Minneapolis business owners face ‘nearly impossible’ challenges, including crime and regulations

Early in the riots over George Floyd’s death, when police were overwhelmed, someone drove a car into Thurston Jewelers on Lake Street in Minneapolis. The store was raided by thieves. Display cases were smashed. Lloyd Drilling says he was lucky the most expensive jewelry was in the safe. Anything that could be taken out the door was stolen.

“That basically bankrupted us for a few months. We had to rebuild the store and renovate it,” Drilling says.

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The jewelry store bounced back, but its customers didn’t.

In the city that pioneered the defund-the-police movement, homeless people now occupy most city blocks. Outdoor drug use is so common it gets little attention, and petty crime plagues businesses that have been able to reopen.

As a result, Drilling says, the suburban population that once fueled his business from survival to thriving is no longer coming downtown. “I think they feel unsafe in the city, in this neighborhood and in (other) areas. They’re a little afraid to come here,” Drilling says.

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Criminals are disrupting every aspect of downtown Minneapolis business. Koby Rich has opened a cosmetics store. Rich Girl’s Cosmetics keeps a painted plywood rectangle on its front door because vandals keep breaking the glass on his front door. He’s tired of spending money to fix it.

“That makes it difficult because there’s vandalism, like when someone breaks windows, someone kicks in doors, someone trashes the entire store,” Rich says.

Jim Schultz of the Minnesota Private Business Council says there’s a direct link between the rise in crime and Gov. Tim Walz’s leadership. “A lot of Democratic leaders in the state were really pushing for reckless policies when it comes to policing and crime,” Schultz says. “And the result was the largest increase in violent crime in Minnesota history. And Tim Walz led that. Minnesota businesses are still feeling the effects.”

Even without crime, business owners and leaders say Minnesota, under Gov. Walz, is not kind to job creators.

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The state has the highest statutory corporate tax rate in the United States, at 9.8%. Doug Loon of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce says the Walz administration has missed opportunities to boost jobs because the governor had other priorities. “A lot of the progressive policies that the Legislature passed and the governor signed have limited the private sector from reaching its economic potential,” Loon says.

The chamber said Minnesota currently ranks 47th among all states in the nation in job creation and 46th in gross domestic product.

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Kent Bergman opened Campanelle in Lino Lakes, a suburb of Minneapolis. It survived COVID lockdowns. But burdened by taxes and regulations, he’s still living off his savings, unable to take home a profit. “With all the mandates and everything that’s been thrown at us as a restaurant, a small business, the state makes it almost impossible for a small business or restaurant to survive,” Bergman says.