Lawsuit over Minneapolis 2040 plan gets moved back to district court
(FOX 9)
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A lawsuit challenging a comprehensive plan for the future of Minneapolis over environmental impacts is getting kicked back to district court after a Court of Appeals ruling released on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, which is in its second appeal, challenges the Minneapolis 2040 plan, which hopes to bring substantial change to the city.
Work on the plan has been ongoing since 2019 but has faced ongoing legal battles, claiming the full plan will have negative impacts on the environment and violates state environmental law.
Cities are required to submit a comprehensive, long-term plan to the Metropolitan Council every ten years. The 2040 version has a wide array of lofty goals ranging from eliminating disparities, increasing living-wage jobs, protecting the environment, and improving neighborhoods with better public transit, walking and biking areas, and access to healthy food and parks. Consideration of the plan took place over a period of more than two years with the final plan being approved by the Minneapolis City Council in October 2019.
A priority for the plan was to create more affordable housing in Minneapolis, which leads to one of the more controversial aspects of the plan.
The project faced scrutiny for a ban on zoning for single-family homes in Minneapolis by 2040, instead replacing single-family structures with triplexes or quadplexes. However, the lawsuit brought by Growth Minneapolis, the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, and Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds worries the plan would ultimately increase residential density in the city and increase the amount of water runoff and pollutants in the city sewer system.
Earlier this year, a judge issued a temporary halt to Minneapolis 2040 projects.