Downtown/Lowertown : Development News

The site of the former Pedro Luggage store in downtown St. Paul is in the beginning stages of becoming a public park.

On March 18, the $225,000 store demolition began, which will be followed up by site restoration work that will go through early May, according to Brad Meyer, a city parks and recreation spokesperson.

Once the building is leveled, the land will be a blank slate for the future park development, he explains.

Pedro's Luggage, which was founded by Carl Pedro in 1914, was in business for almost 100 years before it closed in 2009, he says. The highly recognizable store had occupied the building at 10th and Robert streets in downtown St. Paul since the 1960s.

Pedro family members explored various alternatives for the building before approaching the city about donating the land for a park. The idea jibed with a decade-long planning process involving a park for the Fitzgerald neighborhood. With no cost to the city, besides developing the future park, "we jumped at the opportunity," he says.

It's a dramatic change for the block, but the park will be named after Carl Pedro Sr. as a way to honor the late businessman. 

Although further details of the park plans are yet to be determined, Meyer says that local businesspeople, residents and other stakeholders are enthusiastic about the prospects. "This will be a tremendous neighborhood greenspace and an asset for years to come," he says. "This park can serve as a catalyst for future investment," citing the positive impact of Rice and Mears parks.  

Source: Brad Meyer, St. Paul parks spokesperson
Writer: Anna Pratt

Through a $28 million adaptive reuse project that began several years ago, the historic Minnesota Building in downtown St. Paul has found a new life as an affordable-housing complex.  

Local politicians celebrated its grand opening last week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of the 13-story art deco building.

The building, which opened in 1929 as commercial office space but has been vacant since 2006, now features 137 units of affordable housing. It includes a mix of studio apartments and one- and two-bedroom units, along with 8,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, according to project information.

As a part of a partnership with the local Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 10 units are dedicated for long-term homeless households. Wilder is providing support services for those tenants.

Additionally, the building has a lounge, business resource center, community and fitness rooms, and storage space, project materials state.

Many of the original details, such as the molding, marble and brass fixtures, have been kept intact, while fancy elevator doors were reconstructed to match the originals. Heating and cooling systems, plumbing, roofs, windows and elevators have all been upgraded.    

Sand Companies, Inc., which led the project that started in 2009, will house its metro-area offices in the building.

City spokesperson Janelle Tummel says the building fits into the city's comprehensive plan to fill vacant commercial spaces with a mix of affordable and market-rate housing. "This is a great example of a long-term planning process coming to life," she says.

She hopes it'll attract new businesses and residents to the area.

Among its selling points, "it has some of the greatest views of the river downtown," she says, adding that it's connected to the skyway system, light rail transit, and other downtown amenities. "It's another example of how we're growing and thriving."  

Source: Janelle Tummel, St. Paul spokesperson
Writer: Anna Pratt

Last weekend a couple of local sports teams opted for wind energy to power their games on Feb. 19 and 20 at downtown St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.

The Minnesota Swarm and Minnesota Wild are the first to take advantage of Xcel's Windsource Events program at the arena, according to Jim Ibister, vice president of facility administration for the Minnesota Wild and general manager of Saint Paul RiverCentre.

Windsource, which both venues began offering last fall, delivers energy from 20 wind farms across the state, making it one of the largest programs of its kind nationwide, according to Xcel information.

The program helps groups join its efforts for sustainability. "It's something that people are willing to pay more for," though it's surprisingly affordable, he says.

"Windsource is delivered to the [energy] grid," he says. "It's very simple for the client," which "makes it an easy choice to make."

More and more businesses are seeking out such programs at rental venues. "We're finding more and more people are making choices based on sustainability efforts," he says. "It's a way to have a greener event."  

Windsource is one of several sustainability initiatives underway at the multiple-building campus. The centers jointly have a plan to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent and shrink its carbon footprint by 80 percent within three years.

In the fall of 2009, the centers initiated a plan to dramatically reduce waste, which Ibister describes as its "most public and most interactive" initiative.      

More recently, the RiverCentre started installing a large solar thermal array on its rooftop as yet another way to reduce its carbon footprint.  

It's trying to get the programs to be part of the culture and language at the venues, with as much involvement from workers and visitors as possible early on. "[If] you make it difficult to fail" it can lead to bigger steps, Ibister says.  

Source: Jim Ibister, vice president for facilities administration for the Minnesota Wild
Writer: Anna Pratt  

In the coming months, 600 Ramsey County employees will relocate from the Government Center West building on Kellogg Boulevard in St. Paul to downtown's Metro Square.

