MINNEAPOLIS — Editor's note: The video above first aired on KARE 11 in July 2023.
The Minneapolis City Council voted on Tuesday to move forward with a plan to move its Third Precinct police station downtown into Century Plaza.
The First Precinct, currently located at 10 N. 4th St. downtown, will also move into the now-vacant plaza, which is located at 1101 Third Ave. S. near the city's Convention Center and an Interstate 35W on-ramp.
The original building, which stood at East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in the city's Longfellow neighborhood, was destroyed during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Floyd, a Black man, was killed when former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a white man, held his knee to Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin was ultimately sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for Floyd's murder.
The plan to move the Third Precinct was proposed by Council President Andrea Jenkins in mid-July. At the time, Jenkins said she believed putting the two precincts together in the downtown plaza building could help the community and police department "come to some consensus" that the groups haven't yet been able to fully achieve.
"We were talking about moving the First Precinct into this large building, Century Plaza, and it sits almost right on the border of the Third Precinct," Jenkins said. "So, my thought was, if we have the First Precinct moving into this building, why can't we really co-locate the Third Precinct there, while we work with community... and really try to come to some consensus that we haven't been able to come to up to this point."
Before the plan was passed by the council Tuesday, the city had also proposed two other sites for a new Third Precinct building, including at the current Lake and Minnehaha site or building it a few blocks away on Minnehaha. The estimated cost for the former option was reportedly $12 million, and the latter, for double that price.
The third and final option to move downtown came days after the results of a community engagement survey were released, showing neighbors wanted a more nuanced set of options for the precinct's future site, rejecting those ideas that would place officers back at the spot that, just three years ago, had been destroyed.
"This will help ease the concerns that many of my constituents have and it will allow them to begin to heal," Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez, who introduced a motion to eliminate the former Third Precinct site from being considered, said ahead of the July vote.
The council went on to approve Chavez's motion, confirming the measure wouldn't be referred back to a committee and paving the way for a vote on co-locating the two precincts at Century Plaza.
While plans are now in motion for Century Plaza, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in July alluded to potentially putting a "Community Safety Hub" somewhere in the Third Precinct, which his administration said would streamline MPD with social services, such as mental health response or violence prevention.
"We want to make sure we can provide safety and service in the immediacy to the residents of the Third Precinct," Frey said, "and simultaneously, look forward to that big vision."
An outline presented to the council Tuesday laid out the details for the co-location project, which is expected to be complete by January of 2025 and cost around $41 million.
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