Longfellow Rising

Check out this wonderful story about our very own Pangea World Theater from the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder today. (And thanks for the shout out!)

Pangea World Theater Minnehaha Avenue Permanent Home Pangea World Theater Minnehaha Avenue acquisition secures a permanent home near the former Third Precinct as a space of healing belonging and justice.

This Saturday! They will be sauntering through Downtown Longfellow around 11:00AM or so. Jump in at Lake and Minnehaha or do the whole thing!

The Great Longfellow Saunter A long neighborhood walk, for no reason in particular.

When people invest in a neighborhood, this is what it can look like.

A cultural event that brings people together.
An artist getting support to share their work.
A small business hosting something meaningful.
A space where neighbors connect, celebrate, create, and belong.

Over the last few years, Longfellow Rising has helped support projects, artists, businesses, and community events throughout Downtown Longfellow. The photos in this post represent just a small piece of that work.

Thank you to the organizations, artists, and community leaders who continue making this neighborhood vibrant, creative, and welcoming.

Featured here:
Du Nord Foundation
Soul of the Southside Festival
Pangea World Theater
The Hook and Ladder Event Center
Arbeiter Brewing Co.
Confluence Studio

These moments don't happen by accident. They happen because people care enough to invest in their community.

If you'd like to help create more moments like these, please consider supporting Longfellow Rising.
https://www.longfellowrising.org/build-what-the-city-wont

Together, we're building a future rooted in equity, sustainability, and belonging.

Congratulations to Fancy and Emmanuel (founders of Downtown Longfellow's Soul of the Southside Festival, among many other things) on this beautiful profile in the Spokesman-Recorder!

Hi Instagram.

We’re Longfellow Rising, a community-driven effort focused on supporting and rebuilding Downtown Longfellow through advocacy, events, connection, and local action.

For a while, most of our work has lived over on Facebook. But we wanted to create a space here too. A place to share updates, spotlight local businesses and neighbors, talk honestly about what’s happening in the neighborhood, and show the people still building good things here every day.

Downtown Longfellow is still full of creativity, resilience, small businesses, artists, organizers, and people who care deeply about this community.

Downtown Longfellow deserves more than empty promises and stalled spaces.

For years, this neighborhood has been shaped by the people who actually live, work, create, organize, and show up here every day. Small businesses. Artists. Neighbors. Community leaders. That’s who keeps this place alive.

Longfellow Rising exists to help protect that future and make sure development in Downtown Longfellow stays rooted in community, not disconnected decisions made without us.

But here’s the reality:
Without additional funding by June 30, this work pauses.

That means fewer community-driven projects, less advocacy, less organizing, and less support for the people trying to build something meaningful here.

If you believe Downtown Longfellow should stay in community hands, now’s the time to help keep the work going.

Donate. Share. Talk about it.
Build what the city won’t.

https://www.longfellowrising.org/build-what-the-city-wont

The City Planning Commission will meet on Monday, May 18, 4:30 about 3000 Minnehaha Ave (the future “Democracy Center”) to hear an application to allow the construction of a two-story, 16,800 square-foot addition to the building, the relocation of a public alley, and site improvements. “Interested parties are invited to attend and be heard.” Meeting is in Room 350 Public Service Center, 250 S 4th St, Minneapolis.

Jamie Schwesnedl, Longfellow Rising board member and co-owner of Moon Palace Books , shared this reflection on the past six years in Downtown Longfellow and why this moment matters.

In 2020, Minneapolis rose up against racism and violence embedded in our systems.

Here in Downtown Longfellow, we lost a block of buildings that held immigrant and Native-owned businesses, nonprofits, and community gathering spaces. Other small, family-owned businesses were also damaged.

In the years since, rebuilding has been slow. Longstanding inequities have made it harder to move forward. Many lots still sit vacant, and some buildings remain empty.

At the start of 2026, Minneapolis once again faced state violence rooted in racism.
And once again, communities showed up with care, resistance, and a commitment to something better.

The struggle continues. So does the work.

Here in Downtown Longfellow, that work looks like staying rooted in community.
It looks like building toward justice, belonging, and shared ownership of our neighborhood.

It’s been a challenging six years. And there has also been real progress:

• The historic Coliseum Building has been restored and reopened as a hub for Black-owned, immigrant, and community-centered businesses
• The Firehouse Performing Arts Center (home to The Hook and Ladder Event Center) has been repaired and expanded, bringing music and gathering back to the neighborhood
• Arbeiter Brewing Co. opened as one of the few Asian American-owned breweries in the country
• Solcana Fitness opened as a q***r, woman-owned gym focused on body liberation
• Pangea World Theaterhas purchased and is preparing to renovate a permanent space along Minnehaha Avenue
• The Soul of Southside Juneteenth celebration continues to grow, filling the neighborhood with music, art, food, and Black joy

We’re still here. We’re still building.

And we’re grateful to be doing it alongside this community.