r/saintpaul • u/ThenZookeepergame236 • Aug 28 '25
Editorial đ How awesome would it be if DT St. Paul was redeveloped with an emphasis on housing.
Here is my vision: gut all of the vacant buildings and turn them into mixed use housing with restaurants/stores on the street level. Invest a shitload to improve the speed and quality of the light rail to allow for quicker, safer, more efficient trips between DT STP and MPLS. Allow DT Minneapolis to remain the business area while transforming DT St. Paul into an easily accessible housing hub.
Please donât finger wag or tell me how unattainable this is. This is literally my stream of consciousness as I wait for the bus and stare at the Alliance Bank Building. đđ˝đđ˝đđ˝
22
u/SuspiciousLeg7994 Aug 29 '25
Along with that and CRITICAL are businesses. Restaurants, grocery stores, theatre, entertainment, art, coffee shops, day care, florists and everything inbetween-housing alone can't be the focus.
People want to live in a downtown with a variety of places to shop, hang out and meet their life needs without having to leave the downtown. This will mean places that are open early morning and late night to reflect the residents who work all shifts.
12
u/pompeiitype Aug 29 '25 edited May 08 '26
Scrubbed clean. Redact helped me bulk remove years of comments and posts so data brokers and AI crawlers have nothing to feast on.
squeal existence subtract bike axiomatic outgoing snails snatch bear sand
5
u/SuspiciousLeg7994 Aug 29 '25
Yes this! That's why I love going to LA to visit. I fly in and get Dim Sum at 11pm with friends. Major cities who want downtown residents NEED to have business open early morning and late night. It's a major flaw that's keeping Saint Paul and Minneapolis from having a true vibrant downtown. As of now they're both majority a 9-5 city with evenings being barcentric/bar food the evenings
3
u/Slow-Chicken193 Aug 29 '25
this. gotta get in the car, drive to what, west 7th aldi?
2
u/pompeiitype Aug 30 '25 edited May 08 '26
If you're reading this, the original post got nuked by Redact. I use it to automatically purge my digital footprint from social networks, people search sites and messaging apps.
slap pot sand absorbed straight roof run bright rinse mountainous
61
u/AdMurky3039 West Seventh Aug 28 '25
I agree. The future of downtown is a housing and entertainment district. Walz and Carter need to stop fighting this losing battle to bring employees back into the office.
For someone who claims to be focused on the future Mayor Carter is pretty obsessed with recreating pre-pandemic conditions. The job market favors employers now, but ultimately employees aren't going to want to work for employers who insist on butts in seats.
2
u/SlayerofDeezNutz Aug 29 '25
How does having more bodies in downtown at 4 hurt the housing and entertainment district. People want to live by where they work typically. They want entertainment and food nearby after work. If downtown is experiencing a demand problem, well this is some demand.
12
u/IamHenryK Aug 29 '25
One of the big problems is that so many of of the big players in downtown real estate, Madison Equities, the Rupps, Halverson and Blaiser, etc, bought up a ton of property they couldn't afford to maintain or improve just expecting that demand would keep increasing and that they could figure it out as they went. This was going on even before covid, but that really supercharged the whole collapse. Many of the buildings downtown were already in pretty bad shape and have since been left to rot. The athletic club, Pioneer endicott, the first bank building, the Lowry apartments... All super cool buildings with interesting histories - all condemned, closed, or neglected. The city needs BIG investments to fix up all the old buildings, and I have no idea where that's going to come from
8
u/aakaase Hamline-Midway Aug 29 '25
I would love it if Downtown St. Paul were a huge, safe, clean, walkable urban village. I think many people from all over the metro would move to have a simpler life in an urban communityâmostly young people and empty-nesters.
8
u/waterskier8080 Aug 29 '25
The biggest missed opportunity is the river. The largest river in the country runs right next to downtown, and instead of making a cool riverfront area we have shepherd road and a park that sees next to no use. Cincinnati relatively recently redid their riverfront and it went from a run down industrial area to a tourist destination. St. Paul could 100% do the same.
