Episode 85: TOD and Affordable Commercial

There is a lot of attention and focus, rightly so, on affordable housing. But what about affordable commercial spaces? On this episode of the Mpact Podcast, we speak with Ryan Kelley, Community Development Manager with Hennepin County in Minnesota about the importance of commercial and cultural spaces in the overall community fabric and Hennepin County’s innovative efforts to support them.

Kelly tells a story of bringing together local cities to discuss the frequent problem of losing affordable commercial spaces in redeveloping, for example, strip malls into affordable housing. Drawing on these conversations and using pandemic era special federal funding, Hennepin County launched a program to support affordable rents or ownership of retail spaces by locally-owned small businesses. The program also supported emerging developers and cultural institutions providing business incubators or job training.

Listen to the podcast for Kelley’s take on the differences between affordable housing and affordable commercial as well as stories of some of the projects that received support from the county, often as part of an array of funding sources. It’s a fascinating conversation about the places we hope to build and what makes them vibrant – and affordable.