Community Development with Patrick Connoy

Our program on October 4th was a presentation by Patrick Connoy about the various local government economic development programs. Patrick had worked in the recent past along with our Bob Humphrey in the City of Minneapolis Community Development Authority.

 Patrick is with the “Hennepin County Common Bond Fund”, which provides funding for businesses within the county. It used to be a Minneapolis program, but has extended to cover the whole county. Approved projects are funded by bonds issued by the city of Minneapolis, and the largest recent grant was $18,000,000 for building a factory in rural Hennepin County.

Another program that he talked about was the “Minnesota Community Capitol Fund”, which exists to keep companies in Minnesota, and stop the movement of jobs to other states and countries. Two additional programs he talked about were “Economic Garden” and “Open to Business”. Some of their work is supporting businesses in the current rail corridors where construction has limited or closed access to businesses. An interesting side note that he mentioned is that the Metropolitan Council has received approval to do the engineering for the Southwest Corridor Light Rail - that project will have direct and important impact on our area.

The website for his group, which is called the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers, is located at www.opentobusinessmn.org. All of the programs are discussed in detail there.                                 (Story by Tad Shaw and photo by Steve Frazier)