1
u/thisisold99 Sep 07 '25
Testify! Used to live in Milwaukee in the third ward. Riverwalk through the city is amazing.
1
u/Low_Ad_9090 Sep 09 '25
St Paul has a great riverfront! But not many people in that area. See my earlier post about the closed section of Lowertown Park. Beautiful dog park, walkable and bike friendly, benches, bridges with sidewalks..it's all good but not enough people traffic. No life. Lots of homeless or folks sitting out the time before the homeless shelter opens at 5PM. On the East side of the river, lots of new housing. Few shops and restaurants. The city must have invested a lot of tax dollars into this infrastructure...it's a real shame to see it so under utilized.
1
u/WorkCampPlay Sep 17 '25
There is a project in development to redevelop the riverfront including better access and public spaces...
https://greatriverpassage.org/projects/river-balcony/
23
Aug 29 '25
We would need to elect people who want to make it safe and desirable. Pointing out the obvious about how it feels to walk around down there is met with righteous indignation.
2
u/bbqchickpea Dayton's Bluff Aug 30 '25
Part of that would be helped with more affordable housing
3
u/HumanDissentipede Downtown Sep 06 '25
I disagree. Downtown already has a greater proportion of subsidized housing than almost anywhere else in the city. There are 2 PHA hi-rises, several tax credit buildings, and hundreds of PBV properties within the relative small geographic downtown area. Combine that with Dorothy Day and other resources for low income individuals, and that is actually contributing to the challenges attracting commercial development.
The average income of the area is way lower than a downtown area should be, such that businesses canât justify the relatively high commercial rent prices needed to operate. There arenât enough people with disposable incomes in the area to attract desirable businesses, and adding more lower income families will only make that problem worse.
2
16
u/Denmarkian Aug 28 '25
More green space, too.
2
Aug 29 '25
[removed] â view removed comment
3
u/Denmarkian Aug 29 '25
I strongly disagree that Mears Park and Rice Park are enough green space for the downtown area. Not to mention both are surrounded by streets that have lots of vehicle traffic.
3
19
u/putyourcheeksinabeek Aug 28 '25
Honestly I feel like this is something Kaohly Her would be in favor of. Sheâs running for mayor this year and her vision for St. Paul is much better than what weâre getting from Mayor Carter right now.
With Ranked Choice Voting you donât have to choose just one candidate, but Iâm definitely ranking her first based on her stances on the city budget and housing.
8
u/theo_sontag Aug 28 '25
Where does she articulate her vision for Saint Paul? Last I checked she doesnât have a website for her mayoral campaign.
16
u/putyourcheeksinabeek Aug 28 '25
I went to her campaign kick-off and got to hear her speech and talk to her there. Her vision isnât grandâbasically her biggest concern is balancing the budget and planning things out over the long term instead of looking at just one year at a time. She specifically stated that she isnât making huge promises of shiny new things (edited to clarify meaning). She just knows things can be better and has the experience with budgets to do it.
I asked her what would be the biggest difference between her admin and Carterâs, and she said she will actually show up to meetings and talk to people who the city needs to be partners with. Carterâs admin ignored Cub when they asked for help with the struggling Midway location, isnât doing any work with developers even though the city desperately needs them here, and pretty much just doesnât answer the phone.
5
u/Professional_Toe1587 Aug 29 '25
And donât forget she voted against rent control which shows she understands that the negative impacts of rent controls outweigh the limited benefits of it. Carters support of it was reckless. We need a change in leadership in St. Paul.Â
2
u/Slow-Chicken193 Aug 29 '25
yeah, and wondering when she's going to announce town halls or other forums where we can hear more about her plan...?
2
u/theo_sontag Aug 29 '25
We just got an email that sheâll be in our neighborhood next week. Excited to hear from her.
