Saint Paul Retail News

[twincitizen]

It may take a few more years, but I don't doubt that downtown St. Paul will mostly fill back in. The city just needs to get the chip off its shoulder that it will never be downtown Minneapolis and it shouldn't aspire to be. Downtown St. Paul should refocus on growing the residential population, and fast. Service industry businesses (restaurant, bar, retail) and smaller local-needs office stuff (dentist, travel agency, etc) will follow residential. Perhaps the state could move some (more) operations downtown either from the capitol area or satellite sites to soften the blow of the office vacancies. I would totally live in Downtown St. Paul if I worked for the state or somewhere in a nearby suburb. Lowertown is pretty great already and getting better all the time. I'm repeating myself, but LRT, Lunds, Union Depot, and the ballpark are going to act as one hell of a catalyst by late 2014-ish. Hopefully there will be several residential proposals on the docket by then. The extreme NIMBYism going on in other parts of the city that is blocking density won't apply to downtown.

[seanrichardryan]

Even more interesting is the Honolulu store that opened in 1850!

Downtown Honolulu, HI (80,000 square feet; opened in 1850; 91 associates);

[MSPtoMKE]

I assume the 362,000 sq. ft. is the size of the store before it was downsized? It is only 2 floors now, but what was it originally?

[Didier]

There's not really a thread for this, and not sure there needs to be, but I heard on MPR on the drive home that the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is going to buy two downtown St. Paul hotels, which are believed to be the Crown Plaza and DoubleTree. Apparently the tribe is looking to diversify its portfolio.

[THERAT]

http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_2 ... owntown-st

[Nathan]

It's a good investment with the stadium coming I'd think.

Plus they'd be poised to drop a casino right in there if that ever became legal?

[FISHMANPET]

Even more interesting is the Honolulu store that opened in 1850!

Downtown Honolulu, HI (80,000 square feet; opened in 1850; 91 associates);

It looks like this was a Liberty House (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_House) when it was first built in 1850, though the few pictures I saw of the store look like typical suburban trash, so it's not some grand historic building anymore I bet.

E: Looks like the original building was torn down in 1979 to make way for the building which was finished in 1981:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/4563889610/

[612transplant]

http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_2 ... owntown-st

Hmmm.....maybe we'll stop hearing the arguments about state sanctioned gaming? Oh no, we can't do that! Think of what it will do to the Ojibwe!

[MNdible]

Downtown St. Paul gets some tough straight talk.

Excerpt:

Two observable trends are at work in St. Paul -- taxpayer-subsidized development and corporate departures. Recent development in the downtown area has been financed almost entirely by government.

The $246 million Union Depot; the $25 million Saints ballpark; the Xcel Energy Center and River Centre convention venue; light rail between the cities; the Lawson building; numerous government office buildings; the Metro State and Saint Paul College expansions, the lofts near the Farmers Market; the Hwy. 52 bridge, and even restaurants like Cossetta's -- all are taxpayer projects funded from local, state and federal sources.

Granted, the transportation and educational investments will have some broader impact on the economy, but the others were authorized with the promise of rejuvenating the once-glorious city of St. Paul. One means of measuring success would be the return on investment in terms of job creation or increased tax base. But you cannot get an answer about the private-sector jobs created or whether the tax base is growing.

[spectre000]

I enjoyed Lenny Russo's rebuttal,
http://www.startribune.com/local/yourvo ... 42921.html

"Message to Macy's: Please take Paul Olson with you."

[MNdible]

Consider the messenger shot.

(Coming from the restaurateur who was on the verge of signing a lease moving Heartland to Minneapolis before a change of heart sent him to Lowertown).

[Nick]

Consider the messenger shot.

With a cannon full of fluff. "Yeah, we'll, nuh-uh, at least we're doing better than Grand Rapids!"

[mattaudio]

As I commented on the first article, I hope St. Paul distinguishes itself as something different rather than competing with Mpls. We'd be a better metro for it. Rice Park, Mears Park, the Capitol, etc.... St. Paul has a lot of great places, but they need to connect these places with people-oriented streets. The development will follow especially with more residents moving in.

