Lowertown is a pretty cool place, but if all goes as planned, it’s going to be a destination.
Steve Berg at MinnPost wrote a great piece about the efforts to breath a little life into Lowertown and downtown St Paul in general.
Mayor Coleman has announced a Rebuild St Paul initiative that will put $15 million in city money plus more in private investments towards some pretty rad projects such as a sorely needed grocery store in the form of a Lunds at 10th and Robert. The Lofts at Farmers Market will get another chance, adding 56 rental units and 2,400 square feet of retail space.
[more after the jump]
In addition to the already awesome parts of Lowertown like the gorgeous Mears Park (free live music on Thursdays all througout the summer), Barrio and the Farmer’s Market, the streets are under construction for the addition of the Central Corridor, and there’s talk about extending the Greenway into St Paul. You should go read the vision and sign on in support, even if you don’t live in St Paul or bike, because it’ll mean fewer cars on the roads when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere.
And if all that’s not cool enough, Henry Chan, the chef and owner of Giapponese Restaurant in Woodbury is working with Dave Brooks, the owner of the building at 6th and Wall parking garage/office building, you know the one that doesn’t look like it should be a parking garage, to set up a non-profit restaurant on its rooftop. It’s still unnamed but will be Asian themed, have three sushi bars and a tempura bar. I don’t know about you but¬†this makes me friggin giddy. Expected to open in June of 2011.
Nearby, there is a big “Coming Soon” painted on the windows of the first floor retail space of the O’Connor Building for a spot called “Vines and Steins”¬†that sounds right up my alley,¬†but I haven’t been able to find much about that other than it’s been threatening to open for a long time. If you know anything about that space, fill us in.
September 16, 2010 at 10:40 am
I used to live in St. Paul. That area has been a joke for years. I thought when they built the Excel center, museums ect. ect. that was going to fix the down town/lower town problem. The lofts in that area are a joke. No parking on the weekends and general homeless panhandlers form the Dorthy day center abound. More taxpayer money going down a rat hole. Their are not enough “hipsters” to support that area, if their were they would live there now and subsidies would not be needed.
September 16, 2010 at 10:47 am
Oh, absolutely. Since you think St Paul sucks there’s no reason to try to make it better. Thank you for your added value.
September 16, 2010 at 11:09 am
@ang – What I am against is Corporate welfare. These so called private/public programs benefit the developers and leave nothing behind for the actual people of the city. Let’s just look back and one will realize that most of the “redevelopment” they are talking about was “redeveloped” in the 1990’s. How well is Gultire Plaza doing. Looks like a bit failure to me and now they want to redevelop another failure The model being used to “make it better” had been done and it failed. Redevelopment policies like St. Paul is proposing makes it hard of independent like myself to support Local Government Aid to the cities because I do not see any value in it when looked at from policies like the one proposed by Mayor Colman.
September 16, 2010 at 11:12 am
St. Paul haters will hate.
September 16, 2010 at 11:19 am
Okay, so we’re back to you thinking that because past attempts have failed we should all just give up on it. There’s no point in trying to bring things to the city that will bring people to the city. You’re totally right. That’s sound logic right there.
St Paul Haters, I intend to write a lot of posts about the side of the river you think is unworthy so I would suggest you just skip right on by anything with my name on it or your panties are going to spend a long time in that bunch.
September 16, 2010 at 11:25 am
My favorite part of St. Paul is the meters stop after 4pm and you can usually park anywhere. Also, Station 4.
September 16, 2010 at 11:28 am
Truth! I’m not sure what he means by no parking on the weekend, if we have one advantage it’s ample parking and a very small time frame on meters.
Also, wherever you park and wherever you’re going, you’ll never have more than, like, 5 blocks to walk. I love that.
September 16, 2010 at 11:29 am
Okay, so we’re back to you thinking that because past attempts have failed we should all just give up on it.
Past performance is the best indicator of future performance.
I don’t hate St Paul but the mayor needs to realize that the downtown is never going to attract people to the degree that it will be a viable business district. I do not think that the out state taxpayer through LGA funding should indirectly fund another future failure. My point is that these programs only benefit the developers and not the taxpayers. mayor Coleman was squealing like a stuck pig last week, worried about a decrease in LGA funding but he has the money to subsidies a private developers and a private grocery store. Screw him and St Paul I don’t want my tax money through LGA paying for his future failure.
