The ribbon-cutting Saturday at St. Paul’s Rondo Commemorative Plaza represents more than a memory of a lost neighborhood.

That’s the contention of its champion, Marvin Roger Anderson, who calls the site at Concordia Avenue and Fisk Street “the basis for a renaissance” in what once was the heart of St. Paul’s African American community. The neighborhood was removed from the map in the 1960s in the path of I-94 construction through the capital city.

Anderson, a retired state law librarian, has devoted decades to the cause. With another son of the neighborhood — Floyd G. Smaller Jr. — he founded Rondo Avenue Inc., an organization with efforts that include the annual Rondo Days celebration to be held July 21.

As visitors explore the new plaza at the grand opening — details are on Facebook — and in the days that follow, they’ll see features that include an “exhibit wall” of 6-foot-tall panels with photos and stories shared by residents who lived through the uprooting of families and businesses.

Anderson wants the plaza to “honor the past in a respectful way” that shows at the same time that “we’ve reconciled our anger and pain and we’re using that redemption to power the future of our community.”

He sees a bright future, and an inclusive one. Exhibit panels also note new neighbors in the Rondo area, Anderson said, including members of the Hmong, Oromo, Karen and Somali communities.

Entertainment that representatives of those groups will provide during the day-long grand-opening celebration is part of that effort, he told us. “We need to reach out to them and welcome them to Rondo so that they feel that this could be a community in which they can become a part. If we’re going to survive as a neighborhood, it’s going to take all of us.”

Inclusion is a fundamental piece of the Rondo story, Anderson suggests, and “a reflection of the kindness” shown, for example, by members of St. Paul’s Jewish community. They were among those living in Rondo when the nation’s Great Migration of African American citizens from the South began in the World War I era.

Author Evelyn Fairbanks describes the geography of the neighborhood that became the newcomers’ home in her memoir, “The Days of Rondo,” including Oatmeal Hill — west of Dale Street to Lexington Parkway — and Corn Meal Valley — between downtown and Western Avenue.

Now, the vision to reconnect Rondo includes a bold concept, a “land bridge” over the interstate. Such a highway “lid” — like those in other major cities, including Dallas and Seattle — would “re-weave” the neighborhood, covering the interstate for a stretch that could include housing and commercial developments, as well as green space.

Advocates will report at an event later this summer on developments that include a feasibility study, a state Transportation Department report on I-94 reconstruction and final recommendations from a study earlier this year by experts from the Urban Land Institute.

Along the way, the Rondo effort has changed minds and moved government bureaucracies.

City and state leaders have apologized to the community in recent years, with Minnesota Transportation Commissioner Charles Zelle committing “to a new era where we do put people ahead of highways and community ahead of cars.”

In his State of the City address in 2016, former Mayor Chris Coleman noted his apology to Rondo residents “for the government’s role in uprooting their families and destroying their livelihood.” The city budget that year included funds to help with plaza construction, which also was supported by area foundations and individual contributions.

Although similar efforts are in the works in some other major cities, according to Anderson, St. Paul’s new plaza is the first such public space in the nation “dedicated to a community that was destroyed by governmental action.”

Also among the plaza’s features is a 30-foot-tall marker made of LED lights that illuminates the night sky with the word “Rondo.”

It should serve as a beacon — and a fitting reminder of loss endured, lessons learned and the will to re-connect.