Who am I?

TLDR: I’m a community development expert with three decades of experience working with communities to tackle difficult issues in partnership with neighborhoods, developers, municipalities, community organizations, and state and federal government.

If you want the long story, here it is:

My name is Sean Allen and I have lived in Northfield on and off for more than 34 years. I grew up in Ward 1, went to Washington and Sibley Elementary Schools before going to the Middle School (now Carleton’s Weitz Center) and I graduated from Northfield High School in 1989.

I graduated from St. Olaf College in 1993 with a degree in Political Science. I was on the track and field team at St. Olaf for two years before volunteering at the Middle School as a track coach for my junior and senior years.

After college I joined the Peace Corps and served in Paraguay for more than 2 years. I lived and served the community of Cerro Costa near Santa Maria in the Departmento of Misiones. My main role was assisting a local town council in developing a potable water system for their small rural community. This experience was one of the formative experiences of my life and I regularly visit friends in Paraguay and my fellow Peace Corps Paraguay volunteers. While in Paraguay, I learned to speak Spanish fluently and also picked up some of the local indigenous language called Guarani. This experience was my first in community development and it sparked an interest and important understandings that I still carry today.

When I returned from the Peace Corps, I lived in Northfield and had a variety of jobs, including as a bartender and cook at the Rueb N Stein, a bus driver for Benjamin Bus, and as a receptionist and Spanish interpreter at Community National Bank. As I reacclimatized to life here in Northfield, I found a job working as the manager of our local one-unit homeless shelter at the Northfield Community Action Center. This experience opened my eyes to the often unseen needs of people in our community. While at the CAC, we expanded the homeless shelter from one to three units and worked closely with the City of Northfield to purchase and renovate the Mary Wood House for transitional housing. I was also able to begin coaching high school track at Northfield High School during this period and I have been continuously coaching ever since.

My next role was with Three Rivers Community Action in Zumbrota. Building on my community development experience from the Peace Corps and my recent housing experience, I became the housing coordinator at Three Rivers. They put me through a rigorous training program called the National Development Council Affordable Housing Development Finance Profession certification. This month long course taught our cohort the basics of development finance and the tools available from local, state and federal government. It provided the background I’ve used for most of my career and I was able to immediately put what I’d learned into practice by developing affordable housing projects in several small communities in SE MN. As my role shifted at Three Rivers, I became the Community Development Director.

During this time I was appointed to the Northfield Planning Commission and received an education in public process when Target came to Northfield. I was the chair of the Commission at age 27 (I was completely unprepared for this!) and had to help the community navigate the process which became extremely controversial. We understood the difficulty a project like this was for a small town like Northfield. How do we protect the downtown business district while also providing a retail outlet that many in our community wanted desperately? In the end I think the project was good for Northfield, but it did have a negative impact on the Downtown in the short term.

I left Northfield in 2000 to take a position as Executive Director of a new non-profit subsidiary of the Rochester Area Foundation called First Homes. More than $14 million had been raised locally from the business community and matched by the state government to create a fund for affordable housing development. I was in this role until 2012 and during that time we leveraged those funds to bring in an additional $150 million and created more than 1200 affordable housing units across the region. We also developed Minnesota’s largest Community Land Trust during that time and received the State’s Excellence in Affordable Housing Award twice.

My role shifted while I was at the Rochester Area Foundation. In addition to my Executive Director role, I was also tasked with new community initiatives for the Foundation, including the First Steps program (early childhood education) and the Rochester Community Finance Initiative to bring a CDFI and New Market Tax Credits to Rochester. I was involved in the early stages of the Destination Medical Center project and the Rochester Downtown Alliance, as well as being a board member of the Rochester Neighborhood Resource Center.

Two of the efforts I am most proud of from my time in Rochester are the Imagine Kutzky neighborhood revitalization effort and the C4 (Concerned Citizens for a Creative Community) non profit I helped found to enhance the grassroots arts in the community.

