MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Slowly but surely, some business in St. Paul are starting to recover after the unrest sparked by George Floyd’s death.
Most of the 300 businesses damaged in St. Paul were in the Midway neighborhood. There was more than $82 million in damage.
One of the businesses damaged was Midway’s Goodwill store. It reopened Friday.
To understand what this means, note that the store closed in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was set to reopen on June 1. Two days before, however, it was ransacked, sustaining about $1.3 million in damage.
Seventy days later, the store is new again, with water-damaged walls replaced, shelves restocked and everything clean.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, Councilwoman Mitra Jalali and other company and city leaders said this is one big step for the people who work here and the community they serve.
“When we talked about reopening, we talked about ‘going back.’ I hope we don’t just go back to normal, because there was not peace, there was not the presence of active justice before all of this happened,” Jalali said, during a reopening ceremony. “We have a chance to make something new and better that actually takes care of everybody across our communities.”
She and everyone else who spoke at the ceremony said this should be a sign of resiliency for every other businesses damaged during the unrest — that rebuilding is possible and happening.
Meanwhile, investigators in St. Paul are working to track down who’s responsible for the riots and looting in the city during the unrest.
The task force assigned to piece together what happened says they’re sorting through a massive haystack of thousands of pieces of evidence.
The team’s leader says though this work stretches the police department thin, it’s worth it to bring resolution to the victims.
Source: CBS Minnesota
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