Sharing and Caring Hands

Metro (styled as METRO) is a transit network in Minnesota serving the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. It also provides service to some suburban areas. As of 2021 the system consists of two light rail lines (Blue and Green Lines) and four bus transit lines (Orange Line, Red Line, A and C Lines) all of which are operated by the local public transit company: Metro Transit. The five lines connect Downtown Minneapolis and St Paul with the Bloomington, Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, Roseville, Richfield, Burnsville and Brooklyn Center. Prior to August 17, 2019, service along the entire length of the Green Line operated 24/7, the only one of 22 light rail systems in the United States to do so, but a common practice on some heavy rail lines such as the New York City Subway and PATH. The service gap from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. was replaced by bus service. Metro Transit also provides 24/7 service between the stations serving the Lindbergh and Humphrey terminals of MSP Airport; the remainder of the Blue Line operates from 3:29 a.m. to 1:54 a.m. Monday through Thursday, and 24 hours a day from 3:29 a.m. on Friday morning to 1:54 a.m. on Sunday morning.In the 1970s, roughly contemporaneous with the construction of Washington D.C.'s Metro system and San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit, the newly formed Metropolitan Council contemplated the creation of a similar mass transit for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, but the idea was eventually abandoned due to opposition from the Minnesota Legislature. For the next few decades, there were repeated proposals to build light rail along several corridors, particularly the University Avenue corridor between downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul (the present Green Line), but the idea of light rail only gained steam in the late 1990s. In 1999, the Minnesota Legislature approved funding for the first line (the present Blue Line) along Hiawatha Avenue (initially named the Hiawatha Line) in south Minneapolis, which opened in 2004. In 2011, in anticipation of the opening of the Red Line and Green Line, and in order to help passengers better identify with each of the routes, Metro Transit announced that the system would be rebranded and each line assigned a unique color. The first phase of the Red Line opened in mid-2013, and the first phase of the Green Line (also known as the Central Corridor) in mid-2014. Extensions are planned to bring the system into the western metro area, with construction anticipated near the end of the decade.

Royalston Avenue/Farmers Market Station is one of five light rail stations planned in Minneapolis on the Southwest LRT extension of the Green Line. The Royalston Avenue/Farmers Market Station will be near the Minneapolis Farmers Market, the Hennepin Theater District, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, the Minneapolis campus for University of St. Thomas which includes the University of St. Thomas School of Law. The station is positioned east of I-94 and north of I-394.

The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center also called HERC is a waste-to-energy plant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Following changes to state law in 1980 that prioritized incinerating garbage over directly filling landfills, HERC was developed and began generating electricity in 1989. Located in the North Loop neighborhood near Target Field, the facility replaced a Greyhound Lines bus maintenance facility. The facility which is owned by Hennepin County, collects almost half of all waste generated in the county. Operation of the facility has been controversial with proposals to burn more trash or close the facility both proposed since 2009. Proposals to burn more trash cite the need to deal with an increasing amount of trash generated and to avoid filling landfills as quickly while proposals to close the facility cite the pollution generated and impact on surrounding neighborhoods. In 2023 the Minnesota state legislature required 100% of electricity in the state to be generated by green energy by 2040 and reclassified waste-to-energy power generation as no longer being considered green. The Hennepin County board voted to develop a plan to close the facility between 2028 and 2040 with activists advocating for an earlier closure.

Fulton Beer is a microbrewery based in the North Loop area of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The company was founded in 2009 by Ryan Petz, Jim Diley, Brian Hoffman and Peter Grande, who had been homebrewing for several years out of a garage in the Fulton neighborhood of Minneapolis. The company has also said that early 19th century American engineer and inventor Robert Fulton was the inspiration for the namesake of the brand.

Target Field is a baseball stadium in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. Since its opening in 2010, the stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins. The stadium hosted the 2014 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. It also has also served as the home of other local and regional baseball events. The ballpark is open-air; though originally designed for baseball, it has also hosted football, soccer, hockey games, and concerts. In 2010, ESPN The Magazine ranked Target Field as the number one baseball stadium experience in North America.

Cameron Transfer and Storage Company Building is a four-story warehouse building in the North Loop area of Minneapolis. The building illustrates the different structural systems and shows the evolution from timber post-and-beam framing to the mushroom capital posts used in more contemporary building. It was designed by C.A.P. Turner and built in three phases between 1909 and 1911. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The first section of the building, built in 1909, has a basement with reinforced concrete and mushroom-capital columns. The first through third floors of the 1909 section has a timber post-and-beam structural system where the timbers bear down on the masonry exterior walls. The wooden beams measure 12 inches (300 mm) by 11.5 inches (290 mm) on the first floor, gradually decreasing on upper floors to 10 inches (250 mm) by 8 inches (200 mm) on the fourth floor. The interior bay dimensions between posts are 16 feet (4.9 m) by 14 feet (4.3 m). In 1910, a four-story addition was built on the north side, with a reinforced concrete structure and mushroom-capital columns in the basement and on the first through fourth floors. The concrete columns measure 23 inches (580 mm) in diameter on the first floor, gradually decreasing on upper floors to 15 inches (380 mm) in diameter on the fourth floor. The interior bay dimensions between posts are 17 feet (5.2 m) by 18 feet (5.5 m). In 1911, a fourth story was added to the 1909 section using the same post-and-beam system used on the lower three floors. C.A.P. Turner got his start with reinforced concrete while employed as a bridge engineer between 1890 and 1901. In 1904, Turner designed the Northwestern Knitting Company Factory with a traditional concrete beam system. The following year, he designed the Minneapolis Paper Company Building (no longer in existence) at 400-404 South Fifth Street. He published the results of load tests in the 1906 edition of Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers and used those results to fine-tune his knowledge of reinforced concrete. Although Robert Maillart of Switzerland was credited as the inventor of the mushroom-capital system, C.A.P. Turner was recognized as having independently designed the system in the United States. He was awarded patents for the mushroom-capital system in 1911, and this system increased useable building space and decreased the cost of construction. Without the need for beams on top of posts, overall building height could be decreased even with the same floor heights. The city of Minneapolis building department was skeptical of mushroom-capital and flat-slab construction, though. In 1906, he designed the Johnson-Bovey Building (no longer in existence) at 426-432 Second Avenue North. The building department refused to grant a permit unless the construction could withstand a test load of 700 pounds (320 kg) per 1 square foot (0.093 m2) with a maximum deflection of 0.625 inches (15.9 mm) at the center of the slab. When tested, the slab showed only 0.25 inches (6.4 mm) of deflection. Later that year, Turner designed the Marshall Building in Milwaukee, which is the oldest existing example of his mushroom system. In 2015, Schafer Richardson announced a plan to convert the building into 44 units of affordable rental housing, with studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments. The building had been slated to be torn down, and Schafer Richardson even had a demolition permit, but that plan was scrapped when it was discovered that the building might be the oldest building in Minneapolis designed by C.A.P. Turner. The building was renovated with a new roof, new windows, and tuckpointing. The affordability targets were for people who earned 50 to 60 percent of the area's median income. The building was fully restored and occupied in August 2016.

