Twin Cities
St. Paul
Interstate 94 cut the Rondo neighborhood in half between 1956 and 1968, displacing 600 Black families. ReConnect Rondo now proposes a 21-acre land bridge to restore the ground.
Rondo was the core of St. Paul’s African-American community from the 1860s forward. By 1950 the neighborhood held roughly 85 percent of the city’s Black residents across a linear corridor centered on Rondo Avenue between Lexington Parkway and Dale Street. The Minnesota Department of Highways began planning Interstate 94 through the corridor in 1956, routing the expressway through Rondo after rejecting a northern alignment along St. Anthony Avenue that would have spared the neighborhood. Construction ran from 1956 through 1968 and took roughly 700 homes and 300 businesses, displacing about 600 Black families. ReConnect Rondo, founded in 2015, has advanced a 21-acre land bridge proposal that would cap I-94 and restore the street grid, with projected capacity for 350 to 1,400 housing units. The campaign is integrated with MnDOT’s Rethinking I-94 process.