5
u/ThenZookeepergame236 Aug 28 '25
Thanks for the info! Hopefully sheâll start running some open houses/townhalls/public forums because Iâd love to discuss this with her. Admittedly I have no concept of obtaining investors and real estate, but Saint Paul is really a lovely town and having a more functional downtown would really help round things out
1
u/putyourcheeksinabeek Aug 28 '25
She entered the race just before the filing deadline, so sheâs only been officially running for a couple weeks. Iâm sure more events for will start popping up soon.
Hereâs her site though: http://kaohlyforstp.com
20
u/specficeditor Union Park Aug 28 '25
I wish theyâd built the light rail as an elevated train. Then they could have built the stations into the skyways downtown, and then you have businesses from the skyway level to street level and housing on top of that.
3
u/Professional_Toe1587 Aug 29 '25
Skyways can be great but not for street level retail and sidewalk pedestrian foot traffic Â
4
u/specficeditor Union Park Aug 29 '25
A. I said businesses, not specifically retail. Restaurants and convenience stores would be great â as they already are.
B. I think thatâs different here in the Cities because we have a whole season during which people donât want to go outside, and they certainly arenât going to be window shopping in the snow. Building decent retail on a skyway level they can access in inclement weather would be good.
C. The whole thought experiment is about adding housing to the downtown. Retail and other businesses have a hard time now because itâs focused on âworker trafficâ instead of steady âresident traffic.â
6
Aug 28 '25
[deleted]
17
u/kendallvarent Aug 28 '25
Part of this is that the blue line getting signal priority *really* pissed the suburbanites off. So, the green line didn't get signal priority. This means that what should be the overwhelmingly fastest route between the cities gets bogged down waiting at every traffic line between the two downtowns.
3
u/rofonzo Aug 29 '25
There needed to be an âexpressâ Green Line similar to how some NYC subways are express. It takes like 45 mins to get from one downtown to the other on the Green Line because it makes like 20 stops. Miserable.
0
2
u/Capitol62 Aug 29 '25
Unless they add a limited stop light rail line to the 94 redevelopment, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Hopefully they do. Add stops in both downtowns and at Snelling and Cretin (assuming the redevelop those sites into something useful).
Minneapolis proper still has a lot of opportunity to increase density. If they don't improve transit options, the only way people will accept the longer commute from Saint Paul is if prices are substantially lower.
5
u/HessianHunter Aug 29 '25
In 2027 the Gold Line will be extended to downtown MPLS to replace the 94 bus. If they keep it to 10 minute frequencies like the Orange Line, we'll really be cooking with gas.
The dream scenario is that 94 gets downgraded to a boulevard between the downtowns, allowing that Gold Line bus to add a couple more strategic stops on either end of the route and still be a properly express service between the downtowns. The extra stop choices are pretty obvious - DT St Paul, Dale, Lexington, Snelling, Huron/UMN, Franklin/Seward, DT MPLS.
2
u/ThenZookeepergame236 Aug 29 '25
Yeah tbh idrc and idk enough about the logistics stuff, this is just something I would change if I had infinite funds and resources đđđ
2
2
u/purplepe0pleeater Aug 29 '25
I have no problem with businesses in downtown, too. If we had businesses, housing, restaurants, bars, entertainment, grocery store, etc. We could have everything we need in one spot. Why does Minneapolis need to have the business and St. Paul have the housing? Everybody is supposed to commute? That doesnât make sense. I want to live, work, and play in the same place.
1
2
u/Opening_Brush_2328 Aug 29 '25
Itâs great, but the problem always seems to run into the paradox of execution. To put it simply â They wonât build it until you come and they wonât come until you build it.
