Center for Innovation and the Arts

CITA is imagined to be a dynamic and inclusive center focused on leveraging resources of multiple partners.

The City of Brooklyn Park is working with North Hennepin Community College, Metropolitan State University, Osseo Area School District, and Hennepin County on a feasibility study for the proposed Center for Innovation and the Arts at Brooklyn Park (CITA). The CITA project involves the construction of a new arts and innovation facility at North Hennepin Community College on the northeast corner of 85th Avenue North and West Broadway Avenue. CITA would replace North Hennepin Community College’s existing Fine Arts Center, a dated facility that no longer meets the college’s educational needs.

Vision

CITA is imagined to be a dynamic and inclusive center focused on leveraging resources of multiple partners to create a flexible facility that will greatly increase educational opportunities for students, increase economic prosperity, and advance the quality of life in Brooklyn Park and surrounding communities. CITA will enhance and accelerate secondary to post-secondary academic programs and pathways in the arts and STEAM areas, increase baccalaureate completion, and provide equitable and inclusive access to arts, technology and cross-cultural programming to a richly diverse population.

CITA will engage the broader and highly diverse community through a focus on equitable and inclusive access to arts and cross-cultural programming. The Center will provide access and opportunity to the youth and citizens of the northwest suburban region in promoting engagement in education and attraction to support and increase economic development and advance quality of life. This project matches one of the most diverse community colleges in the Minnesota State system with the most diverse state university to serve a community where over 50% of the residents represent people of color, new Americans and immigrant communities.

The Center for Innovation & the Arts will solve a number of needs for its partners.

1. This project will replace the existing NHCC Fine Arts Center (FAC), a dated facility that no longer meets the educational needs of the NHCC arts programs and prohibits the programs from desired national accreditation. Creating this facility will provide our students with a quality learner centered state-of-the-art educational experience and modern resources to make them competitive in their chosen fields
2. The project presents the opportunity to expand NHCC’s partnership with Metropolitan State University the by creating a “north metro home”. This partnership accelerates and supports the expansion of baccalaureate programs and the goals of the Twin Cities Baccalaureate plan put forth by the Minnesota State Board of Trustees.
3. The vision for CITA includes engaging the broader community and surrounding cities in utilizing the facility to advance cultural engagement, community education and youth programming through art classes, camps, after-school and summer activities. The City of Brooklyn Park and surrounding cities will greatly benefit as the facility will fill an identified “arts gap” within the community and the northwest suburban region.
4. In a future phase, there are plans for an adjoining STEAM magnet school, with the goal to expand opportunities for science, technology, engineering, arts and math pathways. This partnership leverages adjacent library and shared physical resources at NHCC, increasing the “pipeline” of secondary to post-secondary students to NHCC and Metropolitan State University.
5. CITA’s location at the corner of 85th and West Broadway supports the interests of Hennepin County in providing state-of-the-art amenities that will advance economic development and position the NW metropolitan region for ongoing growth and development. Specifically, the anticipation of the Blue Line Light Rail stopping at this very location positions CITA to be a premier cultural and educational destination.