Big River Magazine, November-December 2025
Restoration at the Falls
Minneapolis — McKnight Foundation moved into a new/old downtown Minneapolis headquarters in September. The office is carbon-neutral, green, repurposed and within view of the Mississippi River.
McKnight had $2.6 billion in assets at the end of 2023. It awarded grants totaling $145 million in 2024 and granted an average of $115 million annually in the previous five years, including grants related to the Mississippi River.
On the nearby riverfront, the city of Minneapolis gave a Dakota-led nonprofit five acres near the site of St. Anthony Falls, effective in 2026. McKnight helped the tribal nonprofit with a $300,000 grant in 2023. Owámniyomni Okhódayapi (roughly translated, Friends of the Falls) is working with the Minneapolis Parks Department to expand its riverfront acreage and improve riverfront access. The nonprofit’s website calls it “a groundbreaking effort to heal a sacred Dakota site.”
Tribal leaders hope to restore the St. Anthony Falls riverfront into “a place of healing, beauty and belonging for everyone,” according to Shelley Buck, president of Owámniyomni Okhódayapi. Buck is a member of the Prairie Island Indian Community near Red Wing, Minn.
McKnight’s new home is in refurbished 1880-vintage storefronts that served the flour-milling trade. That industry built the city but ravaged the river.
The building uses no natural gas for heating. Instead, thermal-energy storage tanks buffer extremes of heat and cold in the all-electric building. Its 45,000 square feet includes meeting space and work areas for grant recipients.
Its previous location is also historic — a restored building that once housed the Washburn A Mill and was badly damaged in an 1878 fire that killed 18 workers. That structure now also houses the Mill City Museum.
