SUMMARY

Last year was a year of recovery and rebirth for Lake Street. Following the traumatic events of 2020, our small business community and neighbors came together to chart a new path for Lake Street - one that would center community voices, equitable development, and a Lake Street where everyone would feel at home.

As the cranes popped up and buildings started to be rebuilt, the Lake Street Council worked hand in hand with business owners and community stakeholders to ensure that community voices were and are centered in the rebuild and that affordability and equity would be driving values for each project. We invested in new projects with predevelopment support and helped small business owners with the financing and tools they needed to create their own vision of Lake Street - one that focused on community needs and helped them build generational wealth through property and business ownership.

More than that we continued to ensure that small businesses - still reeling from COVID-19 and the uprising - had the support they needed to keep their doors open, welcome back customers, and continue to grow and succeed. We held events, invested in public art and murals, and supported small businesses in promoting and marketing themselves to new audiences.

Together we have begun down the long road to recovery, and together, we will keep our momentum going.

Sincerely,

Allison Sharkey
Executive Director
Lake Street Council

There are still some big holes in the fabric of our street, but 2021 also saw some major rebuilding projects begin to fill our empty spaces. Important Lake Street employers like Cub Foods and US Bank felt confident to open their doors again and provide much-needed services to our community. 

The Lake Street Council also played a major role in helping fill in our street’s gaps. In the last year, we provided $1.4 million dollars in grants and forgivable loans through our Predevelopment and Acquisition Fund to help 20 entrepreneurs begin to rebuild from the ground up. 

These funds are helping local owners of destroyed buildings to rebuild. Without this support, some of these entrepreneurs may have felt the need to sell their property to investors who aren’t rooted in our community. We’re making sure that our community gets to rebuild in a way that preserves affordability so that Lake Street can still be home to small, independent businesses.

In addition, some incredible redevelopment projects have been proposed for our empty spaces, including affordable housing, state-of-the-art green buildings, an immigrant-owned theater, and a coworking space for Black creative entrepreneurs.

Beyond direct funding to support entrepreneurs and Lake Street’s recovery efforts - we’ve continued to advocate for additional funding from local and state governments.

In the last year, we:

• Supported efforts by state legislators to establish economic recovery funds for commercial corridors damaged during the civil unrest and secured an allocation of $40 million through DEED’s Main Street Economic Revitalization program. 

• Along with others, we successfully advocated for an increase in the City of Minneapolis’s Commercial Property Development Fund, from $4 million to $10 million. 

• Hosted the Governor & Lt. Governor on Lake Street to advocate for an additional $25 million to support the needs of small, BIPOC businesses.