September 16, 2010 at 11:33 am
Ok, swandog. You’re the expert. Whatever you say.
September 16, 2010 at 11:57 am
@swandog: In Minneapolis, the building of the Metrodome was supposed to bring all sorts of hustle ‘n bustle to the east end of downtown. That never happened; it was a dead zone except on game days and nights but no one writes off Minneapolis because of that miscalculation, do they?
St. Paul, more than Minneapolis, was hurt by the building of the Mall of America. It was also hurt when West Publishing left for the ‘burbs. Not having a critical mass of workers downtown, during or after office hours, is a big reason why a lot of what retail did remain in downtown STP closed doors in the past 10 years. Give the city some credit, at least, for trying to attract a critical mass of downtown residents into the area, and the approaches into downtown along Shepard Road and 7th Street. I don’t consider those efforts “corporate welfare.” Tax-increment financing for companies, yes; building housing, no.
September 16, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Past performance is the best indicator of future performance.
Uh, no. It isn’t. If that were true, we’d all be geniuses on the stock market and the Twins would have never won a World Series (or two). We would never have landed anything on the moon. The Japanese would’ve won the Pacific War.
September 16, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Also, if you’ve been to Lowertown at all recently you’ll see that things are looking up. Barrio and Bulldog are both successful, Mears Park brings in big crowds with music fests and hell, just any Saturday there’s quite a few people hanging out, reading, people watching, heading across the street for a beer. Five different street food vendors spend a lot of time from Mears to 7th and Wabasha. Sometimes all of them are in town.
And, if you read the post, business are coming into town, not closing up. We are not talking about the Galtier Plaza here. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, LT is doing pretty alright and the future promises a lot of cool stuff. Spend time here now before deciding you know what you’re talking about.
Lastly, we can’t just sit around and hope and pray to unicorns that people suddenly start moving to downtown St Paul; they need good reasons like grocery stores, public transportation, bike trails and entertainment. I’m glad that my mayor has ideas on how to make our city better, and I truly hope they work. I’ll even be looking into ways that I can actively participate and help.
September 16, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Nood – The stock market did crash in the past and crashed again. That is a trend and it is proof that past performance is a good predictor of future performance. I agree that the metro dome did not fulfill it’s promise to redevelop that area of Mpls and would argue that the past performance of that failure is reason enough not to build another failed stadium on the tax payers dime. Oh yes I do write off Minneapolis been there done that. Both cities suck the tax dime of the out-state and then complain when their budgets don’t balance.
anng – I was just in lower town last week and it looked the same as it always did, dead. If it is so great and people are coming down their why then would the city need to provide corporate welfare to bring more people down.
September 16, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Really, swandog. Go troll elsewhere.
September 16, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I guess swandog has never read a prospectus for a mutual fund, corporate stock, or watched a brokerage ad. They all have a standard disclaimer: “past performance is not an indication of future returns”
September 16, 2010 at 2:21 pm
@swandog: You wouldn’t see any ROI, then, whenever the stock market does — more often than not — run with the bulls. The historical, overall stock trend is UP, not down.
Wrt “corporate welfare”: West Publishing left downtown STP for Eagan because the city government wouldn’t kick in some funding to help it relocate downtown. At the time, in 1991, West had ~1500 employess; now it has ~4500. All of those extra bodies sure would’ve made for some nice ka-ching in downtown cash registers.
September 16, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Really, swandog. Go troll elsewhere.
this is why mnspeak died. no tolerance for dissenting opinions.
September 16, 2010 at 5:07 pm
@cubbie: Oh, I don’t know about the “no tolerance” part. It’s just when someone spouts rubbish about one thing or another (e.g. vaccines causing autism) that the villagers start waving around their picks and axes. 😉
September 16, 2010 at 5:43 pm
This has nothing to do with intolerance of dissenting opinions. This is intolerance of people adding absolutely zero value to a discussion, and always finding a way to crap all over something simply for the joy of it.
You know, I totally expected it, too. As soon as I started putting up posts about St Paul I wondered how long before someone with a half developed thought would come in and shit on it. Didn’t take long, I’m never let down here.
September 16, 2010 at 6:38 pm
This has nothing to do with intolerance of dissenting opinions.
It has something to do with it, not nothing. If that makes sense.
