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Mayoral Challenger Backs More Cash for Affordable Housing, Less for Retail

MINNEAPOLIS-R.T. Rybak, a former development director for the Minneapolis Downtown Council, calls affordable housing "our most important civic goal.

By Jim McCartney | Updated on October 21, 2001

MINNEAPOLIS-Development issues are key in the upcoming Minneapolis mayoral race in which R.T. Rybak is challenging incumbent Sharon Sayles-Belton. Rybak has been critical of Sayles-Belton’s downtown economic development policies, including a large subsidy to build a Target store downtown, and has been proposing his own solutions to the affordable housing crisis that faces the city.

Rybak argues that Target could have built a store in downtown Minneapolis without the “massive public investment” that the city put into the project — an estimated $60 million for a parking ramp, site development and other purposes. “As development director of the Downtown Council and later in the private sector, I played a large role in convincing Target to make an investment in a downtown Minneapolis store,” Rybak says. “I know from first hand experience that this store could have been built for many, many millions less than the city is spending, at the current site or other locations.”

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