Jolly Mangine, the director of property management for Ramsey County, says the county wanted to move away from the riverfront. "We believe there's a higher and better use for riverfront development," he says.  

Plus, the Government Center West building, which dates back to 1895, is "old and in need of repair," he says. "It was time to vacate and get it up for development."  

The county began work on the $19 million project, which includes the cost of purchasing Metro Square, in January.

Metro Square's renovation will unfold in several phases. For one thing, its vertical transportation systems, including elevators and escalators, need to be upgraded.

The plan also calls for "tenant improvements," dealing with the carpet, walls, ceilings and mechanical systems.

The work will be staggered, allowing for workers to move in on one floor while construction somewhere else in the building continues, he explains.    

State workers who were already based in the 400,000-square-foot Metro Square building will remain. They'll take up about 120,000 square feet while the county plans to use 190,000 square feet, according to Mangine.

In this kind of joint governmental building, housing both county and state departments, "there's quite a bit of synergy," he says.  

Mangine stressed the environmental benefits.

Metro Square, which was formerly a department store, allows for the county to use less space, "which lends to lots of efficiency," he says.

Having the opportunity to redesign the space is a huge plus. "We're able to reduce our inefficiency by 15 to 20 percent," he says.   

Heating and ventilation systems will be state-of-the-art for air quality and energy conservation. Newer systems in general, he says, are more efficient, easier to track and manage, and lead to better air quality, he says, adding that all in all, the building will "be quite green."

                                                                                                            
Source: Jolly Mangine, director for Property Management for Ramsey County  
Writer: Anna Pratt

Through a $243 million renovation that has long been in the works, the historic St. Paul Union Depot will become a multimodal transit hub, providing access to the region, Milwaukee, Chicago, and beyond.

The project broke ground on Jan. 18.

St. Paul policy director Nancy Homans says it'll be a center of transportation activity akin to transit hubs in New York City and Washington, D.C. "It's a strong element of the regional economy."     

Amtrak, metro area buses and express buses, the Central Corridor Light Rail line, and pedestrian and bicycle traffic will run through the depot. Greyhound and Jefferson bus lines might also come into play, according to city information.

It harks back to the 1881 depot's early days, when it was known as the transportation center of the Upper Midwest and the gateway to the Northwest, according to historical information from Ramsey County Regional Rail.

Financing for the renovation comes from a combination of county, state, and federal funds, including $50 million from the last federal transportation bill and $35 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to city information.

Ramsey County is studying what kind of activity should go on there to make it more than a pass-through. After all, Homans explains, "It's an economic center, in and of itself."     
 
As the region grows and develops over the next several decades, having more people taking advantage of public transit will lead to less congestion. "Businesses today say there's a congestion tax," with trucks sitting in traffic.

The project represents a shift away from highway building, which she characterized as a drag on the economy. "It frees up the resources that would be put into roads and highways and draws it to the center," she says. "It's much more efficient for the long term."

A more efficient system can "set a pattern of activity to save the planet and support the economic prosperity of the region."  

Trains last ran at the depot 40 years ago. It was mothballed and then part of it was used by the U.S. Postal Service. Eventually the county acquired it for the transit project.

"It's a very cool building," she says, adding that the renovation will make it a "wonderful asset."

The renovation project is planned to wrap up in 2012.

Source: Nancy Homans
Writer: Anna Pratt

Construction of the leading solar thermal energy project in the Midwest, the scale of which is comparable to two-thirds the size of a football field, recently began at the downtown Saint Paul RiverCentre.

On the convention center's 30,000-square-foot rooftop will soon be 144 commercial-grade solar thermal panels, which run 8 feet by 20 feet individually, according to project materials.   

The $2.1 million rooftop array will kick out 1 megawatt of energy and decrease carbon-dioxide emissions by 900,000 pounds yearly, materials state.    

District Energy St. Paul, which operates a biomass-fueled hot water district heating system and a combined heat and power plant and supplies the convention center's energy, will run it.

Solar thermal energy derives from heating water, explains District Energy project manager Nina Axelson. "It's a very efficient and effective way to use energy," which, she adds, outperforms solar electric power. 

Additionally, the RiverCentre's system stands out for its "fuel flexibility," Axelson says.

Extra energy will be shared with the rest of the District Energy system, which includes 80 percent of city buildings, through a grid of heating pipes. Even though similar scenarios are common in Europe, she says, "We never found any other systems like this in the U.S."

