Anissa Keyes buys an old bank building to invest in community

Anissa Keyes will open the doors to her building at 4171 N Lyndale Ave. to BIPOC business owners. Photo by David Pierini

By David Pierini, Editor

A shooting inside a barbershop in September left one man dead and two others wounded. The barbershop was located inside the former Camden Park State Bank on 42nd and Lyndale avenues and the violence prompted some tenants to leave.

Anissa Keyes was in the process of purchasing the building when the realtor asked her if she still wanted to move forward with the deal.

Without pause, Keyes said, “More than ever.”

Keyes purchased the historic building through a City of Minneapolis program that assists BIPOC business owners by covering a portion of the cost to buy commercial property.

Her hope is to create wealth for her children and provide affordable spaces for other BIPOC business owners for their

first brick-and-mortar site. But when the shooting happened, Keyes understood owning the building meant thinking beyond its walls.

“The reclamation of land is what this feels like,” said Keyes, the owner of Arubah Emotional Services, which has mental health clinics in North Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center and St. Paul. “This corner, this block is going to change.”

Keyes is among a growing number of local residents and organizations buying property in North Minneapolis before outside investors do so. The Northside is already changing as property values rise due to a crunched housing market and in anticipation of several development projects underway.

These are opportunities to create wealth in North Minneapolis and keep it here.

The old bank building is divided into several different spaces for different businesses, which Keys says she hopes to have ready

by March. New tenants will include the R. Sullivan law office, a vegan restaurant #HEALMPLS, Snappy Construction Co., Real Life Real Talk massage therapy, Katchy Lash lash studio and Amina Hair Braiding to name a few.

North News first met Keyes in 2017, when she was the first person to avail herself of another city program that gives individuals a $20,000 incentive to commit to building or buying a home on city-owned vacant property.

On empty land where she and three of her kids posed for a photo is now anchored by a beautiful new home where each of her kids have their own bedroom.

She now owns four Northside properties, but the corner building in the Camden neighborhood is the first where she feels like she can give something back to the community where she has spent her whole life.

The following is a conversation with Keyes inside an old ballroom that occupies the newest property. The text is lightly edited for brevity.

On purchasing the old bank building:

“It was like, ‘Wow, this is a great opportunity and someone is going to help me do it. It was the same as the city program that helped me buy my home. ‘This property is super cheap and they’re giving me $20,000 to build. Let’s seize the opportunity.

“The city covers up to a third of the total project cost. So I had to figure out the cost of buying the building and the cost of the rehab and then show where we’re missing money. The city (ensures) it meets programmatic guidelines — you’re a BIPOC business owner, you’re going to use the space for professional use and you’re committed to the community — and then they fill in the gap. The idea to build wealth and make the benefit of the program be from hanging onto it. They forgive a very large portion of money after 40 years and so it makes it worth it to hang on to. The deal came to $1.9 million and so, the city will pay about one quarter.”

Keyes tries to imagine the future use of an old ballroom that came with the building. Photo by David Pierini

Using the building to help others build wealth:

“At first, it was all about getting my feet underneath. I had a horrible divorce. I had to recover from that and kind of start all over. I spent the last four or five years just trying to get my feet underneath me. And then this opportunity is like ok, now that you have your feet underneath you, now you can allow access for other people to get their feet underneath them to continue to build.

“All of the business owners that are coming here are not moving from brick and mortar. They're moving from home or a shared space. This is not an opportunity they would’ve necessarily had. So a lot of people we built into the blueprint before we even purchased it, before I knew the vision was gonna really come to fruition.

“Were having people come in at certain rents and kind of building that rent up within a year of where I need them to be to make the business sustainable. We set up plans with each business owner, where do you need to get to or we’re maintaining rents. We’re working with some business owners individually to be able to support them and actually be successful.”

“Like this is my community, right? First of all, this is an amazing property. To not share this with my community would be crazy. One of the responsibilities we have when we have access to wisdom or knowledge or access to capital to sew into the spaces and places that are sewn into us. North Minneapolis molded me...this is where I’ve been all my life. These are some of the same community members who invested in (Arubah) and sent clients and staff my way. So it only makes sense that I would get to a space and give that back in some capacity. To me this is the only thing that makes sense. So, yeah, this is much bigger than me. I think about it all the time. I wanted to be solid enough so that I would be in a space to be able to help others. I felt guilty about it taking so long to get to that space.”

The possibility of transforming the block:

“With the healing center (5201 Bryant Ave N.), my first space, there were so many shootings around there that first month I was there. There were a bunch of bullet holes in the windows to the point where I'm not going to call the insurance company until I figure out how we're gonna change this, because they're just gonna keep bringing my rates up.

“And so we shifted that corner and it kind of caught fire. Once we were there, then the other neighbors began to say, Oh, this is changing the block. People across the street were like, ‘Oh, they're trying to do good things over there.’ So then you can see people begin
to contribute. So when I heard about the shooting while in the midst of purchasing the building, the realtor came back and was like, ’I’m just worried that you're going to pull out of the deal.’ No, that means I'm supposed to be here. I'm getting emotional even thinking about it.

“I feel like if we can change the culture of the space, if we can allow for something different to happen, then you stop some of those things from happening. Now you have ownership. Now you have people that care about what's happening in this space. Not necessarily outsiders who are just sort of here to make money and then go back to Minnetonka or Woodbury. That's not to knock on those communities but sometimes those are the people who own the spaces and so they don't have an invested heart to kind of say, “I want this to be different for everybody.’"