Often these reports try to be everything to everyone, ending up so comprehensive and agreeable that they become practically meaningless. Not this time.
by Bill Lindeke 03/25/2024 03/25/2024
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These days, my favorite downtown St. Paul spot is Lost Fox, a coffee shop/restaurant/bar next to the Union Depot light rail stop. The building has no parking and had formerly been home to three short-lived businesses pre-pandemic: the Bedlam Theater, Hygge, and Elephant Bar.
These days, it’s relatively thriving. Talking to the owner Annie Rose the other day, I brought up the usual complaints about St. Paul, about parking and perceptions of crime.
“When we opened, we very consciously marketed ourselves to the people who already live downtown,” Rose told me. “We rely on word of mouth and the community.”
That’s why Lost Fox has fewer people complaining about parking or other minor matters, and a steady stream of regulars all throughout the day instead.
Downtown St. Paul needs just this kind of attitude to succeed. That’s a message reinforced by a study released last week that shares a lot with the Lost Fox philosophy. Called the “Downtown Investment Strategy” and commissioned by the city and the Downtown Alliance (the local business improvement district), it suggests the need for more residents, better sidewalks, and some redevelopments.
First off, the study is thorough. Led by James Lima Planning + Development (from New York City) and local firm NEOO Partners, the consultants did their homework, with surveys, data, and interviews to back up their conclusions.
Critically, they narrowed down its recommendations into clear priorities, choosing specific streets and parcels that most need government intervention. Often these kinds of reports try to be everything to everyone, ending up so comprehensive and agreeable that they become practically meaningless. Here, the authors made difficult choices and gave the resulting study enough focus to have purchase.
The main takeaway is the need for better sidewalks, places that boast street-front businesses, calmed traffic, and plenty of amenities. The report lumps all of this under the umbrella term “public realm,” describing the streets linking together currently thriving downtown areas. The status quo, they argue, lacks pleasant connections, so that many people are more likely to drive than stroll from one side of downtown to the other.
The problem centers on St. Paul’s modernist midcentury core, a 1960s redevelopment effort called Capitol Centre which has proven almost uniformly terrible for sidewalk quality. Famous urbanist William H. Whyte once called downtown St. Paul the “blank wall capital of the United States” for precisely this reason. In the skyway-laden core the streets are downright hostile to human interest.
This is nothing new. Years ago, I described how St. Paul was desperate for streets that linked its parks and civic attractions, and I thought 4th Street was the best candidate for improvement.
This study has the same idea, transposed one block over. They select a network of “priority corridors” and the biggest surprise is that 5th Street is at the heart of it. As they write:
“5th Street should be Downtown Saint Paul’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare. Instead, it currently has little appeal to pedestrians along much of its length, despite the fact that it uniquely connects nearly all of the primary civic spaces in downtown.”
Currently, 5th doesn’t have much of an identity, a one-way street that’s far wider than traffic would demand. But it links Rice and Mears Parks with the Green Line Central Station, making it a key place to walk. If you’re going to spruce up one downtown street, this one would make the biggest difference.
Another key point is that improvements need to be focused. This is a lesson taken directly from planner Jeff Speck’s indispensable guide to sidewalk design, “Walkable City,” which urges cities to “choose the winners.” Instead of spreading out storefront investments, public art, placemaking, and traffic calming equally through a large area equally, it’s far better to focus on a few corridors. Cities need to make a specific streets truly compelling and comfortable, instead of watering down improvements.
For some, this might be a discomfiting lesson, as it means continuing to marginalize other parts of downtown for a while. But it’s an important point, because St. Paul’s downtown streets are currently far from being attractive. By emphasizing key links, it could allow walkable parts of St. Paul to grow.
Though it doesn’t dwell on it, the report also includes some of the strongest language I’ve seen about the negative consequences of the skyway system. Like it or not, for a city with Midwestern densities, there’s a zero-sum contest between skyways and streets for everyday vitality. The more people in the skyway, the more the sidewalks feel empty (and vice versa). Add in patterns around times of day, and both parts of downtown are worse off in the big picture.
Last week at noon, wending through the St. Paul skyway, I was lucky to be there on a rare weekdays that boasted a critical mass of office workers. In key spots, the lunch crowd almost seemed back to normal. The rest of the week, though, the skyways feel post-apocalyptic and eerie, the vast majority of shops closed and hallways deserted.
It’s a good sign that the study suggests a round of “skyway rightsizing,” closing off some of the many unused parts of the 2nd floor network. Rather gently, the report suggests further study to “determine the viability of appropriately configuring the skyway to meet current and future needs.” In other words, there are probably a few parts of the skyway system that could be amputated, and street life returned to the sidewalk where it belongs.
A good place to start would be the easternmost connections, or any other skyways retrofit into historic buildings. Most excitingly, though, the study recommends a bit of “surgery” for the Town Square building that could link 7th Place on either side. This would be an amazing change for downtown pedestrian activity.
Another study dynamic is its constant reference to the “entertainment district” as a key piece of the night life puzzle. Also called “subdistrict 1-B”, this is the area that includes the Ordway, Xcel Center and Palace Theater, the part of downtown that has been the quickest to rebound since the pandemic. Using cell phone data, the study says that, unlike the rest of downtown, people here tend to “stay and linger.” The authors suggested figuring out ways to grow and connect this part of the neighborhood outward.
The final key finding was the need for redevelopment, and the study prioritizes some key parcels. Number one on the list is the vacant block surrounding Central Station, which has sat empty for the last decade and has increasingly been a magnet for the drug-addicted population that’s been plaguing the transit system. Doing anything to change and improve this area would work wonders.
The study’s next key redevelopment priorities are the Riversedge site (the former West Publishing and County Jail along the river), subsidies for the Xcel and convention centers, and the “river balcony,” a proposed walkway along the bluff. In each case, it’ll require a lot of public subsidy. Given the tax base potential, they’d likely be a worthwhile and necessary investments.
While it doesn’t dwell on it, the report accurately notes that downtown St. Paul is not in a good place. Even before the pandemic, population growth was stagnant and employment was on the decline. As I’ve written about a few times already, the 2020 COVID pandemic gutted already fragile status quo for U.S. downtowns. In St. Paul, even most government workers are rarely back in the office, and that includes even the city staff spending time drafting revitalization plans.
That’s why the study calls for office-to-residential conversions of older Class B and C office spaces, asking for a specific tax subsidy for this purpose. It’s a good idea, and St. Paul needs it more than ever. Lucky, there are a solid handful of buildings that seem like good candidates for conversion, and even more lucky, a few of them are owned or leased by the government already. (See also: Ramsey County Government Center East.)
Still, the study is somewhat realistic about future investment. The authors don’t sound too encouraged about attracting private investment to places like Central Station and repeatedly caution that any plan will require a lot of public money. Because it knits together everything else about the future of downtown, it seems the most critical piece of the puzzle.
For the most part, the blank walls of downtown St. Paul aren’t going anywhere. The massive, seemingly endless gray façade of the Travelers HQ will likely always stand like Yosemite between some of the city’s most vibrant areas.
This is to say that St. Paul needs some good news, something behind the return of Choo Choo Bob’s to the city via the Union Depot. At least now there’s a collective agreement about what the problem really is — and what people can start to do about it. If you want to mull these good ideas, head down to Lost Fox and find some regulars to chat with.
Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.
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