Metro briefs: St. Paul housing project for homeless gets $19 million boost

Minnesota Housing has awarded Catholic Charities $19 million to replicate its Higher Ground project, which helps transition homeless people into more permanent housing.

The St. Paul project will replace and expand the current Dorothy Day Center and will create 193 new housing units, including 135 long-term homeless units and another 22 units for medical respite. The state already had provided $6 million for the project. The five-story homeless shelter, to be built at the current site of the Labor and Professional Building at 411 Main St., will be modeled on Catholic Charities' Higher Ground facility in Minneapolis.

Officials expect to break ground in June 2015 and open the shelter in 2016.

James Walsh

A semitrailer truck rolled over Saturday morning on northbound Interstate 35W on the south edge of downtown Minneapolis, snarling traffic heading into downtown.

The truck was lying on its side under the Portland Avenue overpass, near where I-35W makes a sharp turn to the east to run alongside Interstate 94. The State Patrol closed northbound I-35W at the downtown exits, and traffic was backed up into south Minneapolis as far as 40th Street.

Demitrius Goudeau, of Gulfport, Miss., was driving the RWI Transportation truck. Goudeau, 38, was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center where he remains in satisfactory condition, hospital officials said.

Assistant Chief Matthew Clark, who oversees day-to-day operations at the Minneapolis Police Department, is a finalist for the police chief job in Bellevue, Wash.

Clark, who was appointed assistant chief by Chief Janeé Harteau shortly after she took the job in 2012, was scheduled to meet with community members and city staff in the Seattle suburb. He is one of five finalists to head the 178-officer department, which polices a city of nearly 130,000.

If he is offered and accepts the Bellevue job, Clark would become the second command-level officer to step down in the last year, joining Eddie Frizell, who took a leave of absence from his position as deputy chief in order to run for Hennepin County sheriff.

Libor Jany

Police are investigating back-to-back armed robberies of Walgreens locations in White Bear Lake and Maplewood on Friday.

A short time later, a Walgreens in White Bear Lake was robbed by a suspect with a similar description. Investigators from the Maplewood and White Bear Lake police are working to determine if the robberies are connected with others in the metro area.

Anyone with information about the suspect is asked to call 651-767-0640 or 911. Anonymous tips can be sent by texting the word Maplewood and the tip information to TIP411 (847411).