The argument against the U of M project, in essence, boils down to suspicions that it's merely an elaborate 2007 version of the Tuskegee Experiments, in which black sharecroppers in Alabama were denied treatment for syphilis under the guise of scientific research.
"Black leadership wants to offer Black people, particularly Black children, to the joint experimental laboratory being built by the University of Minnesota and Hennepin County that will probe the Black mind in order to move us in the 'right' direction," wrote Ron Edwards in a 2006 Spokesman-Recorder column.
Jana Freiband
The Plymouth Plaza Shopping Center was supposed to be a symbol of uplift for Near North's African American community, and was initially named the King Shopping Center in honor of the slain civil rights leader
Jana Freiband
"Black people are smarter than to think, imagine, fantasize that a Tuskegee Experiment could happen in Minneapolis," says NRRC head Sherrie Pugh Sullivan
Related Content
More About
Pugh Sullivan says such analogies are preposterous. "Black people are smarter than to think, imagine, fantasize that a Tuskegee Experiment could happen in Minneapolis," she says. "We are not caught in time warps. We are bright, creative, thinking people."
She also disputes the notion that the only reason the project passed muster is because it's in NRRC's financial interest to make it happen. "We went through one of the most intensive community processes to get to this," she says, noting that two different community referendums were held on the project. "I feel, and I think the board feels, we have a clear mandate."
She says there's a simple reason that NRRC was forced to temporarily lay off its staff at the beginning of August. The Home Ownership Center had failed to provide the funding for foreclosure-prevention services that NRRC was entitled to receive. Over the first eight months of 2007, the nonprofit had tapped roughly $70,000 from other sources to make up for the funding gap.
She argues that, given NRRC's track record of success in a difficult neighborhood, the city and the Home Ownership Center should have worked with the group to solve its financial and administrative problems. "It was a quick, punitive action with no vision, insight, or sensitivity to the plight of people on the North Side," she says. "This is ground zero. There are no more dots. It's just a blob up here of foreclosures. There's not one block you can drive down in this neighborhood and not see a foreclosed house or a boarded property."
In July, the NRRC met with city officials and U of M representatives to discuss the pending sale of the shopping center. One major hurdle was the Plymouth-Penn Corporation's continued failure to make good on its loan from the Neighborhood Revitalization Program. Earlier in the year, the corporation had made a $35,000 payment, bringing it to within $37,619 of clearing the 12-year-old debt. Under the terms worked out in 2001 with the city, the Plymouth-Penn Corporation needed to pay that off by August 1 in order to have the additional $502,000 loan forgiven. In fact, just the previous month, NRP had sent the company a "notice of default" laying out the terms of the deal.
But during the July meeting, Pugh Sullivan says that city officials assured her that the half-million-dollar debt would be forgiven—even if NRRC missed the August deadline. "We left that meeting all feeling like this is a good deal," she says. "We're moving forward."
Wilma McKinnies, chair of NRRC's board of directors, shares this recollection. "We didn't assume," she says. "We asked the question: Was it going to be forgiven? And they said yes."
City officials dispute this. "We did not ever assure them that the $502,000 loan was going to be forgiven," says Chuck Lutz, deputy director of the city's Community Planning and Economic Development office.
Regardless of who's right, there was one key person not in attendance at that meeting: NRP executive director Bob Miller. Since the loans were made through NRP, only his agency had the authority to nullify the terms of the loan agreement.
The August 1 deadline came and went without the Plymouth-Penn Corporation paying off the remaining $37,000. That's when it became clear that Miller had no intention of forgiving the $502,000 loan. In his eyes, the company should not be rewarded for repeatedly welching on its financial obligations. "They are in default," he says. "They had a time period to cure it. They didn't."
