Rondo Community Land Trust revives unity and generational wealth in St. Paul

In St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, signs of renewal are everywhere. New businesses are opening, families are returning, and artists are finding space to create. Yet beneath the energy of revitalization lives a history of deep generational trauma, one the community still carries.

When Interstate 94 cut through the heart of Rondo in the 1950s and 1960s, it did more than separate more than 700 Black families from their homes and local businesses. It dismantled an entire ecosystem of culture, stability and belonging. Generations of Black families lost the wealth they had built and the community that had sustained them.

Today, the Rondo Community Land Trust (Rondo CLT) is working to repair that harm and reimagine what unity can look like when a community rebuilds together.

“We directly address the loss of generational wealth caused by the I-94 displacement,” said Mikeya Griffin, president and CEO of Rondo CLT.

While community land trusts may feel like a modern tool, the model is rooted in the Civil Rights Movement. Griffin noted that the first CLT, New Communities Inc. in Albany, Georgia, was founded in 1969 by civil rights activists, including members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Built on nearly 6,000 acres, it represented a radical experiment in self-determination.

“In the beautiful words of Dr. Rev. Sherrard, we went from having no civil rights to exercising them,” Griffin said. “What they started in 1968 on 6,000 acres wasn’t just about housing. It was about farming, Black Wall Street, education centers. It was about Black people carving their own way in development, cooperatively, together.”

Rondo CLT carries that legacy forward by removing land from speculative real estate markets and guaranteeing long-term affordability.

Under the CLT model, residents purchase their homes while the land trust retains ownership of the land through a 99-year renewable ground lease. The approach stabilizes housing costs and preserves affordability for future generations.

“We want people to move along on their own continuum,” Griffin said. “We have people who have been in their community land trust home for almost 40 years, and they’ve passed it on to their kids.”

Much of the organization’s work focuses on repairing multigenerational wounds. One of its key programs, the Right to Return to Rondo, creates homeownership opportunities for people displaced by I-94 or their descendants. The goal is to repair economic, social and cultural harm that continues to shape the neighborhood.

Rondo CLT also offers foreclosure prevention, tax forfeiture assistance and critical repair programs for elders to help families maintain equity and keep their homes.

Everything the organization does, Griffin said, is rooted in meeting people where they are.

For a community long affected by freeway construction, redlining and racial wealth inequities, creating low-barrier pathways to homeownership is one of the most powerful ways to rebuild unity.

“Unity looks like shared economic stability and opportunity,” Griffin said. “A thriving ecosystem where residents and businesses can succeed together.”

Housing is only one part of that ecosystem.

Rondo CLT also manages affordable commercial spaces, leasing storefronts at about $7 per square foot, far below the $20 to $35 market rate. The goal is to help local entrepreneurs build and retain generational wealth.

“We were the first community land trust in the state of Minnesota to apply the model to commercial development,” Griffin said.

One of the CLT’s recent success stories is the purchase of Golden Thyme Café, a beloved Black-owned coffee shop in the Rondo community. When founders Mychael and Stephanie Wright prepared to retire, Rondo CLT stepped in to preserve the business’s legacy. Today, Golden Thyme has expanded into Golden Thyme Restaurant & Bar, employing 38 people and continuing to serve as an anchor for the neighborhood.

Rondo today includes Black residents, immigrants, elders, youth, renters, homeowners, artists, activists and entrepreneurs. Creating unity across such diversity requires a shared foundation.

“We’re intentional about connecting with all generations,” Griffin said.

Programs like financial literacy and estate planning workshops help families strengthen and protect generational wealth, resources historically stolen from the neighborhood.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed economic justice was the “final frontier” of civil rights, a vision grounded not only in moral arguments but in land, wealth and opportunity. Griffin sees Rondo CLT as a continuation of that work.

“When we talk about generational wealth, we can’t have that unless we are working across generations and helping families secure their property,” she said.

The Rondo community is rebuilding what was lost and protecting what remains. In doing so, it is reclaiming its legacy, and creating a new model of unity rooted in shared ownership, shared power and shared possibility.

For more information, visit www.rondoclt.org.

Lizzy Nyoike is a Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication student.