in early 1998. The Lutheran Episcopal Center, our landlord since 1991, was selling half of the building, a church at 317 17th Ave. SE, near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. We were also outgrowing our space—the church’s basement. So the Resource Center board of directors began considering a move. Our fate was sealed later that year when the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis decided to close the Newman Center, the building across the street. Newman housed our café, parts of our annual Fiesta de las Américas, and most of our coffeehours and Spanish classes (it was also the original site of our offices and library).

Longtime Resource Center member Dr. David Parker read about our plight in our monthly newsletter Connection to the Americas and contacted his neighborhood association, the Longfellow Community Council, to help us find a new home in that south Minneapolis area. Donna Sanders, Longfellow’s business development staffer, connected us to a couple of community-minded property owners who had an 80-year-old building they wanted to donate to a nonprofit organization that would help turn around a blighted intersection. The couple, as it happens, was Bill Halverstadt and Donna Holtan Halverstadt, tried-and-true backers of the Resource Center and many other progressive groups.

We compared the Halverstadt site with other possibilities, and we weighed the merits of moving to Lake Street and owning a building. In November 1998, the board decided to take the plunge. We signed the ownership transfer December 31.

In January 1999, former Opus Corporation construction manager Lyle Meyer agreed to manage the project on a volunteer basis. We enlisted Jon Hall, a professional financial consultant, to help develop business plans for the new café and bookstore and to calculate construction costs, a new operating budget and contingencies.

And we hired architect Peter Kramer and his firm, Roark, Kramer, Kosowski/DESIGN. Based on advice from Kramer and others, we decided it would be too difficult to fund and organize major improvements after moving into the building. So we made plans to gut and rebuild all three floors before moving. To pay for it, we launched a capital campaign that amounted to more than twice our annual operating budget.

In February 1999, we chose Flannery Construction to be the general contractor. Flannery, a mid-sized St. Paul firm, had a long history of working with nonprofits, a strong affirmative-action record, and years of experience in rehabilitation projects in the core cities. The Resource Center eventually signed a contract with Flannery worth more than $900,000.

February also brought a Longfellow Community Council pledge for $100,000 of the group’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program funds. It was not only the first six-figure contribution in our $1.6 million campaign, but a crucial demonstration of community support. The Minneapolis Community Development Agency has administered the contribution.

After two months of planning with staff members, Kramer finished the building’s schematic design in April 1999. The design mapped the basic floor plan and accounted for lighting, traffic flow, energy efficiency, wheelchair accessibility, security and many other factors.

• The first floor is devoted to our retail programs, including the bilingual Bookstore of the Americas and the Café of the Americas, a 30-seat shop with specialty fair-trade coffee, homemade baked goods and Latin American food.

• The second floor includes our public Penny Lernoux Library, a meeting room, and work spaces for staff members, interns and volunteers.

• The basement is for four classrooms, including one big enough for most of our Saturday morning “coffeehours.” Whenever the Resource Center is not using the rooms, they’ll be available for community and neighborhood groups.

• Outside the building, lighting and street parking are abundant. We made every effort to escape from a lease for three billboards on top of the building, but it looks like the eyesores won’t come down for two years. We also let the billboard company know our concerns about the advertising content (we’d rather not work under ads for Howard Stern or liquor, for example).

For the south side of the building, we made a contingency plan for a larger entryway and a green space with trees and park benches. That plan depends on demolishing a “sauna” adjacent to the building and ripping out its parking lot. The sauna, shut down since 1998, has been the focus of intense neighborhood organizing for more than five years. In May, the owner was convicted on two felony counts of soliciting. Pending her appeals, which could take months or even years, we expect Hennepin County to seize the property and allow us to carry out the green-space plan. It will make a big difference for the neighborhood.

On June 23, 1999, our “wine tour” of the building attracted donors, public officials and neighborhood businesses and supporters. More than 200 people turned out, including Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, Minneapolis city council members Jim Niland and Kathy Thurber, State Representative Wes Skogland, a representative of Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, and Dick Johnson, president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. The energy was tremendous.

Construction was delayed for three weeks to get a handle on rising costs due to the booming economy. The sheet-rock supply, for example, was so short it may as well have been gold.

On June 17, Deconstruction Services, a project of the nearby Green Institute, went through the basement and the first and second floors, recovering materials that could be salvaged and resold. It was exciting to support the institute’s work in job training, environmental stewardship and community development.

For a week beginning June 25, Resource Center staffer Larry Weiss led a massive volunteer effort that completely tore out the basement and first floor. More than 25 people, some of them skilled construction workers, came together to save the organization $25,000 in demolition costs. In hot weather, they knocked down walls and ceilings, dismantled a staircase, and hauled away tons of unusable tires, sheet rock, lumber, concrete slabs and junk accumulated over the building’s lifespan, including a Ford Model A wheel. The volunteers included César Arizmendy, David Baker, Bill Barnett, Phil Deering, Erica Englund, Jeff Flory, Michael Guest, Greta Hagg, Scott Hagg, Louise Hotka, Steve Hunter, Paul Irvine, Rick Jacobs, Bill Kingsbury, Joe Knaeble, Barb Kucera, Sarah Ludwizak, Chip Mitchell, Maren Olson, Jack Shelton, Jack Sieloff, Troy Trooien, Steve Woletz, Roger Youngs and Mattie Weiss.

Flannery, the general contractor, began work July 5, 1999. Soon crews of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, laborers, masons and others were all hard at work.

That month, we signed a pledge with the building-trades union, promising to use organized labor for the entire construction project. Recognizing that this raised the renovation cost and curtailed our use of “sweat equity,” the Building Trades Market Recovery program agreed to contribute $40,000 to our capital campaign. The arrangement was a wonderful example of community groups working together to achieve a common goal.

The construction proceeded smoothly. The crews finished each stage on time, and the entire project finished ahead of schedule. We were impressed with the quality of union labor and the diversity of the workers, including women. Flannery superintendent Kenneth Allen managed the project with skill, patience and a willingness to accommodate our many requests.

With construction nearly complete, the bookstore and café began setting up in early November 1999. We moved our offices and the Penny Lernoux Library into the second floor December 6. The basement rooms were ready for classes, “coffeehours” and community meetings the following month.

Amid the tremendous effort to fund and renovate the new facility, not to mention the huge effort of moving, we spoke with community groups and individuals on how best to use the new space. The new physical structure was only the beginning. What’s most exciting is the new programming, new partnerships and new vision that the building is allowing us to create.

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