« In many cases
it’s the subtle
changes on West
Broadway that
prove the most
poignant. Across
the street from
Catalyst’s current
renovation,
the Five Points
Building, sits a
dentist office
that recently
overhauled
its storefront,
replacing, among
other things,
the bars on the
windows with a
decorative mural
that serves much
the same purpose
but in a decidedly
positive way. It
is the type of
unsolicited yet
inspired action
that Catalyst
and others deem
a sign that the
tides in North
Minneapolis have
turned.
tenson. “I’m not sure a really successful, private devel-
oper has ever decided to shift his purpose so clearly
from private to public purposes. And I know the city’s
elected leaders are in awe of what he has done.”
And what Ackerberg has done is built a nonprofit,
Catalyst, which has in turn begun to redevelop West
Broadway one gnarled property at a time in accordance
with West Broadway Alive. After starting in 2004 as a
“not-for-profit arm” of the Ackerberg Group, Acker-
berg determined it was important to bifurcate the not-
for-profit and, in January 2008, formally commenced
as Catalyst Community Partners.
“With Catalyst we end up with an independent
organization that’s accountable, that’s transparent
and that’s really fully developed with professionals
running it from day-to-day,” says Ackerberg. “So, if
something were to happen to me or to the Ackerberg
Group, Catalyst is unaffected.”
rective of West Broadway Alive—Household needs,
Mainstreet, youth Fitness, Housing and Arts/Enter-
tainment. Within said nodes they marked as many as
20 properties for potential investments and began with
1101 West Broadway, the city-owned property that
even Mike Christenson admitted was anemic. In less
than seven months 1101—vacant and rotting for the
11 years previous—was new again and home to three
businesses: the Bean Scene too coffee shop, City
County Federal Credit Union and Emerge.
BUILDING THE CHANGE
CAtAlySt WAntS to buy the worst properties the
area has to offer and turn them into great ones using
the Ackerberg Group as their developer.
“[they’re] all-in on West Broadway,” says Chris-
tenson. “And [they] have 10 major projects. Acker-
berg has signed personal guarantees on churches,
personally redone parks, he has purchased property,
he has worked in the streets, he has taken the risk of
the unknown with the historic properties.”
After working with the Pohlad Family Foun-
dation on revitalizing Cottage Park—a former
drug-dealer hotbed just one block north of West
Broadway, which witnessed the 2000 murder of
a 11-year-old—and surrounding homes, Catalyst
turned to a century-old church, which had stewed
vacant for decades before being purchased in 2003
by a group of liberian immigrants who spent five
years futilely toiling on its renovation. In less than
five months Catalyst transformed the dilapidated
church above Cottage Park into what is now the
200-member-strong Garden of Gethsemane Minis-
tries; the effective all-seeing-eyes of the park.
on West Broadway proper Catalyst began by
assessing all of the condemned, run-down and foreclosed commercial spaces on the corridor, eventually
sectoring them into five distinct nodes as per the di-
PEACE PERPETUATED
CAtAlySt IS not the only organization affecting
change in north Minneapolis, however. the northside Economic opportunity network (nEon), led by
Grover Jones, and WomenVenture are at the forefront
of promoting entrepreneurism, while Emerge and
twin Cities Rise! are actively working to facilitate job