Imagine Kutzky used deep community involvement processes to reimagine a neighborhood situated between The Mayo Clinic downtown and St. Mary’s Hospital to the West. The Kutzky Park neighborhood had been in decline for decades since the City changed the neighborhood roads to one way pairs to facilitate traffic from outside the community into and out of downtown as Mayo Clinic expanded. At the Foundation we raised more than $20 million for this project and with the support of the neighborhood association and the City of Rochester removed dilapidated housing, added new affordable housing and changed the roadways back to two-way. The result was a dramatic shift for the neighborhood from decline to being one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Rochester. While this resulted in some gentrification, our development of dozens of affordable homes preserved and increased the density and economic diversity of the neighborhood.

At C4 we worked with owners of vacant buildings to provide a free space for local artists to gather, create, and show their work. This provided a foothold for the local arts community that can still be seen today in Rochester.

When I left the Rochester Area Foundation in 2012, I became a real estate development consultant, assisting land owners with development projects, including project feasibility analysis, design and development of affordable housing and market rate projects, and I worked with several municipalities on housing planning efforts. It was during this time that my future wife and I created a series of Air BnB homes and then leveraged our construction and finance efforts to create a brewpub called Forager Brewery, located on the edge of the Kutzky Park Neighborhood where we lived. This project was financed using a local investor fund that we created. I managed the design and construction of the project acting as the contractor. This 10,000 square foot brewery/restaurant/coffee shop brought in more than $3 million in revenue our first year.

As the restaurant project was completed, I ran for Rochester City Council President against an entrenched incumbent. I enjoyed the series of debates - many of which were televised locally. Our campaign was very grassroots and we garnered more than 21,000 votes to my opponent’s 24,500. I received the Rochester Post Bulletin’s endorsement and I’m proud of the positive campaign we ran in 2016.

I got divorced in 2017 and decided it was time to start over. I moved to the Stillwater area and worked on a number of small projects before becoming the executive director of Northcountry Cooperative Foundation, a non-profit that works with manufactured home parks to convert them to cooperatives to preserve the affordability of the homes and provide resources to upgrade infrastructure.

in late 2019 my mom died unexpectedly and I returned to Northfield to be with my dad while we both were grieving. By early 2020 the pandemic happened and I ended up staying here to ride it out. As it was for everyone, it was a difficult time but we got through it, and as the pandemic abated, I decided to get more involved in the local community. When a six month spot opened on the City Council I applied and was appointed to the Council. I enjoyed my brief time on the Council and decided that if the opportunity arose again I would seriously consider a run for the role. Towards the end of this service I heard that the Northfield Historical Society was looking for an interim executive director. While I’d never worked for a museum, I thought it would be an interesting challenge so I met with the Board and was appointed to the position. In the 3+ years I’ve been executive director of the Historical Society, we have worked hard to update all the systems, added youth and adult programming, restored long standing programs that were lost during the pandemic, and developed and implemented two strategic plans. As you can see by driving down Division Street, we are in the middle of a long overdue renovation and restoration project that will see the exterior be returned to its late 1800’s appearance and the interior will have five new apartments. This was accomplished with the support of the Board, donors, state grants, and both state and federal historic rehab tax credits.

Since I returned to Northfield, I have served on the Heritage Preservation Commission, the Board of the Friends of Downtown Northfield, and I’ve been the sprints and hurdles coach for the Northfield Girl’s Track and Field Team. This last season was my 31st season coaching track and field.

And a shout out to the many mentors I’ve had over the years that have supported, critiqued and humored me over the years. In addition to my fantastic parents Pat and David Allen, here is a non-inclusive list. I hope that I can live up to their expectations.

Bob Flynn, Dick Scott, Dr. Darwin Deim, Pat Foley, Bill Thornton, Zenon Portillo, Rosanna Brusquetti, Mark Thornton, Carla Johnson, my Uncle Mike Reedy, Mike Thorsteinson, Jo Ellen Mahn, Steve Thornton, Al Tuntland, Al Deboer, Charles Umbanhower, Lisa Peterson, and many others.

(For the record, NONE of these people have endorsed me!)