What’s best for the neighborhood? Community organizations have presented competing visions.
Burhan Israfael, a community advocate pictured on January 19, 2024, believes the city of Minneapolis should allow the community to develop the vacant Dania Hall lot in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood into an inclusive space. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal
The future of a historic property in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is in limbo as community and business leaders make arguments for competing visions.
Many of them also worry about the city’s proposal to sell the Dania Hall lot, vacant since a 2000 fire, to private developers.
Dania Hall, at 425 Cedar Avenue S., was built in 1886 as a cultural center for the Society Dania, a Danish immigrant aid organization. The grand building housed a theater, library, offices, retail spaces, and a dining hall for the Cedar-Riverside community, then a hubbub of Scandinavian-American culture.
The building’s prominence declined in the 1940s as neighborhood demographics changed, and it was sold in 1963. Though restoration attempts continued through the 1990s, two significant fires ultimately led to the building’s demolition in 2000.
In September 2023, community leaders asked the city not to sell the property to private developers. In a letter to Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development agency, the West Bank Business Association and several neighborhood nonprofits and small businesses asked the city to delay sale of the Dania Hall lot for private development.
The groups laid out a community-driven development plan that would aim to benefit residents through affordable ownership opportunities for residents and businesses. They requested a comprehensive and open process to attract multiple proposals before any sale.
In early December, the West Bank Business Association held an open house at the Brian Coyle Center to gather community input about future uses for the lot. KJ Starr, the association’s executive director, said the open house was scheduled on a Friday to engage as many people as possible after Friday prayers and also waited five hours to give community members returning from first-shift work an opportunity to comment.
Burhan Israfael, a community organizer who organized the open house on behalf of the association, said, “My interest was to get feedback from the community and educate them about community and land ownership and to show them the benefits of public ownership as opposed to how expensive private ownership is.”
The fight over the Dania Hall property has been going on for decades, Burhan said.
“I don’t think it’s right to give the lot to someone with an entrepreneurial interest,” he said.
Business association’s efforts has critics
Not everyone agrees. A group of East African community leaders came to the open house to protest the West Bank Business Association’s involvement, claiming that it does not represent the majority of Cedar-Riverside residents and that it left community-led organizations out of the process.
Among those opposing the West Bank Business Association’s efforts is Abdisamed “A.J.” Awed, 32, a former Minneapolis mayoral candidate and the executive director of Cedar-Riverside Community Council. A.J. said his organization and the business association had been working together to envision the future use of the Dania Hall property, but that the association had ignored community organizations and their leaders.
He said that when his organization and the business association applied for a Community Specialist Safety Program grant from the city of Minneapolis, the association had agreed that the Cedar-Riverside Community Council would be the lead contractor. But the council withdrew from that agreement “because we could not collaborate with [the business association] in good faith,” A.J. said.
Osman Sheikh, who manages the Riverside Mall and who served on the West Bank Community Association’s board for seven years, also attended the open house. He said he has a vision for the Dania Hall lot that differs from those of both the business association and community council. He proposes that the lot be given to small-business owners primarily East African immigrants, who currently rent spaces at the Riverside Mall.
Osman said neighborhood businesses have been contemplating a future use for the lot for more than six months. One of their proposals is to build a business center that would house 100 to 150 stores specializing in different commodities.
“Business owners [would] contribute to a down payment of 25 percent until the end of the construction, and they [would] pay the balance in monthly mortgage installments with no interest,” he said. “Business owners [would] also own the property collectively, a form of economic empowerment for the community.”
Sahan Journal emailed the office of Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman, who represents the neighborhood, for comment, but did not receive a response.
