From Hoops to Housing: How Devean George is Helping Revitalize North Minneapolis

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If it weren’t for J.R. Koch spraining his ankle, Devean George wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Or, maybe he would be, but under different circumstances. But I’m getting ahead of myself. On a recent Monday afternoon, the one-time L.A. Laker—6-foot-8-inches tall and still looking game-fit—is making a mockery of a lounge chair scaled to normal-size people. We’re in the lobby of The Commons at Penn, his affordable housing community on the corner of Penn Avenue and Golden Valley Road, in North Minneapolis. The development stands out in its own way: Not a lot of attractive new homes get built in North Minneapolis—a fact that hasn’t been lost on its mostly African-American residents.

The school day has just ended, and kids filter into The Commons, which is just down the block from the off-white foursquare home where George grew up. (His father still lives there today.) The three-time NBA champ greets each kid with the fist bumps and casual hellos of someone they’re seeing for the hundredth time. Between salutations, George talks about his vision for revitalizing North. Under the banner of his for-profit company George Group North, the 40-year-old has been dabbling in commercial real estate for years. But he has only recently turned that real-estate savvy toward his hometown through his nonprofit, called Building Blocks. George splits time between his own family, in Los Angeles, and his Building Blocks family in Minneapolis. 

As residents come and go, George recounts how, as a kid with no Division I scholarship offers, he took out nearly $70,000 in student loans to play at DIII Augsburg—and still managed to reach the NBA. And, oh yeah, he reflects on how this whole story might be different, had that random Iowa Hawkeye not turned his ankle one fateful day in 1999.

The intersection of Penn Avenue and Golden Valley Road is under construction. They’re putting in the C Line rapid-transit bus line, right? It’s literally right at the front door of The Commons at Penn. That sure works out nicely!

People always ask me how I knew. And I’m like, “I just knew!” No, I’m honest. I say, “Nah, I just got lucky.” And they say, “You shouldn’t tell people that.”

Joking aside, it really is a big deal. Like, the situation for North Minneapolis, geographically, is that freeways and railroad tracks have made it an island. And when you don’t run quality mass transit to and from an island, people are stuck.

You got it. But now it’s starting to pick up. And I’m increasing their ridership because I’ve got 47 units worth of people walking right out to a bus stop right there, and one right here, one across the street. And now we have this new C Line. That transit takes stress off the community. 

You’re a child of this community, whose circumstances changed. From where you sit now, what’s the biggest misconception about North?

That everybody here is on some BS. It’s a small percentage of knuckleheads doing all this wicked shit. Everybody else here is trying to work and trying to make it work. Trying to be honest. 

My dad still lives here. My dad doesn’t have to live here. He wants to. He likes it here. He has friends here. I don’t have to be doing this. I could be chilling with my kids. But this is a passion. This is something I want to do. But I think that’s part of the thing that people don’t understand. They’re like, “Man, why ain’t you out in Cali hanging with the stars?” And I also understand what people need.

So, what do the people of North need? Over the years a lot of people have thrown money at North hoping to fix it, and that probably only made things worse.

You have to build it from the inside out. When something’s been underserved for so long, this is what you get. There are people here who know how to do business things, but they can’t go rent a space and put a storefront up. Or they know how to cook, but lack a commercial kitchen. People know how to clean. People know how to work on cars. People know how to do hair. People know how to do nails. Dollars are changing hands all day, it’s just not on the books. 

What compelled you to take this on?

I was lucky. I had two parents growing up. They worked all the time, but I still always needed financial aid. Pooh Richardson, when he was with the Wolves, used to have a camp at Breck, which I could never afford. But they let me go for free. I had a fair share of people who helped me get to where I’m at. When I got to the Lakers, I was low man on the totem pole, so they’d send me out to do the team’s community service. And when I saw the impact of a Laker coming in to read for 30 minutes, and what that could do to a neighborhood? It was incredible. 

I read that your epiphany might’ve come a couple years later when you were with the Mavericks and discovered The Empowerment Center in Dallas?

My girlfriend saw a group of kids with donated tickets in a row right behind our bench. She said they were nice kids, but they were sort of threadbare. So I called my Nike rep and they sent me a box of stuff and I sent it to the kids. And then Reverend Johnny Flowers, the group’s leader, called me and said, “Hey, can you stop by? The kids want to thank you.” So I went, and he had this whole compound—full buildings. Some were housing. Some were food shelters. One was a recording studio. One was a church. It was this one-stop shop. 

And that planted the seed for what you’re now putting in action here?

