"A Closer Look" with Laura Oakes: What does the future of downtown St. Paul look like?

In this edition of WCCO's "A Closer Look with Laura Oakes," Laura continues her series on the future of the Twin Cities' two downtowns, with a deep dive into the future of downtown St. Paul.

SEE: "A Closer Look" at Downtown Minneapolis

"We're LIVE! with A Closer Look with Laura Oakes, on WCCO!" St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter joked. "I'm going to use that," warned Laura.

Yes, mayors are allowed to be silly too. Mayor Carter was punchy that day after being up all night with a sick kid. But when it comes to the serious business of mayoring, Melvin Carter says one thing is clear when it comes to the future of his city's downtown.

"Downtowns, I think, were established, have been established, as sort of a place of necessity or a place of obligation," Carter says. "You have to be here anyway, so here's a happy hour. You have to be here anyway, so here's a lunch place. The future of downtown is going to have to be a place of choice, a place of excitement, a place of vibrancy."

Carter says the future of St. Paul's downtown is among the top concerns that keep him up at night. Still, he’s brimming with optimism and says the momentum for a successful evolution is there.

Events like the recent and hugely successful Yacht Club Block Party on Harriet Island with 60,000 attendees and 200 boats help the city's image. But at the same time, and, as in many other major cities, it seems there’s been a string of stinging blows to that momentum.

Those include longtime downtown business TKDA relocating to the suburbs, U.S. Bank leaving downtown for the city's west side, the only downtown grocery store Lunds and Byerlys cutting its hours, and the State of Minnesota considering consolidating a chunk of its downtown workers at the capitol complex up the hill.

Not to mention a major commercial building owner, Madison Equities, suddenly putting all of its downtown properties up for sale.

"While I have spent a number of years looking forward to some of those Madison Equity properties changing hands, and maybe getting into a more active management situation, seeing them all go up for sale at the same time in this economy really is jarring," Carter explains. "And so we'll have work to do. From my perspective, all options are on the table. We're kind of checking in with our team and our partners to see what that even means. I was trying to signal this in my State of the City address this year, and I'll signal it again in my budget address this year, that we should expect to make deep investments in the future of our downtown. Because it's got to continue to be an economic engine for the rest of our city and not the other way around."

With fewer downtown workers and vacant office buildings threatening to increase property taxes for residents citywide, one strategy to combat such a scenario is to accelerate the conversion of commercial buildings into residential properties.

City leaders already know people want to live downtown, hence the current occupancy rate of 96 percent, and have a goal of tripling the residential population from 10,000 to 30,000 in the near future.

All of this takes some reimagination, says President of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance Joe Spencer.

"The best downtowns that anybody ever goes to have a great mix of people," said Spencer. "These are the spaces that you walk through that have a mix of visitors, people who are there to work, people who live there. They come from a variety of different backgrounds, they're in that place for a variety of different reasons, and it makes for just the most kind of exciting and vibrant atmosphere."

"I think when I started in this role, when the organization was stood up, we talked a lot about adding vitality, adding vibrancy, and people wondered what that means," continues Spencer. "What that means is adding people. Vitality and vibrancy are just words that mean having lots of people around and having lots of people around at all hours and for a variety of reasons. And so this idea of a central business district, that downtown is for tall buildings with offices and office workers, that was never really a very good idea. And we ended up with a downtown, especially in the core of downtown St. Paul, where we have exclusively office buildings, and then we would kind of run around wringing our hands like 'how come there's nobody around at night?' Well, there's nobody around at night because we built it that way on purpose."

So, as with many other cities facing vibrancy challenges with their downtowns, Spencer is doing what he can to accelerate the pace of office to residential conversions, and attract more young professionals to fill those spaces.

"While we have had a lot of success repurposing commercial buildings and residential buildings, we know that we're not going to achieve our 30,000 residential goal with just repurposing alone," he said. "But if we can do some of those, if we can repurpose some of those buildings at the core, it allows us to do three things at once. Number one is, it allows us to create that diversity of users in that core, which will will create that connection between the Rice Park and Mears Park areas. The other thing it will do is it will help stabilize the commercial real estate market. So, by driving down the denominator, you end up with a more healthy vacancy rate and more stabilized values in the commercial buildings. And you're then also adding residents and population to the overall goal of of adding residents in downtown. So, that key area is really, really important for downtown."

