The City of Minneapolis’s comprehensive plan, Minneapolis 2040, has become an operatic saga. Back in 2019, a majority of City Council members along with the Metropolitan Council, the city’s regional policymaking and planning agency, formally approved the plan—it was passed in 2018, along with City Council’s historic move of proscribing single-family zoning citywide—and decreed it take effect on January 1, 2020.

As comp plans go, Minneapolis 2040 is as audacious as they come. While much national (and local) attention has been paid in recent years to the plan’s policy regarding increasing equitable access to housing and, by extension, increasing the amount of “missing middle” housing throughout the city, there are 99 additional interrelated policies, each with their own detailed action steps, that collectively aim to transform the city over the ensuing two decades, street by street and block by block.

Writing in ENTER in April 2019, before the plan took effect, director of UMN’s Minnesota Design Center Thomas Fisher praised Minneapolis 2040 as “a thorough and impressive body of work” that aspired for “complete neighborhoods, climate-change resilience, a clean environment, a sustainable and diverse economy, and a proactive and accessible government that welcomes equitable civic participation.”

Housing at top of list

But it was policy #1 of 100, Access to Housing, that proved to be the plan’s stickiest point. As such matters typically play out, some vocal detractors weren’t enthused at the prospect of triplexes and other multi-unit housing stock getting built where, in the not-so-distant past, only single-family dwellings were permitted, per zoning codes.

(One of the action steps for this policy reads: “In neighborhood interiors farthest from downtown that today contain primarily single-family homes, achieve greater housing supply and diversity by allowing small-scale residential structures with up to three dwelling units on an individual lot.” For those who speak NIMBY, I’m sure you’ll spot the dog whistles.)

Then in 2022, those very detractors found an unlikely ally in the form of Smart Growth Minneapolis, a well-meaning but misguided coalition of environmentalists who argued the plan failed “to understand the possible long-term cumulative consequences” of widespread development and upzoning, and challenged Minneapolis 2040’s legality on the grounds that the City never commissioned an independent Environmental Impact Statement.

To many people’s surprise, the challenge was successful. A Hennepin County judge sided with the co-plaintiffs, which included Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and filed a temporary injunction in the fall of 2023, halting implementation of everything under the Minneapolis 2040 umbrella, including dozens of important initiatives not tied to housing. (For reference, there are 23 individual policies associated with housing-related goals alone.)

The reason the injunction came as such a surprise is because the state’s half-century-old Minnesota Environmental Rights Act (MERA) was already largely baked into the plan as drafted, even though the plaintiffs argued the plan disregarded prevailing environmental concerns.

The comprehensive plan had also garnered early support from the Minnesota Housing Partnership, local chapters of the Sierra Club and the American Planning Association, and like-minded groups on the merits of Minneapolis 2040 prioritizing robust transit-oriented development, mixed-use neighborhoods, mixed-income housing, renewable and carbon-free energy sources, and much more.

Further, despite their victory, Smart Growth Minneapolis failed to establish how reverting to the city’s previous comprehensive plan (the 2030 Plan, codified in 2009) would be the favorable environmental path.

Reversing (reversed) course

All this came to a head in early May 2024, when the State House passed legislation to halt the lawsuit and, shortly thereafter, the Minnesota Court of Appeals overruled the lower court’s decision and lifted the injunction, citing, in part, that “the district court erred by shifting the proof of an environmental burden to the city of Minneapolis.”

Finally, on May 19, just minutes before midnight on its last day of session, the Minnesota Senate passed the “Comp Plan Clarity” bill, effectively terminating the lawsuit and any ensuing appeals, and allowing Minneapolis 2040 to move forward once again.

As to be expected, there were sighs of relief—albeit in a tone more cautious than celebratory—from various parties. Back in March, when legislation to end the litigation was working its way through committee, State Senator Omar Fateh observed how, due to the 2022 lawsuit, “projects that were already far along in the building process, and that have spent tens of thousands of dollars, were abruptly canceled and left in limbo. Hundreds of homes that could be housing people have been canceled.” Pending renewal of funding, those projects can now move forward.

As for any lingering concerns, reasonable or otherwise, over the environmental impacts on building three or more units on a lot originally envisioned for one, it’s worth noting that environmental studies haven’t become a moot point. According to Katie Jones, a clean energy policy expert (and owner of this strawbale home in Minneapolis’ Lowry Hill neighborhood), “we still want environmental impact statements for reviewing specific developments. That’s what those processes are for.”

Jones says the legal complaints against Minneapolis 2040 were ultimately misguided because they were speculative. Indeed, the comprehensive plan lays out in painstaking detail more than a dozen long-term goals composed of 100 policies and hundreds of recommended action steps, including a provision to build nearly 150,000 new units of housing.

“The comp plan just allows for development to happen,” Jones says. One thing the plan doesn’t do is specify where those units will be and what form they will assume. “How do you review the environmental impact of the unknown?”

Public housing can’t do it all

On the question of building for greater density, a high-ranking representative from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA), speaking on the condition of anonymity, puts things in perspective. “Minneapolis 2040 doesn’t change the allowable footprint of a building, whether it’s a single-family home or a three-unit building, or even the amount of parking or other spaces than can be provided. The footprints are considerably the same size as they would have been before the 2040 plan.”

The MPHA confirms that the agency’s current waiting list for family housing sits at approximately 7500 people, with an additional 6000 on the list for public non-family units. While the reinstatement of the comprehensive plan will not automatically lessen those numbers by any significant measure, this latest legal action does give MPHA the green light to develop on two infill sites – one duplex and one triplex – that the agency rep says they “have been sitting on since last fall, when the injunction was handed down … we have a lot of opportunity to add [new housing] within our portfolio.”

Of note, even while the injunction was in place, the MPHA continued moving forward on the development of 84 units of affordable family housing – comprising a mix of four- and six-plexes and all of it prefab volumetric modular construction each fitted with 22kW solar array – spread across 16 sites throughout the city. This project, dubbed the MPHA Family Housing Expansion, completed earlier this year, would not have been possible to initiate while the moratorium stood on Minneapolis 2040. But since the city had issued building permits prior to the injunction, the family housing project was allowed to commence, and so it did, at a breakneck pace of just 13 months, start to finish.

A big hurdle

Outliers aside, some concerns do remain regarding the overall impact of the comprehensive plan thus far, and what it can feasibly accomplish going forward. More than a year after the plan went into effect, stories began to surface of how Minneapolis 2040 looked great on paper but was yielding too few tangible results.

As of March 2021, it was reported that 22 existing properties had been converted into duplexes and triplexes, totaling just 70 new units of housing that resulted from more lenient zoning rules. (Altogether, Minneapolis closed out 2020 with 3300 new apartment permits issued; well below the record-setting 4800 permits set the previous year, but still an admirable number during a pandemic.)

Private developers have cited financing, supply chain disruptions, and existing zoning rules, including height restrictions and setback requirements, as the major obstacles to getting more duplexes and triplexes on the market.

“Penciling out projects is hard,” Jones says. “And our zoning is still too strict to allow for these projects to happen and be cost effective to build.”

Jones concedes that, all things considered, the plan presents “a hurdle.” Development schedules are a factor (Minnesota has long winters, no secret there), interest rates are a factor, the availability of vacant lots is a factor, and in a growing city of nearly 430,000 and counting, where housing demand is already high, the price of land is indeed a factor.

For Minneapolis 2040 to make a noticeable dent in the city’s affordable housing stock, the legislative landscape will need to favor the types of developers that have a vested interest in building the missing middle.

Now that the comprehensive plan is once more the law of the land, it seems as though there is cause for both optimism and concern.

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