Minneapolis added as many as eight community safety ambassadors to Uptown starting Nov. 8 as part of a wider effort to draw shoppers and businesses back to the corridor.

The unarmed ambassadors, who are not police, began working Uptown on Nov. 8 after roughly a year of operating along Lake Street and Franklin Avenue under a city pilot, the city said in an April update. Before the Uptown expansion the program ran seven ambassadors on Lake Street and five on Franklin Avenue, according to the city's Community Safety Ambassadors page.
The ambassadors provide safety escorts, wellness checks, first aid and Narcan, help people file police reports, and connect residents with services, and a dedicated dispatcher fields calls for those requests, the city said. They do not carry weapons or make arrests.
City officials have tied the expansion to a broader push to revive Uptown that also includes the planned Lake Street Safety Center. At an April briefing, the city reported that drug-related calls for service in the ambassador zones were concentrated in February and March, with only one such call in April 2026, according to MinnPost.
Whether the program changes how Uptown is used over a full season — more evening foot traffic, fewer empty storefronts — will be the test backers point to. For now the city is staffing the corridor and tracking the calls that come in.

The East Isles Neighborhood Association holds its annual Summer Social on Wednesday, June 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Joanne Levin Triangle Park, with a rain date of June 15.

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The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association reviews apartment and land-use proposals in the Wedge through its Community Development Committee, the volunteer-led forum where the neighborhood weighs in before projects reach the City Council.

Land use is the recurring flashpoint in Lowry Hill, a neighborhood of Victorian and Prairie-style homes where even a modest multi-unit proposal draws scrutiny under the city's built-form rules and the 2040 comprehensive plan.