Two years ago, the Minnesota Legislature appropriated $330,000 in bonding money for designing an expansion of Brian Coyle Community Center, the hub for the densely populated East African community of Cedar Riverside where high-rises house thousands of people and children.
Yet the money has not been spent.
While people say the need to expand is clear — the center's gym is packed, its programs have waiting lists — the money to jump-start the process is tied up in a stalemate between the Minneapolis Park Board and Pillsbury United Communities.
"It's a missed opportunity for a neighborhood that really needs resources," says Louis Smith, attorney for the Cedar Riverside Partnership, a local consortium of organizations and institutions in the area.
The Park Board owns the Coyle Center and the land on which it sits and provides some programming there. But Pillsbury United Communities pays for most of the maintenance and operates the center under a 99-year lease signed in 1992. To get the bond money, that lease must be renegotiated to meet state requirements that call for a shorter time frame, among other things.
The leaders of both agencies accuse each other of failing to negotiate.
Minneapolis Park Superintendent Jayne Miller said Friday that the Park Board has offered proposals over three or four years, including a draft of a revised lease to Pillsbury, but never heard back.
"The need is incredibly great in this neighborhood," she said. "I'm really disappointed that we cannot seem to come up with a solution or even have a dialogue to solve this."