For more than 20 years, the Native American Community Clinic has served as a health care anchor on East Franklin Avenue, offering culturally centered care out of a modest strip mall. That low-slung setup is now on its way out. In its place, the nonprofit is moving ahead with a new six-story building that will combine an expanded clinic at street level with 83 affordable apartments above. The project is pitched as a way to keep core medical, dental and behavioral-health services on site while also adding deeply affordable housing in the heart of the American Indian Cultural Corridor.
The project has already landed on the list of the city's top construction efforts for 2025, according to the City of Minneapolis. In that municipal roundup, the Native American Community Clinic and housing development sits alongside other publicly supported builds that helped push total construction value across Minneapolis past $1 billion last year.
Site and scale
Filings with the Department of Community Planning and Economic Development list the site as 1213 East Franklin Avenue and describe a six-story mixed-use building with a two-story clinic at the base and 83 residential units stacked above it. The CPED staff analysis details the site data and massing and describes the clinic as a more than 40,000-square-foot facility that will bring medical, dental, behavioral health and administrative space under one roof. For a deeper technical dive, see the CPED staff report.
Housing, affordability and services
Project materials submitted to the Metropolitan Council show that all 83 apartments will be income-restricted, targeting households in the roughly 30% to 60% area-median-income range. The plans also call for units specifically reserved for supportive housing and residents with disabilities. According to the Metropolitan Council, the development will include a public plaza and space for programming that can be used for community and ceremonial purposes.
The Minneapolis Public Housing Authority and project partners note that the design layers in amenities such as a rooftop garden and outdoor gathering areas, which are intended to support health programming and neighborhood events. MPHA called out those features when it joined partners for the public rollout of the project.
Funding and partners
Private and public players are splitting the duties on this one. Wellington Management purchased the air rights and will co-develop and manage the residential portion, while the Native American Community Clinic will own and operate the clinic itself, a structure the developer highlighted at a 2025 groundbreaking. In its own write-up, Wellington Management cast the arrangement as a way to pull in private capital for new housing without displacing a nonprofit health provider.
City records and council resolutions show that the project has drawn on multiple public funding streams, including Tax Base Revitalization Account awards, Hennepin County environmental grants and a Great Streets gap loan that helped cover site cleanup and other early costs. The financing steps are laid out in records from the City of Minneapolis.
Community impact
The Native American Community Clinic has been serving the Franklin Avenue corridor for more than two decades and, according to planning documents, now sees thousands of patients each year. The new mixed-use building is designed to pair stable, deeply affordable homes with on-site care and care coordination so residents have fewer hurdles when it comes to appointments and follow-up visits.
Project partners and neighborhood advocates say the decision to combine housing and culturally grounded health services in one building is intentional. The goal is to reinforce the American Indian Cultural Corridor at a moment when housing and health access are often treated as linked issues in city planning work.
Timeline and next steps
Construction followed a ceremonial groundbreaking in April 2025, and work on the site is underway. Developer materials and industry trackers currently list delivery targets in the 2026 to 27 range. Wellington and its partners describe the project as a multi-year effort that will bring the clinic expansion and the 83 apartments online at roughly the same time, while public records show the team continuing with site remediation and permitting.
The Development Tracker has identified an anticipated completion around 2027.
City officials have also amplified the project publicly, posting a short video and saying they were "proud to support" the clinic-and-housing build as part of a broader push for more affordable housing and community services along Franklin Avenue. The Facebook post from the City of Minneapolis, embedded above, appears alongside the municipal list of top projects and underscores the level of public backing for a site that puts housing and health care under one roof.
