NACC and WMI Celebrate New Facility’s Groundbreaking
The Native American Community Clinic (NACC) celebrated the groundbreaking of their new facility on Friday, April 25th alongside government representatives, investors, and community members.
Sarah Anderson, Development Director with NACC and Dr. Antony Stately, President & Executive Office with NACC led the program. Among those invited to speak were David Wellington with Wellington Management, Mayor Jacob Frey, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, Brett Edelson with UnitedHealthcare Minnesota, Stephanie Albert with Delta Dental of Minnesota Foundation, Commissioner Angela Conley with Hennepin County, Council Member Jamal Osman with Minneapolis City Council, Andrea Brennan with Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, and Dominic Mitchell with Minneapolis Public Housing Authority.
The overwhelming sentiment of the event was gratitude toward the community and investors in the project. With the opening of this new facility, NACC will be able to combine housing and healthcare to holistically support the community along the Franklin Avenue corridor. As Lieutenant Governor Flanagan said, this project “is a vision that is rooted in sovereignty and strength, and in self-determination. And I applaud the Native American Community Clinic and Wellington Management for showing us what it looks like to build and partner around a shared mission and vision. NACC has long stood as a beacon of culturally-grounded holistic healthcare. With this new facility, we are quite literally making space for our people to thrive.”
The new NACC facility will provide deeply affordable housing for large families, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities as well as clinical services directed toward physical, mental, and behavioral health. Housing will include 83 units of affordable rental housing, with affordability levels ranging from 30% to 60% of the Area Median Income. The expanded clinic space will allow NACC to serve around 8,000 individuals each year, an increase of about 3,000 people. Angela Conley noted, “housing is healthcare. To combine the two means that we are looking at investments that are holistic, that ground our indigenous relatives in their culture and in their spirituality, and they deserve that investment.”
David Wellington commented that his project is a celebration of “the start of a long union between NACC and Wellington Management; two seasoned and highly-capable organizations with deep and lasting roots in this community. Two organizations renewing and deepening their commitment to the health and vitality of the people we will serve day in and day out right here for years to come.”
We are honored to be working alongside Dr. Stately and the rest of the NACC team to deliver this innovative facility to the Minneapolis Indigenous community. We are grateful to NACC and the Minneapolis American Indian Center for hosting such a meaningful celebration of this project, and to those who have partnered with WMI and NACC to make this dream a reality.
