Denied: City Council says no to 38th & Chicago road tax and mayor’s choice for Peoples’ Way

The City Council cast two votes related to George Floyd Square on June 11, 2026. One denies the mayor’s choice to give exclusive development rights of the Peoples’ Way to the Minnesota Agape Movement. The other frees property owners from being assessed to cover a portion of the road reconstruction at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.
The votes came a week after community members held a press conference at the Peoples’ Way calling attention to the city’s lack of transparency and communication in the process, forcing neighbors to pay for a project they didn’t ask for, and what organizers called a “pattern of refusal to integrate community feedback.”
The mayor’s recommendation for the Peoples’ Way came more than a year after the city was going to decide which entity would be granted development rights for the former Speedway property. Of four applicants, it was down to two: Agape had proposed a six-story building; Rise & Remember, a memorial garden and gathering space.
The recommendation of Agape was at odds with the City’s own survey, conducted in February-March of 2025, which showed Rise & Remember as the clear preference (See survey results online at southwestvoices.news, “City readies for reconstruction of 38th and Chicago”).
“Despite what the survey results showed us – and despite these results being known since April 2025 – the city was about to go down a path that the community did not support,” said Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez in a statement.
The selection process was unclear, prompting at least one council member to ask for an evaluation matrix. At one point during the Business, Housing and Zoning Committee meeting on June 2, CPED’s Miles Mercer said, “I’ve emphasized [to Agape] they really need to come up with a viable development concept. It’s not gonna be a six-story building. It could be something smaller. It could be leaving the site largely as it is” (which would have been more closely aligned with Rise & Remember’s proposal).
Mileesha Smith, co-chair of the GFS Community Visioning Council, said she appreciates the council standing up for the community and that the mayor’s recommendation only caused more harm.
“The mayor doesn’t know the relationships and the bonds between the people in the community and why the reaction was what it was,” said Smith. “What the mayor did was make an extra space of [discomfort] in the community.”

Property assessment
Despite years of conversations about road reconstruction, the fact that property owners would be required to foot more than $600,000 of the project’s cost was news to many. Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization Co-executive Director Lane Brown said in a door-to-door survey of residents, business and property owners in the space that only three of 25 were aware of the construction or the special assessments that neighbors were facing.
“We did an audit and the audit failed. The city has not spoken to our residents. The city has not spoken to our elders. They have not given out information about what people should be expecting. If this was graded, if this was a project, the scorecard would be an F,” said Brown. “And we deserve so much better.”
Patrick Rohde, who lives in the only residential property on the 3700 block of Chicago Ave., said he hadn’t received any notification from the city and that information came to him from the community.
“What I know is, I’m gonna be taxed. It’s crazy to me to just hear that out of the blue. I never knew it was part of the plan,” he said. As for other residents, an additional property tax would be a large burden to shoulder.
Rohde represents three generations of his family to live in his home. His mom and dad bought the house in 1994, and he bought it in 2001. He said he’s been there longer than any of the businesses at the Square, with the exception of the church and two auto shops.
“That’s it. Everybody done came and gone. I done seen it all,” he said. Rohde doesn’t want to be forced out of the neighborhood. He tells the kids his stories of the block, and he wants them to be able to tell theirs.
Smith noted that the harm extends beyond simple dollar figures. Trust has never been restored between the city and community, and many feel the disruption from construction has never been adequately addressed.
Julia Johnson, neighbor and organizing director at Black Visions, learned just days before construction began by way of a signpost on her street that she would not be able to park in front of her apartment from June 8 through Nov. 25. Her son is in special education and relies on the bus picking him up in front of their house.
“Nobody told me that,” she said.
Construction began June 8 on 38th St. east of Chicago Ave. and on Chicago Ave. south of 38th St. There are still questions about how the fist sculptures will be preserved. The artist, jordan powell karis, received a letter on June 3 from Mary Altman of the city’s Arts & Cultural Affairs Department. The letter said that if the south and east fist sculptures weren’t moved by June 5, the city would move them – and would not assume liability for any damages that may incur. In subsequent communications, the city said outer fists would be moved for no longer than 24 hours for site work to be completed.
The central fist sculpture will stay in place this year, but according to Altman’s letter “there is a strong possibility that the sculpture could be damaged” and that the city disclaims all liability for damage.
Memorial caretakers and additional community members organized moving the south and east fists to the Peoples’ Way without city support on June 14.
Council Member Soren Stevenson led these efforts to find an alternate funding source for the project in lieu of special assessments, given the “unique and extraordinary circumstances” of the location and construction project.