When the Little Africa Festival returns to St. Paul’s Hamline Park and the stretch of Snelling Avenue just north of University Avenue on Sunday, organizers will be doing more than just celebrating the 10th anniversary of an event that draws a growing mix of immigrant cultures on a business corridor they’ve dubbed “Little Africa.”

They’ll also be recruiting potential commercial tenants.

With a sizable boost from city and state coffers, African Economic Development Solutions has been remodeling the vacant, century-old, red brick building at 678 N. Snelling Ave. — the former home of Great Fans and Blinds — into what they hope will become a commercial anchor for the northern edges of the business corridor between Blair Avenue and Van Buren, near Hamline University.

Given a number of retail vacancies along several blocks of Snelling north of University Avenue, AEDS hopes the “Little Africa Plaza” building jump-starts commerce and draws attention to the cultural corridor when the $4.5 million remodel is completed by winter.

Cultural, entrepreneurship center

Large “For Lease” signs on the exterior of the work site advertise space for an African grocer and two “micro-retail” boutique-style vendors. AEDS officials say they also plan exhibit space for a pan-African museum, as well as office space for their own headquarters on the second floor. Workers from Flannery Construction on Wednesday were still busy painting and maneuvering through interior wood frames that will someday be finished doorways. But the ongoing construction won’t delay a grand opening celebration planned for 10 a.m. Sunday.

“The building will be completed by late September or October,” said Gene Gelgelu, founder and executive director of AEDS. “This is going to be Little Africa’s cultural and entrepreneurship center, and the beginning of revitalizing the corridor.”

The 1926 building, which sits between a shuttered former autobody shop and the Korean restaurant Sole Cafe, spans 15,000 square feet and had sat on the city’s “repair or removal” calendar — a kind of precursor to condemnation — since at least May 2020.

That legal designation was drawn into sharp relief after a fire around February 2022, not long after AEDS purchased the site for $300,000.

Public funding for a building in disrepair

“Having been on the city and inspections side of this, that building has a lot of disrepair and it’s very much a fixer-upper, to put it lightly,” said St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali, on Wednesday. “It needed a lot of electrical and rewiring work and overhaul to function in the way they envisioned it. This property pretty much sat unused on the private market. The building itself had been in really bad shape and was not necessarily on the path to turn into anything better without some intervention.”

As a result, no small amount of public funding has gone into the remodel, including $1.83 million in tax increment financing, a type of tax incentive-based city loan that is effectively paid back through property taxes generated on site. Another $200,000 came from the city’s Neighborhood STAR grant program, approved by the St. Paul City Council in November 2022, as well as another $65,000 awarded from the year-round STAR program, approved by the city council in November 2021.

All of the city funds were used for capital improvement and renovation work, according to a spokesperson for the city’s Planning and Economic Development department.

The project also received a $1.5 million appropriation from the state surplus, $750,000 from the St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation’s Main Street grant program, $103,500 from the Ramsey County Critical Corridors grant program and $45,000 in public funding from the Metropolitan Council’s Livable Communities Demonstration Account program.

Other funders have included Sunrise Bank, the Otto Bremer Trust, the Neighbors United Funding Collaborative and the federal Community Reinvestment Healthy Food Financing Initiative, among a series of additional sources.

Snelling Avenue “is where a lot of African-owned businesses have operated and been part of the community,” Jalali said. “Little Africa Plaza aims to be an institutional home for that legacy … and also a community gathering space.”

Snelling to be shut down for festival, parade

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter recently declared July 27 through Aug. 4 to be “Africa Week” in the city. The 10th anniversary Little Africa festival will run from noon to 9 p.m. Sunday, featuring dancers, food vendors, African fashions and a 1 p.m. parade, all of which will shut down Snelling Avenue between University Avenue and Minnehaha Avenue from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Also taking place this week at the downtown St. Paul InterContinental Hotel is AEDS’ fifth annual National African Leadership Conference, which has been titled “Lifting As We Climb.” The conference, which is drawing African immigrants from across the country, will feature lifetime achievement awards for five immigrant leaders chosen through a vote conducted on social media. The vote drew more than 2,900 participants from across the world.

The winners, who include at least one person from Minnesota, will be revealed during a dinner to be held at the InterContinental at 6 p.m. Friday.

“We brought people from different communities and different states as an advisory council, to create criteria and then nominate people based on that criteria,” Gelgelu said. “The public voted. Our role was just to create that space.”

More information is on the Facebook page for African Economic Development Solutions and the website aeds-mn.org/little-africa.

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