Bob CollinsIt can be easy for people to give up on north Minneapolis. Just ask a craft brewery owner, who has decided to move his business after another weekend of violence in the neighborhood, KARE 11 reports.
“Four people shot. Four. And that’s what I wake up to on Saturday morning,” Kevin Welch, owner of Boom Island Brewing Co., tells the station. “Seven years trying to pull off this business, in this neighborhood. And things haven’t gotten better.”
Violent crime has dropped in the last 12 years in the neighborhood around 21st and Washington, though, KARE says.
Welch tells City Pages he’s not seeing it.
“I’m not going to risk our employees dodging bullets,” he said. “It’s not gonna change anytime soon.”
“The work the coalition has been doing… in general, crime is down on the north side,” John Bueche, a community organizer, said. “And we’re totally in sync with the city’s goal of trying to do investment without displacement. Trying to do comprehensive development for the residents of the community that already live here.”
Welch says the neighborhood is a “wonderful place with many good people.” But he’s out.
“How much worse can it get when you leave on Friday night, and there’s bullets flying around?” Welch tells City Pages.
