Meet the woman working to create a Rondo revival in St. Paul

Mikeya Griffin is a Rondo child, with a great aunt and uncle who emigrated to St. Paul from Mississippi 80 years ago. They first settled in Highland Park, but were quickly “directed” to Rondo, the city’s traditional black neighborhood.

Streams of loved ones followed, seeking to carve out a better life for themselves.

So it makes perfect sense that Griffin’s job as executive director of the 30-year-old Rondo Community Land Trust is to make housing and commercial properties accessible to low- to moderate-income families. The land trust buys the land and provides grants to home and business buyers. It holds rights to the land on behalf of the community, which significantly reduces costs for subsequent home or business owners.

Eye On St. Paul recently met with Griffin at the land trust’s headquarters, at Selby Avenue and Oxford Street, to talk about his work. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

Question : How did you get to this position?

A: My husband told me about it. He said, “Hey, when you get home from work tonight, I left you something to read.” I want you to read it with an open mind and then we’ll talk about it. And it was the position of executive director of the Rondo Community Land Trust, and I was like, “Well, I have a job.” I started thinking about it, then talked to the former CEO and a few board members. As I walked through the neighborhood, I really didn’t realize how much it was gentrifying…and I felt like it was time to return.

We are privileged to provide affordable homeownership opportunities throughout Ramsey County. And it’s something that I’m passionate about as well. But I have the weight and responsibility to ensure that Rondo’s legacy is about more than just the name.

Question : What is the vision?

A: Looking for ways to maintain some level of control over gentrification and displacement and a way to truly be stewards of community development. For Rondo in particular, we’re really looking to strengthen our restorative economic development framework. The community included everyone from day laborers to doctors to lawyers. And it was a really rich, interdependent, wonderful place to live, where we were very cooperative with each other and really took care of each other. And can we go back to some of that?

One of the things we’re doing right now is recreating an African-American arts and culture corridor, which is one of the reasons we purchased Golden Thyme. We want to be able to activate the corridor, bring the kinds of things here that people want to come to.

Question : How do you attract professionals who have settled in the suburbs?

A: When people are connected to their culture, they will want to live where they can shop, mingle, and participate in their culture. Where they feel at home. And we want to have different types of housing available for young professionals. And attractive jobs for professionals and newcomers.

Question : Where are things now?

A: We have spent the last few years building our infrastructure. We are developers and we consider ourselves a community anchor. The Community Land Trust movement was born out of the black experience of the civil rights movement when sharecroppers and people were kicked off their land because you know, God forbid, the audacity of our desire to have the right voting. And back then, in 1968, they created the model that many of us use today.

We have strengthened our own internal capacity. We’ve gone from about 1.5 employees when I started to nine now. A budget of $300,000 per year to $2.5 million per year. We are on track to have 600 people as owners by the end of the year. And the goal is to exceed 300 companies. We have townhouses on the corner of Oxford and Marshall.

Question : Back to Golden Thyme. You bought this to be a restaurant incubator, but now Justin Sutherland and his father are developing a restaurant. What happened?

A: We’re going to continue to do that, supporting restaurateurs here in the community, and it’s going to be different, maybe in a different location.

We also said that Golden Thyme could be a platform for something else – and that fit Justin. He committed himself to Saint-Paul. He always says he’s a St. Paul guy and he wanted to stick with us and bring a concept here. And what that does for us, again, is it brings something that the community wants around a place to go and eat and enjoy.

The concept that Justin is developing will actually be the main flagship location. But there will also be a continuation of this concept further down the street, in what we call Golden Thyme Express. It’s in one of our other buildings, at Selby and Victoria.

The second location will primarily feature specialty coffees and sandwiches. That, with a few retailers sharing that space. A platform allowing entrepreneurs to sell their products in order to gain customers. These will be very micro and smaller spaces.

Question : What is your broader vision for this corridor – from Lexington to Dale?

A: You will discover African-American history and culture. Beautiful murals. There will be jazz, maybe a chic cigar bar, maybe a microbrewery. The first black women-owned brewery will be located here. We’ll do artist tours and festivals and that sort of thing to get attention here.