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Tapping Federal Funds to Bring Equitable Infrastructure to St. Paul’s Rondo Neighborhood
February 28, 2022
UrbanLand Online featured February’s Infrastructure and Land Use Exchange that focused on the the need for infrastructure investment that increases equity and sustainability. The speakers, Joshua McCarty from Urban3 and Keith Baker from ReConnect Rondo, described the fiscal impacts of the building of I-94 and redlining through data storytelling as well as laid out metrics for a successful project.
“What we’re requesting here is not new in terms of infrastructure investment into a proposition, but we are requesting that this kind of investment happen within communities and neighborhoods in a way that is much more effective. We can measure direct benefit from that investment, which I don’t believe that we can do on either [the U.S. Bank Stadium or Target Field]. It’s not a criticism, but about a shift of a narrative of what we mean by investment in neighborhoods.”
Keith Baker
Executive Director, ReConnect Rondo
The story of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Rondo neighborhood has echoes in the development of dozens of other American cities.
In this African American neighborhood, residents were segregated from their neighbors by official laws and unofficial discrimination. But the cross-class nature of the community (80 percent of St. Paul’s black community lived there) ensured there was a thriving economy that supported businesses and livelihoods despite the larger oppressive context.
From the perspective of white planners and policymakers, however, the area was nonetheless designated a slum. When Interstate 94 was constructed in St. Paul, its path ran through the heart of Rondo.
“Rondo was a growing middle-class community in the ‘50s, before the freeway came,” said Keith Baker, executive director of ReConnect Rondo. “You can see a 61 percent population decline took place between 1950 and 1980. We lost 48 percent of homeownership in the area. That’s a pretty devastating gutting of a community.”
This pattern was repeated in many U.S. cities. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 funded the creation of the interstate highway system, and its construction moved the equivalent amount of soil as 116 Panama Canal projects. It also displaced more than one million residents, disproportionately affecting African Americans and other marginalized groups.
Photo By Urban3
Those areas that are redlined (D-Fourth Grade) have significantly less value today than those areas that were rated at higher grades by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps.
But at the Urban Land Institute’s Restorative Development: Infrastructure and Land Use Exchange forum in February, Baker and his compatriots at ReConnect Rondo described their plan to address, even undo, some of that traumatic history.
Access a recording of the discussion on Knowledge Finder.
Already years in the making, their proposal would place a cap on a substantial chunk of I-94 and create a new 24-acre (9.7 ha) neighborhood on top of it. The idea is to create park space and other cultural amenities, hundreds of permanently affordable homes, and a local business corridor (200 Black-owned businesses were destroyed by the historic highway project).
At the February meeting, Baker and his colleagues laid out the history of Rondo, their conception of the land bridge across the highway, and how they plan to engage with the community around the massive undertaking.
“I keep thinking about missing teeth…we all know what a dental bridge is,” said Joshua McCarty, chief analytics researcher at the consultancy firm Urban3. “That’s a great analogy for what we’re talking about here, restorative development like restorative dentistry. We have parts of our city that are intact [and parts] that are missing.”
The idea is to create a moral and financial case for bridging those missing teeth.
Click here for the full UrbanLand article about the session. The ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative aims to build a movement to promote infrastructure solutions that are equitable and resilient and that enhance long-term community value. Read the full Prioritizing Effective Infrastructure-Led Development publication.