Manufacturer that burned as Minneapolis protests turned violent plans to relocate from city

[question everything]

A Minneapolis manufacturing company has decided to leave the city, with the company’s owner saying he can’t trust public officials who allowed his plant to burn during the recent riots. The move will cost the city about 50 jobs.

“They don’t care about my business,” said Kris Wyrobek, president and owner of 7-Sigma Inc., which has operated since 1987 at 2843 26th Av. in south Minneapolis. “They didn’t protect our people. We were all on our own.”

Wyrobek said the plant, which usually operates until 11 p.m., shut down about four hours early on the second night of the riots because he wanted to keep his workers out of harm’s way. He said a production supervisor and a maintenance worker who live in the neighborhood stuck around to keep watch over the business. He said they became alarmed when fire broke out at the $30 million Midtown Corner affordable housing apartment complex that was under construction next door.

“The fire engine was just sitting there, but they wouldn’t do anything,” Wyrobek said. “That’s the frustrating thing to us.”

In an interview last week, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the city was overwhelmed by the riots. He said every fire truck was operating during the protests. “We were on our own those first few nights,” Frey said. “There were simply more people destroying property, more people setting fires, than any city government could respond to at once.”

The Star Tribune recently obtained the city’s first survey of property damage, which shows that nearly 1,000 commercial properties in Minneapolis were damaged during the riots, including 52 businesses that were completely destroyed. Owners and insurance experts estimate the costs of the damage could exceed $500 million. That would make the Twin Cities riots the second-costliest civil disturbance in U.S. history, trailing only those in Los Angeles in 1992, which were also sparked by racial tensions with police and had $1.4 billion in damages in today’s dollars.

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https://www.startribune.com/manufacturer-that-burned-during-mpls-riots-plans-to-relocate-from-city/571104922

[jimfields33]

1. The 52 businesses that were completely destroyed probably won't rebuild there,

But hopefully the other 900+ will stay. It’d be a shame for the neighborhood residents to not have any stores or restaurants near by.

[Sneederbunk]

2. For those who remember the 1960's, it's called voting with your feet.

[Backseat Driver]

3. Where's he headed? Antarctica? North Pole, a foreign or domestic isolated desert?

where climate will be a larger challenge than racism or lack of social justice? Some low-altitude island covered over by rising oceans; Where tectonic plates don't move under his feet; where tornadoes, hurricanes, or cyclones are 100-year events? Until climate change makes all those equally uncontrolled human events? Good luck, buddy! No guarantee, even with only 50 employees, diversified for race, age, gender, or accommodated for disability!

I'm not inclined to think there's a guarantee against human free will to vent anger and frustration wherever that happens. Bad things do happen to good people marred by all kinds of faults because they are human - that is a fact of life as well. If corporations are people, there's no guarantee about their everlasting continued existence, come what may, no?

Increasing insurance costs by bean counters are shared down to the lowest mandated ones, here or abroad, largely by policies that promote social injustices and racism's uglier faces, and it's not unusual for FDs to allow a structure to burn when it's too far gone to save or fix. Following standards of protection when humans are in danger? Experts re: fire? Experts as untainted great heroes?

Stop with the whining; do some introspection, and get on with whatever consumer good you make and grow fat and less and less creative and fair-minded!