And yes, Spencer says the area between Rice and Mears parks is their primary focus, and it's ripe for renewal.

"You think about 5th Street, where you have the Xcel Center and the Ordway and Landmark Center," Spencer explained. "And Rice Park and Landmark Plaza and Osborne Plaza, Central Station, Mears Park, Farmers Market, CHS Field all line up on one street that is maybe from end-to-end nine blocks. That should be the absolute kind of center spine of downtown St. Paul. And right now as a pedestrian experience, it's quite poor."

Then there are the aesthetics of it all. There are some really ugly Soviet-era buildings in the downtown area, just like in any downtown, not specific to St. Paul. Which makes us wonder, if they are not being used very well, would the city ever tear them down and make a promenade, or a park, or something beautiful that will help connect the two regions?

"I think absolutely," says Spencer. "If there are buildings that no longer have a useful life, it's absolutely OK for those buildings to come down. There are some buildings where nobody would shed a tear if those got torn down and saw some new construction happen in its place. It's not a prescription we want to make for anybody's private property and that gets to be a little bit sensitive. You don't want to say like, 'hey, your building's a turd, we need to tear it down.' But at the end of the day, the market will reflect what the market will tell us, which buildings have kind of served their useful life, and maybe have come to an expiration date. And that's an OK thing."

On a recent Tuesday, city employees were cleaning up Rice Park, where three old friends decided to sit down and catch up.

Joe Maniaci has lived in St. Paul for many years.

"I lived in Edina when I was still a buyer for Target, and then I became a buyer for Minnesota Mutual and the drive from Edina to St. Paul was not particularly wonderful," Maniaci says. "And so I decided I'm going to move to downtown St. Paul and I moved into the condo building, Gallery Tower right across from the old St. Joe's Hospital."

Maniaci says downtown St. Paul wasn't the greatest experience back then.

"Well, when I first moved here, it was real scuzzy," she said. "On the way to work, I'd walk past buildings where people had obviously thrown up or there was blood on the sidewalks. Then over the years it got a lot better. And sadly now, I don't think it's maintaining that, because the police aren't patrolling down here anymore. They don't stop all these hot rods that race up and down Wabasha Street. I mean, it's just scary that they go so fast. But, you know, with everything, people picking up litter and stuff like that, that's great. But I worry that St. Paul is going to become completely residential without too many businesses. With a higher residential ratio in downtown, we need more police protection."

As for safety concerns downtown, and along pockets of the Metro Transit Green Line in particular, the Downtown Alliance's Spencer says having more people around, as well as the recent expansion of the city's community ambassador program will help. All of the special events after work hours appear to be helping too.

Dozens of folks brought their lawn chairs and blankets to Rice Park to see the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's Ordway performance outside on a big screen. Lowertown Sounds is back with live concerts in Mears Park every Thursday. 370 Sets, outside the Osborne 370 building, draws the after work crowd, and the Wednesday food trucks capitalize on a busy work from the office day.

And, while most people are familiar with the bars, restaurants and hotels along West 7th Street adjacent to downtown, it's become an eclectic little neighborhood that is quickly becoming one of the hottest in the entire Twin Cities right now.

St. Paul's Director of Public Works Sean Kershaw has known that for years.

"I moved in and rented a place for three years because it was affordable," Kershaw begins. "It was quirky, you know, and there was a sense of history, and there was this great sense of involvement and it was a really, and is a really, unique neighborhood. And so that's what drew us in. It was the old homes, it was the community engagement, and it had a lot of unique places."

Now that neighborhood is blowing up. A lot of younger people are moving in, it's hip, it's historic, it's bohemian, and it's affordable.