September 16, 2010 at 7:58 pm
I was in Lowertown earlier this summer and thought it was just lovely (especially some of the smaller row houses a few blocks from the river front). Actually looking into moving there in the winter.
September 16, 2010 at 8:02 pm
That’s a big step.
September 16, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Well, I prefer the Nokomis/Longfellow area, but I’m having a hard time finding affordable rental.
September 16, 2010 at 10:26 pm
my neighborhood, northeast, has experienced a decent resurgence in the past several years. (i don’t know how much public money places like lunds, keegans, or the cobalt received. maybe a lot.) but it seems to me these things happen organically. does dumping a ton of money into an area then hanging an ‘open for business’ sign really work? it’s not an amusement park.
September 17, 2010 at 8:49 am
St. Paul is all right with me. I don’t know Lowertown from Frogtown, and that’s why I like the place. It’s like a little road trip to a new town. And then I get home 20 minutes later. Destination places for me include Ngon, Senor Wong, Tanpopo.
September 17, 2010 at 9:10 am
Exciting! I am looking forward to a more vibrant St Paul. I bike to the Farmer’s Market all the time (now). Lowertown is somewhat of a mess with the construction, but when the train comes…
Jane, Frogtown is where all the frogs are — duh!
Saint Paul Represent!
September 17, 2010 at 9:25 am
Swandog is firmly in the pessimist club. The world needs sunshine and rain.
I think some reasoning is spot on, some is off topic – but regardless any discussion is going to have a devils advocate or “Troll” as intynet folks like to call them.
Do they add value to the discussion? – that’s a subjective question depending on what side of the issue your on.
There really is no more polarizing issue in this state than STP vs Minneapolis. So of course posts on the Peezy gonna bring out some trolling…it’s the internet.
I believe noodle said it best “…haters gonna hate”
September 17, 2010 at 10:34 am
I agree with Swandog on a few points. The $ Coleman sank into DT STP worked for as long as the money was flowing and the business left as soon as it dried up. At some point if the business can’t survive on its own, you have cut your losses and stop throwing good money after bad. At least Minny stopped trying to attract business on the East side after it failed and sunk money into Washington and NE which have done quite well. To me the draw to either which STP would be smart to take note of is the river. Look at the exisiting structures in STP prohibiting river views. Do you think the post office or the gigantic parking structures taking up 4+ blocks of prime river real estate provide a return for the city?
There are several businesses doing OK in Lowertown and with the housing being expanded (and doing quite well), it is a critical juncture to support small business. I think the $ being allocated is a small amount and could benefit the city in tax return. Especially in liquor sales where they get $1 for every $10 you spend.
Also, the Dorothy Day traffic is an eyesore for many folks. Don’t rip me because this is not my opinion. I used to manage a restaurant in Lowertown and it was the opinion of MANY customers. It deters visitors whether you share the opinion or not. There’s a reason the police presence on event nights at the Xcel is so heavy.
Please follow the authors recommendation and support the Greenway!
September 17, 2010 at 10:38 am
Also, read the original article at MinnPost. The details you are missing in your discussion are $100M in PRIVATE investment and 3,000 jobs. Jobs like these are what will bring our economy back.
September 18, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Lowertown absolutely has potential beyond the Gopher Bar. I was shocked when the Nature Valley Grand Prix moved the downtown St. Paul bike race from Mears to Rice Park because there was, to paraphrase, “more going on at that end.” I guess a run-down Macy’s with a skyway to nowhere counts for something.
September 18, 2010 at 8:35 pm
@Brett: Dorothy Day is not anywhere near Lowertown. The X is in what’s called “Uppertown” STP. Lowertown really doesn’t begin until one goes east from Cedar or Robert.
@champs: Macy’s … and the Ordway, and the Science Museum, and the Children’s Museum, and the library, and …
September 20, 2010 at 11:55 am
@noodleman do you not think the homeless population is mobile beyond 6 blocks? Mears is a notorious hangout.
September 20, 2010 at 8:32 pm
My company moved to Lowertown in May and we’re very impressed with the area and happy with the move. Sure, the area has a lot more places to improve, but it has definitely taken a turn for the positive. With more young companies moving to Lowertown, restaurant openings, Union Depot and housing, I think the conversations about Lowertown will be quite different 3 years from now.