City staff is not supposed to recommend a developer that is actively under investigation! The City of Minneapolis is proposing to award Sherman Associates Tax Increment Financing to develop West Broadway from Girard Ave N to Oliver Avenue.  We, the undersigned, oppose the use of TIF for this site.  We submit that if the City uses tax funds as an incentive, it should be used to meet a comprehensive set of goals that are not met in this case.

Sherman has held the exclusive development rights to this block of vacant land owned by the City since in 2015.  In 2015, the city said it was confident the developer would be positioned to move forward within 18-24 months. 

Despite development not occurring, the City council continued to extend the exclusive rights and now offers public financing for the project, including the Tax Increment Financing.  If approved, the City will rebate the developer for a portion of the development costs using incremental tax revenue increases until the developer’s costs have been covered-up to 26 years for this project.

We don’t object to affordable housing and support the City’s 2040 goals to this end.  But we also support the City’s goals to eliminate disparities in wealth and increase living wage jobs equitably.  We believe these goals intersect with affordable housing and are not independently achieved. 

Housing developers with close ties to North Minneapolis are accountable to improve the overall economic health of North Minneapolis.  They provide local jobs when developing properties, they are more often black or person of color owned and managed, and we believe partner with the residents of properties resulting in better long term management.  This developer does not have ties to our neighborhood and is only willing to develop this project in our neighborhood if incented with our taxes.

While the proposed mixed income housing development is positive for the area, we want to see a holistic benefit to North Minneapolis, in wealth building, job creation and housing.  We demand the City not merely consider “could this project be built without TIF”, but whether this project can be built by and for people accountable to North Minneapolis.  

Sherman and Associates has a history of building properties with poor materials as well as using public funding to build a project for the community then selling it to make a profit within a short period of time. They have many unresolved complaints against them by their tenants and have been known to be poor property managers in minority and low income communities. North Minneapolis wants and needs more affordable housing, and we support developers that come from inside our community not Sherman & Associates with a $5 billion portfolio yet feels they still need to benefit from our tax increase to build substandard housing for our neighborhood.

We, the undersigned, support the use of TIF to benefit the greater good of the community only if it benefits everyone from the bottom up. We, the undersigned, would like to see the development rights of this property to no longer be extended to Sherman & Associates and a public notice to be widely shared amongst local developers of the opportunity to develop with a timeline for development to take place within 2 years from the time of ‘development rights transfer.’

While Sherman and Associates has very few Regulatory Services complaints (the presence of which precludes the sale of city-owned property to problem landlords), Sherman’s open investigation by the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights related to tenant complaints at Riverside Plaza is ample reason for pause.