As a heating company that has a goal to eventually become 100 percent renewable, Axelson says, "It's a critical part of what we're trying to do here."

The system will be up and running sometime in January thanks to a $1 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which District Energy matched. It's the first project that will reach completion as part of a broader DOE initiative called "Solar America Cities," which includes 26 cities--Minneapolis among them--that are tackling various solar energy technologies.    
 

Source: Nina Axelson, project manager, St. Paul District Energy  
Writer: Anna Pratt

A home that's reasonably priced, safe, and sustainable should be within reach for anyone.

That's the statement that brought together more than 800 attendees, from high-ranking public officials to low-income residents, at the Nov. 8 "Homes for All" conference at the St. Paul RiverCentre.

Among the event's highlights was a keynote speech by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, a how-to workshop about making changes for the greener around the house, and an audiovisual exhibit featuring an oral history of homelessness.  

Emmy-Award-winning actor and vocalist T. Mychael Rambo led a  breakout session, while representatives from more than 40 housing, health, and financial organizations were on hand, as were U.S. representatives Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.

Chip Halbach, the executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership, says that he and other advocates hope the get-together will influence housing policy for the better, especially as the state's political leadership turns over and the legislative session nears.

"It's important to get people energized and thinking about what the state can do come January," Halbach says. His goal is to lay the groundwork for various housing-related bill proposals that will be introduced this session, and which he says deserve special attention in a budget-cycle year,

The challenges are many. Homelessness has spiked in the recession, and this has produced all kinds of side effects, he explains. "We have a situation where more people are losing homes and renters are paying a higher percentage of their income for housing." Recent U.S. census figures show that one in eight families in Minnesota are facing severe housing situations, he says.

There may be greater need and fewer resources these days, but he insists, "It's moral issues that are at stake."

Source: Chip Halbach, executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership
Writer: Anna Pratt

This month St. Paul held its 30th art crawl, and the semi-annual event has grown so popular that it has spawned a smaller, monthly version. Foot traffic at Saint Paul Art Crawls averages 20,000�24,000, says Robyn Priestly, executive director at the Saint Paul Art Collective, the nonprofit that runs the event.

Spectacular fall weather may have suppressed attendance at this month's three-day crawl. Priestly says reports are still being tallied from organizers at the four "clumps" of studios across the city: Lowertown and downtown; Grand Avenue; University Avenue; and the East Side.

The crawls' appeal is partly architectural, Priestly says: "Looking at the buildings is part of it because these are great old buildings, whether they're the new rehabbed buildings on University Avenue or the old warehouses down in Lowertown."

First Friday open houses occur every month in which the collective isn't mounting an art crawl. The scaled-down monthly crawls feature studios in five Lowertown buildings: Tilsner, Jax, Lowertown Lofts, Northwestern Building and the Northern Warehouse. The next First Friday, on Nov. 5, marks the one-year anniversary of the event.

One of the collective's other projects has been opening a new art gallery in the Northern Warehouse. On exhibit now (call 651-292-4373 for hours): artwork by the collective's past and present board members.

The crawls grew out of open houses held by members of the Lowertown Lofts artists' cooperative 20 years ago. For the first decade they were annual affairs before growing to a twice-yearly event that has stayed true to its original impetus. "It is a giant open house," Priestly says.

Source: Robyn Priestley, St. Paul Art Collective
Writer: Chris Steller

Class C office space--the kind craved by startups and nonprofits--saw a big occupancy-rate jump over the last year in downtown St. Paul. But that's something of an illusion, according to Eric Rapp, one of the commercial real-estate professionals behind a report released this week by the St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA).

The Class C market actually held relatively steady in 2009�10, says Rapp, co-chair of BOMA's marketing and leasing committee, which is in charge of producing the organization's annual Office Market Report. But the total amount of Class C space shrunk significantly with Ramsey County's purchase last year of the Metro Square Building on E. 7th Place. That moved nearly 400,000 square feet of office space from Class C to BOMA's Government classification, and bumped up downtown St. Paul's Class C occupancy rate from 63.9 percent to 83.3 percent.

In reality, Rapp says he suspects "nothing major" has changed in the amount of space available in Class C buildings in areas such as Lowertown, where many small companies go in search of economical leases close to the heart of the city. One other change is the addition in this year's report of the Southbridge Office Center at 155 S. Wabasha St. With that addition of 22,000 square feet and without the Metro Square Building, about 140,000 square feet of Class C office space remains ready for new occupants.

