Financial trouble forces Hispanic resource center to close its doors

The south Minneapolis center was founded 25 years ago to help Hispanic Minnesotans.

By Maria Elena Baca, Star Tribune

Last update: August 17, 2007 - 10:40 PM

After 10 years spent helping Latino workers navigate the Twin Cities economy, Teresa Ortiz spent time Friday in an informational meeting about her own job training and unemployment benefits. Her employer, the Resource Center of the Americas, announced Thursday it was closing because of financial woes.

After a weekend review of the organization's finances, the board of directors voted Thursday to close shop at its south Minneapolis headquarters, effective immediately.

"I'm in shock," said Ortiz, who coordinated the Centro de Derechos Laborales, or Worker Rights Center, and the English as a second language program.

"It's such a great loss for the community. We've been here so long and served the community extremely well."

The center was founded 25 years ago to advocate for Hispanic Minnesota residents, and help Minnesotans understand their connection to the rest of the hemisphere.

Although the Resource Center still exists as an organization, all of its 17 full- and part-time employees have been given notice or let go.

While the board of directors works to figure out what comes next, the Bookstore of the Americas and Las Lomas, the cafe in the building's ground floor, also are closed.

Classes, set to start next week, are canceled; students will receive a refund for fees paid. The Minnehaha Avenue building will be put on the market.

For the past several years, the organization has faced financial problems. They only recently became insurmountable.

"This summer we discovered pretty much all of our programming was losing money at a faster rate than we had budgeted for," said Barb Kucera, spokeswoman for the Resource Center's board of directors.

"That along with discovering we had a lot of things like deferred maintenance costs that we hadn't budgeted for, and we were also not seeing some of the grants from foundations we were hoping to get," she said.

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409

Maria Elena Baca • mbaca@startribune.com

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