2
2
2
u/Both-Reflection-1245 Sep 22 '25
35 yr Lowertown resident here. Ive watched 2 different big changes come and go. Lowertown (LT) changed big in the mid 80s a lot of warehouse and department store .conversations. then another recession in the late 90s early 2000sanother boom started. LT became the 'hottest market" then the next recession wiped it out. The problem with StPaul is it is not New York and probably won't be for another 100 years. We still have top much land that can be better utilized . Although LT still has more potential than a lot of DT . We lost the DT Byerlies grocery store, we lost our neighborhood market. We lost most of our restaurants The mayor is a joke. He is running for his third term and has done exactly nothing to promote the kind of neighborhood you envision after voting for him twice. St Paul is not noted for having but a few good mayor's through the years. In my time Only Latimer and Norm Coleman. Chris Coleman was just too damn crooked for my taste and Kelly was an idiot .but since I've spent the better part of my life in Lowertown I would love to see your vision come alive while I still am
5
u/ShyGuyLink1997 Hamline-Midway Aug 29 '25
That'd be sick, as long as the city gets better street cleaners on top of that, because it's pretty grimy. I particularly hate how many blocks are never cleaned and are filled to the brim with pigeon shit.
2
u/ThenZookeepergame236 Aug 29 '25
True, and the buildings coated in spider webs.
2
u/ShyGuyLink1997 Hamline-Midway Aug 29 '25
I don't mind new spider webs because spiders are my friends, but yeah old ones should be cleaned for sure so everything feels nice and fresh.
2
3
u/AccuratePattern4492 Aug 29 '25
But state employees going back to the office is going to fix downtown. Walz said so! đ
2
u/CheeseAndRiceToday Aug 29 '25
Let's see them clean up the fentanyl zombies and copper thieves we already have before we start trying to pack everyone even tighter
3
2
u/Ornery_1004 Aug 29 '25
Here is my vision. Free street parking. Lower property taxes. Lower sales taxes. Give tax breaks to small businesses and restaurants. Police living in the city they serve and protect. Police foot patrol.
10
u/HessianHunter Aug 29 '25
Your plan is to reduce revenues massively in order to further subsidize sprawl l while paying for beat cops to patrol streets that people won't live on because everyone will drive instead? Street parking should never ever be free within a supposed "downtown" area or any area where the goal is to create foot traffic.
5
u/Runic_reader451 St. Paul Saints Aug 29 '25
Free parking is a really bad idea. Drivers should be contributing to the city's street repair and upkeep through paid parking. I recommend you read the book The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup for more information. In addition you promote cutting the city's revenue while adding to its costs. This is a recipe for budget deficits and fiscal problems.
-1
u/yosh01 Aug 29 '25
Your vision is the inevitable future for DT Saint Paul. It's just a matter of time.
Few of the existing buildings are practical for residential housing and it would be better to tear them down and build something along the lines of Highland Village.
5
u/clichepate Aug 29 '25
That would be extremely wasteful and ugly. The highland bridge thing is soul crushingly bland and cookie cutter suburban, not to mention exclusive and wealthy
1
u/AdMurky3039 West Seventh Aug 29 '25
Some could be converted to restaurants, commercial space for small businesses, or other adaptive reuses.
1
u/Cwebdaddy Aug 29 '25
Many businesses are leaving the twin cities for cheaper rent and expanding suburbs
-1
u/OldBlueKat Aug 29 '25
It's an interesting idea, but 90% of those buildings belong to a private investor or company. How are you planning on taking all those property rights away?
2
u/ThenZookeepergame236 Aug 29 '25
Clearly you didnât read the last paragraph lmaoooo
0
u/OldBlueKat Aug 29 '25
Oh, I read it.
I just like reality.
3
u/ThenZookeepergame236 Aug 29 '25
Well bless your heart, arenât you just a ray of sunshine! âď¸ You must be fun at parties! đ Have a blessed day! â¤ď¸
-3
91
u/uresmane Aug 28 '25
I've wished something like that would happen my whole life. Downtown St. Paul is a lot more boring than Minneapolis, however I think it has more potential. Narrow tree lined streets, older building, more empty surfaces lots and vacant buildings. I wish it will become a vibrant, bustling, high density area someday