Also, I'm not nearly as much of a skyway hater as some, but I think St. Paul is a better spot to experiment with taming the influence of the skyway. Whereas most Mpls skyways seem to thrive (even if it's at the expense of sidewalks) most of St. Paul's skyways are disjointed, awkward, narrow, and an afterthought. The hills downtown also make it so there's less of a consistent level, whereas there are very few spots in Mpls which require escalator/stairs which confuse wayfinding.

[twincitizen]

John Kari agrees with you.

Kari, a planning consultant and the Met Council’s leading planner for several decades, believes downtown St. Paul’s days would be numbered in the absence of light rail, but he sees little likelihood of the city landing an office tower at the Central station site. “I think what they need to do is make it into a really nice transit plaza — a central plaza for St. Paul.”

Indeed, Kari believes city officials would be well advised to start thinking about downtown as an “activity center” rather than a traditional downtown, capitalizing on its strengths as a government, entertainment and cultural center, and as a place to live.

Great article (with a great comment by Nick) if anyone missed it. I wish Steve Dornfeld wrote for MinnPost more often.
http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... challenges

Personally, I'd bold & underline the "place to live" part. Not just in downtown St. Paul but strengthening and densifying the neighborhoods immediately adjacent to it. Several thousand more residents within a mile or so would at least keep the current theaters and restaurants in business and hopefully attract a few more (among other things). It's too bad St. Paul College and Metro State are located just far enough from the core that they aren't really connected to downtown at all, and certainly aren't walkable on a lunch break. Neither of them have any student housing either, which could also help downtown.

[Didier]

I usually agree with Nick's comments on these boards, but I don't agree necessarily with his take on Saint Paul on the Minnpost story. The politics behind funding have no doubt led to some dubious and uneven decisions, but while Minneapolis is obviously the larger and more "important" city in many ways, St. Paul still does exist. So the notion that any funding to improve Minneapolis has more merit than funding to St. Paul doesn't really work because, ultimately, the metro area would be much worse off if downtown St. Paul flat out failed and died.

I think it's very easy to forget that St. Paul is still the more central city to a lot of people in the area. As a very anecdotal example, did you know people still read the Pioneer Press? Because according to this Minnpost story, the Pioneer Press is still the dominant newspaper among people in the entire east metro. Who'd have thought?

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2012/1 ... press-turf

[Nick]

As a very anecdotal example, did you know people still read the Pioneer Press?

I lol'd at that.

The point of anything I say about St. Paul is never based on some intention to be intentionally antagonistic. And if the City of St. Paul wants to tie up their own local resources by becoming a landlord, well, that's their decision I guess.

But recently, the huge boondoggle investment in the Union Depot as well as the small (but symbolically large) decision to allocate that DEED money to the Lowertown ballpark over the Green Line extension planning--that's bad regional decision making. People live in the East Metro and will continue to do so. And that's okay! They should get nice things, but not at the expense of making logical decisions for the metro area.

People live in New Prague too, should the state give them $30 million for their new sewer plant?

[nordeast homer]

If it weren't for the State Capitol being in St. Paul, the place would have been a ghost town long ago. As it is, the downtown is not too far from that.

[Didier]

So what are you saying?

[Nick]

The point that I'm making is that reasonable people have to find a balance. I made a joke yesterday to twincitizen that trying to have a conversation about Downtown St. Paul vitality is like talking about gun control on cable news. You either want to give them $250 million to site a train station in the wrong city for their emotional well-being, or you think "LOL no 1 is in saint pol LOL make them go away". We just built a billion dollar train right into Downtown St. Paul. Logic suggests that there will be a residential boom there in the next few years--unless of course developers are scared away by competition from city-built projects.

[Didier]

To be sure, my most recent question was to Nordeast Homer. I get where you're coming from and don't even disagree, really, but I feel like there is a general feeling of "Who needs St. Paul? Put the money where it matters, in Minneapolis."

So the point I'm trying to make is simply that downtown St. Paul isn't going anywhere, so we might as well try to talk about it more substantively.