Target Field Station (formerly known during construction under the names of Minneapolis Intermodal Station, Downtown Minneapolis Ballpark station and The Interchange) is a multimodal commuter train and light rail station in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Located in the North Loop area of Downtown Minneapolis, the station is named for Target Field, the Minnesota Twins baseball stadium. METRO Blue Line light rail service started November 14, 2009; Northstar Line commuter rail service started November 16, 2009; METRO Green Line light rail service started on June 14, 2014.

A statue of former Minnesota Twins baseball team owner Calvin Griffith stood in front of Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 2010 until 2020.

The Minneapolis general strike of 1934 grew out of a strike by Teamsters against most of the trucking companies operating in Minneapolis, the major distribution center for the Upper Midwest. The strike began on May 16, 1934 in the Market District (the modern day Warehouse District). The worst single day was Friday, July 20, called "Bloody Friday", when police shot at strikers in a downtown truck battle, killing two and injuring 67. Ensuing violence lasted periodically throughout the summer. The strike was formally ended on August 22. With a coalition formed by local leaders associated with the Trotskyist Communist League of America, a group that later founded the Socialist Workers Party (United States), the strike paved the way for the organization of over-the-road drivers and the growth of the Teamsters labor union. This strike, along with the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike and the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike led by the American Workers Party, were also important catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

The January 23, 2026 Minnesota ICE protests were large-scale protests held on January 23, 2026 across the state of Minnesota in opposition to expanded federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and the Donald Trump administration's mass deportation policies. The protests emerged amid a period of escalating federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota that preceded and continued through January 2026. Tensions rose after the Trump administration significantly increased funding and deployed thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents statewide as part of Operation Metro Surge, drawing sustained criticism from local leaders and activists. Public outrage intensified following the fatal shooting of Renée Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on January 7, and further escalated as Minnesota officials and community members decried the lack of criminal accountability for Ross and the broader federal operation. In the weeks that followed, persistent ICE activity, aggressive raids, and confrontations with residents contributed to growing calls for a coordinated protest. On January 23, 2026, statewide demonstrations to oppose ICE operations and demand accountability and policy changes began. Organizers estimated that tens of thousands attended associated protests in subzero temperatures, and hundreds of businesses across Minnesota closed in solidarity with the action. Even some workers whose employers did not close still went on strike. Subsequent polling commissioned by the May Day Strong coalition and conducted by Blue Rose Research found that roughly one in four Minnesota voters either participated directly in the January 23 shutdown and protests or had a close family member who did. Among those participants, approximately 38 percent reported staying off the job that day, either by choosing not to work or because their workplace closed.

The Northwestern Knitting Company Factory, also known as Munsingwear Corporation and later as International Market Square, is a former factory building in the Sumner-Glenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The company was founded in 1888 by George D. Munsing, who invented a method of plating wool fibers with silk and cotton to make the union suit more comfortable. The company received financial backing from Clinton Morrison and Charles Alfred Pillsbury, who were prominent businessmen in the Minneapolis flour milling industry. This style of underwear, patented in 1891, proved to be very popular, and the company eventually became the world's largest manufacturer of underwear. The company changed its name in 1919 to Munsingwear.The company built five brick and concrete buildings between 1904 and 1915, eventually creating a complex covering 650,000 square feet (60,000 m2) and employing up to 2000 workers. The five- to eight-story buildings had long rows of windows, and although the buildings mostly had a plain appearance, the architects added some details such as slightly projecting cornices, fretwork friezes, and fluted Doric columns. The oldest of the buildings, along Glenwood Avenue, is notable for being the city's first entirely reinforced concrete building. Engineer C.A.P. Turner used concrete columns shaped like a mushroom on top, and he eventually patented this process, which was widely used.The factory eventually closed in 1981 when the economy reduced demand for Munsingwear's products. In 1985, the buildings were renovated and the complex was renamed International Market Square, which housed offices, shops, and over 100 showrooms for home and office products. The renovation included a five-story atrium created by roofing over an old courtyard where rail tracks once served the complex. In 2005, some portions of the building were renovated into 96 loft apartments. This was a leading example of adaptive reuse in Minneapolis. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Ramp A/7th Street Transit Center is a bus rapid transit station in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. The transit center is a southbound station on the Metro C Line and upcoming D Line, as well as several local routes. The transit center is located inside of Ramp A, a 3,637 stall parking ramp built over sunken Interstate 394.