One year after George Floyd’s murder, Minneapolis’ businesses are still reeling
“Some businesses have been able to get back online and reopen their stores,” he said. “The flip side is businesses that were under-insured are staring at a pile of rubble.”
Rebuilding Minneapolis
“We don’t have an accurate number, but it’s certainly more than $1 billion,” Democratic state senator Patricia Torres Ray told CNN Business. “Rebuilding Minneapolis is a very expensive proposal.”
Funds held up
“The Republicans in the Minnesota senate have argued that the damage that was done by rioters in the community is not something we have the obligation to rebuild,” Ray said. “This community has been impacted by the civil unrest and it’s no different than what happened during the tragic events of any other time.”
Unequal recovery
Minneapolis business leaders say much of the remaining damage is concentrated in areas of the city where a disproportionate number of people of color live and own businesses, including a two-mile stretch of Lake Street in South Minneapolis south of downtown.
The area suffered an estimated $500 million in damages, according to Allison Sharkey, executive director of the Lake Street Council, a non-profit business association that’s served the region since 1968.
Sharkey said warmer weather and vaccine distribution has restored “a feeling of hope” for the estimated 80% to 90% of Lake Street business owners who have reopened since last year’s riots ended.
“The ones that haven’t, maybe 50 that were completely displaced, a couple of them have returned to new locations,” she told CNN Business.
One of those business owners was restaurateur Ruhel Islam, 43, owner of the local Curry in a Hurry, a Bangladeshi and Indian restaurant that opened in October, five months after Islam’s former restaurant, Gandhi Mahal, was burned down.
“I was a little bit traumatized when I saw someone killing a man with a knee like you slaughter a cow,” Islam told CNN Business. “We value life over a building. We value life over properties.”
Islam said residents in his community responded to his overture by donating enough money for him to open his new temporary restaurant while he works with the Pangea World Theater to reopen a new and improved Gandhi Mahal restaurant in the future.
“We’re collaborating with them to build a restaurant, theater, outdoor space,” Islam explained. “Ultimately it will cost more money, but we don’t just want to rebuild. We want to build something better that’s a symbol to the world of peace, prosperity and success.”