The overall occupancy rate in downtown St. Paul inched up from 90 percent in 2009 to 91 percent this year. It's an increment of progress that BOMA's Office Market Report can point to with confidence. "Saint Paul BOMA prides itself on developing one of the most accurate, first-hand, and detailed office market reports in the region," writes BOMA chair Fred Koehler.

Source: Eric Rapp, St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association
Writer: Chris Steller

On a sunny Sunday August afternoon last year, Leo Kim waded into the stream in downtown St. Paul's Mears Park for a new angle on a scene that had become familiar to him--maybe overly so--after many attempts at photographing it.

"What if I were a squirrel?" Kim asked himself. "What would I see?"

The resulting picture--an intimate view of natural forces set into motion in the city's midst--inspired Kim to embark on a nine-month quest to capture more images of surprising serenity within the city of St. Paul.

Now he's trying to raise $24,000 to publish a book of 96 photos he's calling "Saint Paul Serenity." That's twice what his earlier photo-book of North Dakota landscapes cost, but Kim decided he wants to keep the money in the local economy by using a Minneapolis printer instead of shipping the work overseas. An event on Thursday launches his fundraising effort, which he says is so far going more slowly than did the North Dakota project. He's hoping to get enough book orders to have "Serenity" printed by Christmas.

Kim, a professional photographer, lived in Minneapolis for 15 years before a 2005 move to Lowertown near Mears Park. He found he hadn't created a cohesive series of Minneapolis images--"Someday I will," he vows--but he readily discovered the serene scenes he went looking for around St. Paul.

"The city has done a great job with the landscape," says Kim, an immigrant of Korean heritage who came to Minnesota via Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Austria--not to mention time spent studying in North Dakota. He says he aspired to become an architect or city planner but couldn't bear to be in meetings. Instead, he seeks out St. Paul's wild side, often finding "I have the place to myself, only a stone's throw from downtown.

"It's amazing."

Source: Leo Kim, Leo Kim Photography
Writer: Chris Steller

They say nothing succeeds like success, and that's the attitude Lund's is bringing to plans for a new grocery store in St. Paul's Lowertown.

The grocery chain has committed to leasing 30,000 square feet of ground-floor space in the Penfield, a mixed-use building for which the City of Saint Paul has taken over the role of lead developer.

Mayor Chris Coleman announced the grocery deal at a press conference last week for an initiative called Rebuild Saint Paul that encompasses $15 million in city funding for more than a dozen development projects around the city.

The Penfield project has had its ups and downs but the grocery chain remained certain it wanted to be a part of it, says spokesman Aaron Sorenson. One reason: a similar and  "extremely successful" Lund's store near downtown Minneapolis.

"This store is patterned in many ways on [the] Northeast Minneapolis [store]," Sorenson said, adding that St. Paul store will have more of an emphasis on prepared foods and "grab 'n' go" items. The Northeast Minneapolis store is slightly smaller at 26,000 square feet.

The Northeast store, the chain's only new location in the last decade, gives Lund's "extra confidence" in its downtown St. Paul prospects, says Sorenson, noting that both sites are on the "outskirts of downtown."

"We feel very confident about bringing that model" to St. Paul, where Lund's sees a rising downtown population that lacks a nearby full-service supermarket.

Sorenson emphasized that Lund's interest has held steady throughout shifts in Penfield plans. With or without city or federal money in the project, Lund's always intended to lease space at market-based, not publicly subsidized, rates.

Back in Minneapolis, plans are yet to gel for a store actually in downtown, where Lund's owns a two-story building. Those two floors, Sorenson says, raise a difficult question: "What items do you put on what level?"

Source: Aaron Sorenson, Lund's
Writer: Chris Steller

As his family prepares to move to St. Paul's Lowertown, filmmaker Troy Parkinson is getting ready to create a series of video vignettes about the downtown St. Paul neighborhood they'll soon call home. Parkinson plans to show them to the world at his "Life in Lowertown" website.

"So much is happening in Lowertown these days," Parkinson says. "It's an exciting place to be." He's taking a cue, in part, from an old Sesame Street song ("Who are the people in your neighborhood?"), Parkinson says he intends to feature the artists, events, and day-to-day life of Lowertown that he has observed while working at the Co-Co co-working space located there.

At first though, Parkinson figures the "Life in Lowertown" videos will focus on his family's move to the Galtier Plaza tower--a location that is closer to the kids' school than was the house they've been renting in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood since coming to the Twin Cities from Fargo last year.