I stole the whole thing from Father Johnny. The idea. The programming. It’s on a smaller scale, but the same kind of constant. Because the housing is just the base of it. These people need programs. These kids need mentors. It’s got to be more to the affordable housing. Twin Cities Rise, the job-training center, is going to have the whole first floor—17,000 square feet—of our new development across the street. And I’m going to have 64 units of affordable housing above that. Now this corner is changing. I have programs here. I have programs there. We have a grocery store here. We’ll have a restaurant and culinary school kitty-corner from here.

When did you buy this first piece of land? 

This used to be a nightclub and my dad used to run it. They were going to lose the building, and my dad was like, “You should come and take over the land here. Do something with it. Finally figure out what to do with the neighborhood.” I ended up buying it and I was figuring out what to do with it when I met Johnny, and was like, “Ah! That’s it!”

By the time you’re done with this intersection it’ll be a bona fide micro-community.

A community within a community. That’s what urban living should be. When your dry cleaner is across the street. You can catch a bus. You can ride a bike. That’s what is valuable. But in underserved areas like this, there are no amenities like that. Whereas I get a chance to choose where I buy my food—my produce, my meat—people here aren’t choosing. 

But unlike other communities within communities, this one built around affordable housing is only meant to be a pit stop, right?

I want it to be temporary. I want you to come in, take a deep breath, and get caught up. And I want to try to make affordable housing as nice as possible, within a budget that makes sense. Affordable housing is how you finance it, not how it looks. 

Which sounds good in theory, but you had to actually do it.

All of my real estate before had been market rate. I mean, you can build in the North Loop and charge $3,000 for a one-bedroom and pay your mortgage. But you can’t do that when it’s rent-restricted. There’s a $12, $13, $18 million building that you only can charge a certain amount of rent in, yet the cost to build it is pretty much the same—the brick, the windows, the steel. It’s not like because it’s in North Minneapolis it’s cheaper to actually build. 

When you first said you were going to put affordable housing here, how did residents react? 

They gave me hell. There’s a stigma to the words “affordable housing.” Like, “Oh, we don’t want affordable housing in the neighborhood. We need more market rate.” People get it confused with public housing, but affordable housing is for working people. 

Now that you’re up and running, with a plan for more in the works, are your neighbors still skeptical?

When I presented the second phase to them, I allowed them to walk through and ask questions. It wasn’t noisy. Even though people have been in here for eight months, they thought the building was vacant. The light bulb went on.

You’re breaking ground for two more buildings in this development later this summer. What comes after that?

I move to another pocket. There’re some pockets on Broadway that I have my eye on. But when will I be all done? I’ll probably reevaluate in 15 years, after the compliance period on this building.

So you’re in this for the long haul. How do you balance the seeds you’re sowing here with your young family in California?

This comes second. My boys come first. I coach their teams. I get them to tae-kwon-do. I take them to school. And then I come home to Minnesota for a week, week-and-a-half, each month, and cram in all my meetings. I’m a hands-on type of guy. Part of the reason a lot of the funders in the city got behind me was because they could call me and ask where we were at, and I could answer. I know exactly what’s going on. I ain’t going to play golf when there’s things to do.

You took inspiration from Father Johnny. Has anyone taken a cue from Devean George? 

D.L. Hughley got word out that I was doing this building. He talked about it on his show. He basically said, “Why aren’t more guys doing this? This is a blue-collar NBA guy. He’s doing more for his community than the stars. Come on, stars! Where you guys at helping your community?” Because the reality is a lot of us are from areas like North Minneapolis.

What other pros are looking to replicate this?

Charles Johnson from the Carolina Panthers. Ted Ginn and Roman Harper from the Saints have a building going up in New Orleans. Kevin Garnett is partnering with me for the next one here. 

Kevin Garnett was already a budding superstar with the Timberwolves when you were just a DIII baller dreaming of the NBA. How did you get from A to B?

Yale Dolsey was a kind of champion for me and he was on the committee at Portsmouth, the first of the NBA draft camps. He was trying to get me in. He was like, “I just believe in this guy.” They were like, “He played at that DIII school. He played against bums.” And so they picked 64 other guys. Then, J.R. Koch, who played for Iowa, ended up hurting his ankle the day before camp and they were like, “Let’s see what Yale’s guy can do.” I tore that camp up. I went from not even being in the draft conversation to destroying everybody at that camp. The rest just went on from there.

And the Los Angeles Lakers—with Kobe and Shaq in their prime—draft you with the 23rd overall pick. 

Walked right into it. Boom, boom, boom. Three championships. 

Have you ever looked up what became of J.R. Koch?

I have not. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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