Walk Selby Avenue between Milton and Victoria this month and you will pass a coffee shop, a restaurant, a business incubator, and a senior housing building that all trace back to the same address book. That is not a coincidence of small-town proximity. It is the outcome of three decades of one organization buying, holding, and now redeveloping this specific stretch of pavement, and it explains why the changes here feel connected in a way that random new openings usually do not.
If you have lived in Summit-University for a while, you already know Golden Thyme split into two spots last year. You may have caught the ribbon cutting at the storefronts next door this spring. You might even have Selby Ave JazzFest circled for next month. What is less obvious, unless you go looking for the paperwork behind each of those stories, is that a single nonprofit, Rondo Community Land Trust, now sits behind nearly all of it. That is the part worth understanding, because it changes what to expect from this block next.
Same Name, Two Doors
Golden Thyme Coffee Cafe opened in 2000 on what was then an underused stretch of Selby Avenue, founded by Mychael and Stephanie Wright. Over two decades it grew into more than a coffee shop. It became the kind of place where a dozen other Black-owned businesses opened within a few blocks simply because Golden Thyme had proven the block could work.
The Wrights stepped back in 2023 and handed the keys to Rondo Community Land Trust, the land trust that had quietly been assembling property along this corridor since 1993. Last year the trust relaunched the space as two operations a block apart: the original Golden Thyme Cafe at 856 Selby Avenue, still serving coffee and pastries from 6:30 a.m., and a new full-service Golden Thyme Restaurant & Bar at 934 Selby Avenue, with a menu built around New Orleans-style Southern cooking and a Sunday brunch that started in June 2025. The restaurant is overseen by executive chef Adam Randall, a longtime Rondo resident, and the expansion brought more than 35 jobs to the neighborhood, with hiring focused on residents from around Rondo.
That detail matters more than it might read at first pass. This was not a founder selling to a chain or a developer flipping the space for condos. It was a transfer to the one institution on the street built specifically to keep commercial space affordable and locally controlled.
The Storefronts Behind the Cafe
Walk into 856 Selby now and Golden Thyme is not the only thing there. Rondo Exchange, a 2,800 square foot creative business incubator, shares the building. It held its ribbon cutting in late March 2026 with an inaugural cohort of four businesses:
- Mind the Crown, founded by Adrianna Willis, self-care products and community wellness programming
- BLovely Production & LeMae Photography, founded by Bianca Rhodes, multimedia work centered on Black life in Minnesota
- Brii Noir, founded by Briauna Williams, visual art and wellness-centered products
- Kp Inspires, founded by Kprecia Ambers, digital illustration celebrating Afro beauty and self-love
None of these four had a brick-and-mortar presence before this space existed. Rondo Exchange gives them one, plus business coaching, marketing support, and a shared cohort of peers working through the same growing pains at the same time. It is a small footprint, but it is the kind of retail space that rarely gets built from scratch on a residential-heavy commercial strip like this one.
Mikeya Griffin, president and CEO of Rondo Community Land Trust, has described her own connection to this work in personal terms. "I'm a daughter of Rondo, so my family's been here for almost 100 years," she said in a March 2026 interview. That is not incidental context. It is the reason the trust's projects on Selby keep landing in the same few blocks rather than spreading opportunistically wherever land is cheapest.
One Owner, Several Buildings
Zoom out from any single storefront and the pattern gets clearer. Rondo Community Land Trust, together with partner Community Housing Development Corporation, developed the mixed-use buildings at 852 Selby and 940 Selby, which combine long-term affordable commercial space with 34 units of affordable senior housing on the upper floors. The trust's own offices sit at 624 Selby. Add the cafe and incubator at 856, the restaurant at 934, and you have a run of storefronts along a few blocks where the landlord, the incubator operator, and in some cases the restaurant tenant are all functions of the same organization.
That concentration is not slowing down. In March 2026, the same month Rondo Exchange opened, the trust announced it had acquired the former Sears site at 425 Rice Street, a 17-acre property that has sat vacant since 2019 and changed hands three times in the past three years. The trust has said it plans to engage the community before deciding what goes there, but the acquisition itself tells you something: the organization now shaping Selby Avenue's storefronts is also positioning itself to shape a much larger site nearby.
For anyone trying to read the tea leaves of what Selby Avenue looks like in five years, that is a more useful signal than any single new restaurant opening. The businesses arriving now are not random bets by outside investors testing the market. They are the visible edge of a longer, more deliberate accumulation of property by one community-rooted organization.
The Festival Changed Hands Too
The same shift from individual founder to institutional steward played out with the neighborhood's signature music event. Selby Ave JazzFest started in 2002 when Mychael Wright, then running Golden Thyme, wanted a response to the somber mood after September 11. What began as a gathering of 600 people on Milton Avenue grew into a St. Paul institution drawing crowds as large as 12,000.
Wright and his wife stepped away from running the festival in 2024, and the event passed to Walker|West Music Academy. This year's edition, the 25th, returns to Selby and Milton on September 12 and 13, headlined by Stokley, the Mint Condition frontman who spent part of his youth on Selby. The Saturday schedule opens with a New Orleans-style brass parade led by the Selby Avenue Brass Band, moves into an after-hours jam session at Walker West's campus on Marshall Avenue, and closes Sunday with a masterclass at Harmony Hall featuring Stokley himself.
Like Golden Thyme, the festival did not disappear when its founder stepped back. It moved to an institution built to carry it forward, which is the same story playing out with the storefronts a few blocks south.
What This Means If You Already Walk This Block
None of this requires a decision from you. You do not need an opinion on what eventually fills 17 acres of vacant Sears parking lot to find this useful. What is useful to know is simply this: the recent wave of openings on Selby is not scattered small-business luck. It is the output of one land trust that has spent three decades acquiring, financing, and now redeveloping this specific corridor, and its next move, the former Sears site, is already public.
If you are the kind of resident who tracks these things because you care where the neighborhood is headed, that is the throughline to watch, more than any single storefront sign.
Christian Klempp keeps an eye on how these kinds of local shifts eventually show up in property values and buyer interest across Summit-University, even when the story starts with a coffee shop rather than a for-sale sign. If you are curious how Selby Avenue's changes are reflected in what is happening with homes nearby, or you just want a local read on the neighborhood from someone who follows it closely, Christian Klempp is happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
