Details emerge for new Southside Safety Center

The city has shared more details about what the new South Minneapolis Community Safety Center at 2633 Minnehaha Ave. will look like when it opens.
On July 11, Ward 2 Council Member Robin Wonsley held a small community conversation at Matthews Park about the new center that is expected to open early next year.
“We are moving toward a new public safety system, one that emphasizes a comprehensive public health approach that goes beyond policing, and this building will be a physical embodiment of that direction,” said Wonsley.
The vision emerging for the large, 78,000 square-foot, single-story building located in the Seward industrial area, has two sections, each with their own entrance and focus. The back, or eastern, half will serve the needs of the police department. This includes an indoor, secure parking garage for the department’s vehicles and a pedestrian entrance on the north side of the building.
The police department would use 60-65% of the building, or 40-50,000 square feet, for offices, meeting rooms, lockers, showers and other operational needs in addition to parking.
The remaining 35-40%, or 28-38,000 square feet at the front, or western, half of the building would be designed and used for non-police purposes.
This would be accessed through a larger front entrance that would likely include 311 staff to greet and assist visitors. Inside there would be bathrooms, a drinking fountain, small meeting rooms, quiet/prayer/lactation rooms, a large meeting space, kitchen, medication disposal, a children’s play area, flexible office space, a kiosk to apply for county benefits, and a communication center.
The outside front area would include outdoor parking, art, a bike repair station, signage for marketplace exchanges and a new bus stop.
Amanda Harrington, who is the city’s director of community safety design and implementation, shared information about the facility at the Seward meeting and provided an update of the plans to the city council’s public health and safety committee the day before on July 10.
At the committee meeting Harrington explained how the results of community engagement, visits to three facilities that have implemented comparable projects, and an assessment of particular needs in the area were used to identify potential non-police uses for the facility.
Harrington noted that the Denver Assessment, Intake, & Diversion Center they visited had a “trauma-informed way to deliver services to people and had secure space for people to store belongings and access to computers to use to apply for services and employment.”
City staff also visited the Santa Anna Justice Center. There 14 social service agencies use a non-police section of the center at various times and offer a “one stop shop for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking and elder abuse,” according to Harrington.
The city of Santa Anna has agreements with the providers but “the city does not actually pay them, which I found surprising,” she added.
Harrington and other staff working on the project have identified 15 potential kinds of services that could use the space. These include services or resources related to affordable housing, food insecurity, human trafficking, medical needs, mental health, youth support, addiction services, domestic violence, human trafficking, legal help, and unsheltered homelessness. In addition to the 311 staff, the building could also serve as an office, or home base, space for the city’s safety ambassadors, crime prevention specialists and culturally specific navigators. City behavior crises response teams or violence interrupters could possibly use the facility as well, but that is not currently in the plan.

Community member viewpoints
At the Matthews Park meeting a variety of views were shared.
One resident expressed frustrations about the long process and was ready to have a greater police presence in the neighborhood.
Some residents raised concerns about whether people would feel comfortable going into a building with police in it to get help, especially if they were suspicious or fearful of the police.
“Attendees also expressed interest in seeing the creation of a community advisory board that would help oversee and support the safety center itself and the activities within it,” said Wonsley later. “My office looks forward to bringing many of the concerns and ideas raised at this meeting back to City Hall, and to city staff.”
Another person agreed that mental health services should be a priority, but they wanted to see them available for police. “Mental health is a good thing for police,” they said, sharing concerns about the divided facility. “This seems silly if it does not help our police become better,” they said, adding that mental health or veterans’ services might be a good fit and that the proposed separation would not help police develop better connections with community.
Absent from this meeting was anyone from the city’s police department.
“Despite the safety center having policing as a core service, I am not aware of conversations about the safety center that have been held with police and community together to discuss the visions and concerns,” said Michele Braley after participating in the Seward discussion. “If the purpose of the safety center is to build connections and trust, this needs to start with the planning process, not once the building and services are in place.”
Braley has more than a decade of experience working with police administrators, city attorneys and police officers as Executive Director of Seward Longfellow Restorative Justice. “I have been to several community meetings about the safety center and my concerns about the mixing of policing and community services at this re-imagined 3rd precinct have not been alleviated,” she said.
She believes that there are still issues that need to be addressed for it to be safe for community members to visit the center for non-police matters. “For example, in policing, expectations of confidentiality are often superseded by an officer’s belief that they are acting in the interest of public safety,” she said. “This puts those visiting the safety center for social services at real risk of being observed, interviewed, or even detained by an officer who believes they are acting in the best interest of public safety.”
She wants this potential problem to be carefully considered and addressed in future planning for the center.

Next steps: requests for proposals
As a next step, the city plans to issue a “request for information” (RFI) to reach out to all potential service providers in the area to see who is interested in co-locating in the building. Based on those responses, they will develop a more formal request for proposals for specific services that would operate there.
At the same time, the city is drafting a request for proposals (RFP) for a design and architecture firm to help with layout and renovation of the building. Harrington expects the social services RFI and the design RFP to be coming before the council in August for review.
The funding for the center and especially for the non-police city staff and others who might work there has already been a topic of discussion.
Wonsley said that the city council “will be continuing to protect funding for unarmed initiatives in the building, which is crucial for ensuring that it does not revert to being a status quo police precinct.”