Parkinson sees his project as a bit like the recent documentary feature "No Impact Man," about a filmmaker's family in New York City trying to have zero environmental impact (his family will likewise downsize). It's complementary, in his view, to a TPT television documentary about Lowertown that is in the works.

And if "Life in Lowertown" sounds like a project for a guy with time on his hands in a slumping economy, Parkinson says in fact he regularly works for network cable productions like "Monster Quest" (among other ventures).

Source: Troy Parkinson, Parkinson Productions
Writer: Chris Steller

Some places around town -- under-used, in transition -- seem to be waiting in the wings for their moment in the spotlight. Skewed Visions, a site-specific performance company based in northeast Minneapolis, makes such places part of the show.

Skewed Visions performances have taken place at sites ranging from the Grain Belt Brewery office building in Northeast to a storefront in Minneapolis' Elliot Park neighborhood and the old Drake Marble building on St. Paul's West Side.

As he ticks off those and other performance locations, founding member Charles Campbell notes that every one of the buildings Skewed Visions has visited has seen a new use since.

Moving outside the world of ready-made stages and seats is no simple matter. The company encounters many of the same obstacles that developers -- or other site-specific visual artists, such as Christo -- face when they try to make permanent or even temporary additions to the urban landscape.

Skewed Visions has a light touch at the locations where they perform, Campbell insists: "It's not a high-impact kind of thing."

At the moment, Skewed Visions has its sights set for a future production at a downtown St. Paul site that Campbell wants to keep secret until negotiations with local governmental agencies and other organizations are further along. The performance will be based loosely on "Austerlitz," a book by the late German author W.G. Sebald.  

Skewed Visions' goal is "to make something exciting to witness," Campbell says -- "to engage not just the audience but the spaces."

In St. Paul's Lowertown, Sixth Street runs along the north side of picturesque Mears Park, but "it's a bit of a freeway offramp," says CapitolRiver Council Chair Kim Hyers. That is one reason that calming traffic by widening sidewalks into the parking lane is an attractive idea.
 
The council is asking the St. Paul City Council to consider pushing sidewalks out into the street along Sixth. The move would give restaurants a lot more room for outdoor seating, although Hyers also says "there's a flip side"--public property would be given over to private businesses' use.
 
An open question is whether, when widening sidewalks, the city should make the changes permanent--literally set in concrete--or temporary, with seasonally installed wooden risers.
 
The issue arises at a time when things are looking up for Lowertown and downtown. Hyers says she sees "a lot of momentum, with new restaurants and signs of positive change and growth." Hyers says she was excited recently to hear a developer call Lowertown the "gateway to the city."
 
She cites the Penfield project, still slated for construction, which will include a Lunds grocery store, the kind of full-service, larger store downtown has been lacking. And the Saint Paul Saints minor-league baseball team's pursuit of a new stadium on the old Gillette site in Lowertown is fueling anticipation about related development. A long-range task force is set to hire an outside consulting firm to chart the area's future development--independent of, but complementary to, the city's official vision.
 
Source: Kim Hyers, CapitolRiver Council
Writer: Chris Steller

RiverCentre and the Xcel Energy Center share a campus and a problem. It's a problem familiar to hosts the world over � cleaning up after the party.

Last year the two city-owned, privately-managed facilities were recycling just 15 percent of the stuff that guests left behind after events. And they must pay combined state and local taxes of 75 percent on what gets hauled away as waste.

Enter the husband-and-wife team of Patrick and Christina Reeves, who moved from Washington State to help the X and RiverCentre tackle their trash problem. The Reeves' small business, Progressive Associates, Inc., gets big buildings on track to operate more sustainably. (Another nearby client is the Science Museum of Minnesota.)

Touting the pursuit of achievable and measurable goals as the way to go, the Reeves set to work assessing the facilities' situations and systems. Twin aims emerged: recycle 50 percent of the waste annually, and reduce waste by 50 percent.

They're already close. In the first quarter of 2010, the recycling rate hit 45 percent, with an all-time high in February of 53 percent. "April looks like it's going to be the best month yet," Patrick Reeves says.

So far, he figures the recycling campaign has diverted 900,000 pounds of trash from the waste stream, and it's saving $17,000 on monthly bills from trash haulers.

While the two 50-percent goals could be reached within the first three years of the effort, the sustainability work is really just getting started. Next up: carbon-footprint reduction.

Source: Patrick Reeves, Progressive Associates, Inc.
Writer: Chris Steller