"I think what we're seeing is a lot of new people moving in," says Kershaw. "A lot of folks now, I mean, we were the couple that were pushing the stroller 25 years ago, 20 years ago. And now there's a lot of couples moving in with kids. We're seeing a lot of people come in for restaurants and breweries. You know, Waldmann or Bad Weather, Mancini's, DeGidio's, it's a place people want to go to have a drink, live, and I think what it's really done well is continue to be welcoming. I think neighbors go out of their way to make people feel welcome. The neighborhood has always been full of artisans and people who are artists who are doing some sort of creative activity, graphic arts. So when we started doing our music there, it didn't seem unusual and the neighborhood really got behind it.

Kershaw and his husband host an annual summer music series called the Grand Oak Opry in their backyard.

"Well, first of all, it wouldn't have happened without the neighborhood, and we're lucky to have an 80 foot lot," Kershaw says. "It's very old, one of the oldest houses in St. Paul with an oak tree that's probably 225 years old. I mean, the oak tree really predates, probably predates the majority of white presence here in the region. And it's this big oak and we happened to get married in the backyard and had music, and it was interesting to see how people gathered there. In 2014 we knew a couple of performers and said, 'you know, we have this idea, let's give it a try.' And it was really meant to support artists and to bring people into the neighborhood. It just grew. All the staffing comes from volunteers and then people who show up to concerts donate money. There's not a ticket, you don't have to pay anything, technically, if you don't want to. And all that money goes to support the artists.

Kershaw says West 7th helps feed downtown, and downtown helps feed the neighborhood.

"I think West 7th's success and downtown's success are really nicely linked," he said. "And so, when you think about downtown and the vision that the Downtown Alliance and the mayor have for it, it's trying to pick up off these unique old buildings that both West 7th and downtown have. There are unique places to eat and drink in both spots, unique architecture, unique buildings. Both places need attention to the pedestrian space. So as a resident of West 7th, and in my role at Public Works, we've got to pay more attention to pedestrian space. So, street lights, trees, sidewalks, that's really important in both areas and it's one of the priorities of the Downtown Investment Plan and West 7th."

Which brings us back to a building that serves as the nexus of West 7th street and the front door of the downtown core, the Xcel Energy Center, which is at the top of Mayor Carter's downtown priority list.

"That's a space that generates, I think, in the neighborhood of $400 million in economic activity in our city every year. Just out of the building," Mayor Carter says. That doesn't include folks going to a restaurant or a bar on West 7th before a game or before a concert. We have, you know, tons of events there. Some of them, I think about a third of them, are hockey games. So people associate the building with the Minnesota Wild, which is right. They're kind of an anchor tenant. That said, and I was just recently reminded, that building was designed and built not only before COVID fundamentally changed how we gather safely in groups, but that building was designed and built before 9/11. So the building is well beyond its competitive lifespan. I say competitive lifespan because its structural lifespan is still there. The Wild have been great tenants, the reinvestment of the building has been great. So the bones are still good."

"We need it to be more accessible, we need it to be easier to secure, we need better ways to ingress and egress in and out of the building to help to secure it," Mayor Carter continued. "And that creates an opportunity for us, one to create different offerings inside that cannot just make us more comfortable while we're watching a concert or a hockey game, but make the next recording artist who wants to decide where they want to perform more likely to choose us. The thing that excites me even more though, is one of the best practices in arena design right now, is to forego the sort of brick wall façade that we're used to like the Metrodome, right? Like something's happening inside, but all I see is a brick wall around it, in favor of a kind of a softer perimeter that has maybe outdoor spaces to watch the game on a big screen. Or outdoor spaces to have a happy hour or something like that."

"And, long story short, we can create in that space, a vibrant, thriving walkable space that's exciting and welcoming even when there's no concert tonight, even when there's no game tonight. And that's what I mean by saying, we have to really transform our spaces into places of choice that people want to be more. And that'll give us an opportunity to leverage, again, the high number of visitors that come in and out of this city. Particularly for activities after work, and make our city, our downtown, just a little more sticky, Stop by one more bar before you leave. You can stop and have dinner before you go to the concert. That's part of our goal, to make the city just a little stickier."