Friday August 2, 2024
By H. Jiahong Pan
The Somali Museum of Minnesota hopes to open a Somali cultural center to display its 1,500-piece collection in a new museum on Franklin Avenue.
Augsburg University announced its intent to sell the Bethany Lutheran Church building to the Somali Museum. Photo by H. Jiahong Pan
What will ultimately be built, however, remains in question. As museum representatives work with their consultants and their board on a vision, they are not entirely sure whether they will build a new museum on Franklin Avenue. Some neighbors oppose a new museum proposal because it could destroy a historic resource and gentrify the neighborhood.
Director Osman Ali said in a phone interview that the Somali Museum has been looking for a new location for quite some time. The museum exhibits artifacts and organizes dance, finger weaving, and language programs for people who want to connect with Somali culture. They want to be able to house all those activities under one roof, in addition to a cafe, library, and offices for the community to use.
“You can’t imagine our [ limited]capacity and the tension we’re getting from the community. We need a bigger space. Because of the lack of space, we don’t do everything that they need. But once we have space, we will have more than seven or eight different programs running through the cultural center,” Ali said.
In March, Augsburg University announced its intent to sell the Bethany Lutheran Church building to the Somali Museum. In doing so, Augsburg University spokesperson Rachel Farris wrote in an email that they wanted to find a “financially sustainable, community-serving use that contributes to the vitality of the E. Franklin Ave. corridor and honors Bethany Lutheran’s legacy of service.” Augsburg University says they worked with the community development organization Seward Redesign to evaluate possible site uses.
Both Augsburg University and the Somali Museum are in the due diligence phase of the sale. They expect for the sale to close within 120 days of the phase concluding. Neither party has disclosed how much the church will sell for, though Augsburg’s spokesperson says they don’t expect a net gain.
Even after the sale closes, the Somali Museum isn’t sure whether they will demolish the church. They believe renovating the church to house a community center and offices will cost between $3 million and $4 million. On the other hand, demolishing the church to build a museum and a community center would cost between $25 million and $30 million. The Somali Museum received $3.9 million during the 2023 legislative session to purchase and build a museum and cultural center.
“We are under negotiation with the board, with consultants, about how we can combine these two,” Ali says. Ali adds that if the church isn’t demolished, the museum will remain in its space at the Midtown Global Market.
The building housing Bethany Lutheran Church was built in 1917 to replace a previous church that was destroyed in a fire. The congregation worshiping in it, which were Scandinavians, was formed by splintering from the nearby Trinity Lutheran Church in the 1900s. They did not trust their pastor after he had written a “steamy love letter” to someone over 20 years his junior, according to a 2019 Star Tribune article. (The Trinity Lutheran Church still worships today at Augsburg University; its physical church was bulldozed in the 1960s during Interstate 94 construction.)
In 2020, the Bethany Lutheran Church board voted to donate the property to Augsburg University. Augsburg allowed the congregation to remain until it disbanded in 2021. It also allowed local organizations, including the Minnesota chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations and the free lunch organization Soup For You Cafe, to remain until May of this year.
The sale of the church to the Somali Museum and its possible demolition worry Joel Albers, a Longfellow resident who is a pharmacist and is working on health care reform. “There is a history, there’s a heritage, there’s an architecture, there’s religious, deeply rooted, Lutheran Scandinavian history up in this church,” Albers said in a phone interview.
Albers spearheaded a campaign to save the church from demolition by gathering over 100 petition signatures, organizing 25 people onto an e-mail list, and nominating it to be designated as a historic landmark. According to an architect he’s working with, he agrees with the Somali Museum that the church could be renovated for around $4 million.
Gentrification is another one of Albers’ concerns. “Franklin Avenue, that whole corridor, is really at risk of the usual takeover by the corporate real estate companies,” Albers said.