Overview: Transformative commercial real estate model empowering Northside residents
Lyneir Richardson, CEO of The Chicago TREND Corporation, is inviting North Minneapolis residents to become co-owners of Hawthorn Crossings, a shopping center on West Broadway Avenue, with investments starting at just $1,000. It's part of a broader model TREND has used in Chicago, Baltimore and Columbus, Ohio, buying commercial corridors in under-invested neighborhoods and structuring deals so local residents share in the ownership and financial upside. There's also a matching-grant program for investors in the three ZIP codes surrounding the property, plus a strong personal narrative from Richardson about how a pro bono barber loan early in his career shaped his approach to this work.
Lyneir Richardson still remembers the loan application that changed the direction of his
career. Fresh out of law school and working as a bank attorney making eight-figure corporate
loans, he was handed a pro bono assignment: a $100,000 loan for a barber on Chicago’s West
Side who wanted to buy his own building.
“People say, ‘Oh, that’s too small, that’s too hard,'” Richardson said. “But for me, I saw value
in what that guy was trying to do, and the neighborhood was the west side of Chicago, not very far from where I grew up. So that became my life work: How do you see value in people and in places that other people overlook or undervalue?”
Nearly three and a half decades later, Richardson is CEO and co-founder of The Chicago
TREND Corporation, a commercial real estate firm that acquires shopping centers in lower- and moderate-income neighborhoods and invites local residents to become co-owners. The
company’s latest project, Hawthorn Crossings, will be TREND’s eighth shopping center overall and its first in Minneapolis, a 51,459-square-foot commercial property on West Broadway Avenue that TREND has under contract to purchase from Sherman Associates.
“Commercial property, the commercial corridor, is your first impression of a neighborhood,”
Richardson said. “If the little strip shopping center is blighted or disinvested, it brings down
property values, attracts loitering. It becomes a liability for the neighborhood.”
TREND’s path to North Minneapolis ran through 18 months of searching across the Twin
Cities. The company had raised a real estate investment fund backed by institutional investors, including the MacArthur Foundation and a foundation formed by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. The McKnight Foundation, one of the fund’s first investors, required that a portion of its investment go toward Minneapolis or St. Paul.
“We’ve looked in Uptown. We’ve looked in south Minneapolis. We looked in the Rondo
neighborhood of St. Paul,” Richardson said. “People were starting to take us even outside of the city.”
That changed after Richardson met Warren McLean, president of the Northside Economic
Opportunity Network, who introduced him to other neighborhood leaders and stakeholders.
Reading the North Side Forum plan, which outlines roughly $1.5 billion in investment including the future Blue Line light rail extension, sealed his decision.
“This is a neighborhood that’s on the cusp of change,” Richardson said. “We want to be a part
of that change, and we want to have a seat at the table.”
Unlike a traditional real estate deal, Hawthorn Crossings is structured to let residents
buy in directly, with investments starting as low as $1,000, alongside the institutional capital.
TREND has already helped more than 23 local and Black-owned businesses open through its
other properties, and Richardson said the company now has more than 460 community investors across its portfolio, 70% of them people of color and 44% women.
“That’s very different than the 81% of the value of commercial real estate owned by 1% of
the population, kind of thing,” Richardson said.
Richardson said he’s drawn on an idea he first heard from Newark, N.J. Mayor Ras Baraka:
that instead of only fighting gentrification, communities can also own a stake in it.
“Maybe we should own something and benefit and have a seat at the table as the
neighborhood gets stronger,” Richardson said. “That’s what this offering is all about, that
Hawthorn Crossings will have local and Black ownership in a seat of power as the neighborhood continues to get stronger.”
The offering is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and full details,
including Richardson’s resume, the business plan, financial projections and current tenants, are posted on the crowdfunding platform Small Change, under the Hawthorn Crossings listing.
Richardson said he’s paired that online transparency with old-fashioned organizing: meetings in churches, gatherings of 40 or more residents on Saturday mornings, and sit-downs with
nonprofits and community groups.
“I always start the meetings by [saying], no one ever knocks on the door and intentionally
invites local people to own commercial property in the neighborhood,” Richardson said. “That’s what’s unique about this.”
A philanthropic partner is also matching early investment: anyone who invests $1,000 and
lives in one of the three ZIP codes surrounding the shopping center can receive a matching
$1,000 grant, turning that stake into $2,000 in equity.
“Someone in one meeting said that sounds like reparations,” Richardson said. “So, maybe it is.”
More than 25 people have already invested in the project, according to Richardson.
Minneapolis will be TREND’s fourth city overall, following Chicago, Baltimore and Columbus, Ohio.
“Every place I start, I’m the outsider, the carpetbagger,” Richardson said. “But over time,
what I’ve enjoyed in this process is people start a meeting and their shoulders are up tight to their ears, they have a cynical look on their face. But as they hear our experience, hear our business plan, I like to see the shoulders go down, the cynical look change to supportive nods.”
The investment window closes July 31. For more information, visit: www.smallchange.co/projects/hawthorn-crossings.