This is huge!!
Highlights from the article below:
Sears wants to add retail, office, housing at St. Paul site
By Drew Kerr
* Sears wants to build new retail and office space, townhomes and apartments.
* The 14-acre Sears site, assessed at $15.5 million, is west of the State Capitol and a block south of the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line
* The Sears store and auto center will remain in place, but the store’s footprint will be downsized from 187,000 square feet to 175,000 square feet to make way for a pair of new retail spaces
* 111,700 square feet of retail space, including a pair of two-story buildings on the southeast and southwest ends of the Sears building.
* Two smaller retail buildings are also proposed along Rice Street.
* 121 apartments and 18 townhomes at North Marion Street and Aurora Avenue, in the northwest corner of the property.
* A four-story, 112,000-square-foot office building on the northeast corner of the site. Another 12,600 square feet of office space would be built on top of a new retail building on the southeast corner.
* A four-level, 586-space parking garage on the northeast corner of the site, at Rice Street and Aurora Avenue. Another 701 surface parking spaces would be retained on the property’s south end.
* Sears spokesman Howard Riefs would not say much the redevelopment is expected to cost, or if any tenants had been lined up. More information will be shared in the coming weeks, he said.
* Additional details could come Jan. 16, when the project goes to the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board for design concept approval.
* The state planning agency has design and zoning authority on the site because of its proximity to the state Capitol campus.
* Cecile Bedor, St. Paul’s director of Planning & Economic Development, said the city is enthused about adding density to an area now dominated by more than 1,200 parking spaces.
“When asked when they might get going, they [Sears] used the word expeditious quite a bit,” Thompson said.