Downtown Saint Paul, MN

1841, Father Lucien Galtier established a Catholic chapel (near present-day Second Street and Cedar Street), on the bluffs above the Lower landing naming it in honor of his favorite saint. This is essentially where Saint Paul’s development first began although the Upper Landing Development near modern day Irvine Park was established soon over. Downtown Saint Paul naturally grew out of the Lower Landing site evaluating into the Lowertown District as shipping and commerce grew thanks to this being the first port of access to the Twin Cities. By the 1870s Lower landing grew into a major shipping and rail yard with more and more warehouses. Eventually by the late 19th century commercial buildings incrementally filled in the rest of current day Dwtn St. Paul. The next major development in Downtown was the creation of the Minnesota State House which was completed in 1905. The early 1950s saw the creation of the expansive State  mall that currently surrounds the Capitol. This was in reality a major urban renewal project that razing several blocks of a deemed undesirable neighborhood north of Dwtn. This coupled with extensive highway and innerbelt construction left Downtown St. Paul with a significant amount of dead and underutilized spaces. Like Downtown Minneapolis, Downtown Saint Paul adopted an extensive skyway system consisting of 40 bridges and experienced a skyscraper-building boom beginning in the 1970s.  Interestingly, because the  City Center is directly beneath the flight path into the airport across the river there is a height restriction for all construction.

The scares of Saint Paul’s extensive highway and urban renewal projects are still very visible today and have left Dwtn with a low level of vibrancy on its streets. Nevertheless Downtown has seen a resurgence of Dwtn living and has grown from 5K to 10K between 2010 and 2020. Like most American dwtn’s Saint Paul also has a solid concentration of theaters and cultural/regional amenities, decent park spaces, plenty of Museums, a supermarket, and decent retail amenities. Dwtn hosts around 60K office workers (pre-pandemic), is a solid hub for transit and biking access across the City. But for this to be a great Dwtn, it needs not only more population but an improved urban realm erasing many of the mid-century development mistakes. Significant attention should be made to redeveloping dead spaces surrounding the Capitol Complex, adding more retail amenities, and creating a better sense of place Dwtn. Given St. Paul’s relatively modest size, I think this is a very doable proposition. 

Click here to view my Dwtn St. Paul album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

• Excellent ADA infrastructure. Good wide sidewalks and nearly every Dwtn intersection has modern ADA curbs.
• “* Good density for a Dwtn area.
• Solid public transit access throughout most of Saint Paul and especially good Dwtn and the surrounding neighborhoods. Decent transit service only extends a couple miles out to the suburbs north and south of the City.
• Good amount of attractive historic architecture but less than most mid-western cities.
• While Saint Paul only has a dockless bike share system Citywide it has a good array of bike lane connections including a couple lane seperated options within Dwtn, good connections to city neighborhood (especially to the west and north), and decent bike connections to the suburbs, especially to the south. Suburban connections are pretty fractured north and east of the City thanks to all the Minnesota lakes.
• Cultural amenities include a good number of museums including family friend options like the Children’s Museum & Science Center.
• Good diversity indicators among residents living dwtn and pretty friendly place for families to visit.
• Decent skyline thanks to a good cluster of medium sized skyscrapers. Not many distinctive skyscrapers however.
• Solid park amenities including Rice Park & Mears Park, which serve as Dwtn’s Civic Plazas, some decent riverfront parks along the water and up on the bluff, a couple small plazas, the extensive but dead mall space Infront of the Capitol Bldg, and Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, an extensive reclaimed industrial sight now run by NPS.
• Excellent dwtn mark that is open on the weekends. This has been part of St Paul’s history for 165 years.
• Solid # of rental options including plenty of studios leasing generally in low 1KS, 1-beds lease in the 1Ks, 2-beds btwn 1.5Ks-2.5Ks. Decent amount of dedicated affordable rentals as well dwtn.
• Pretty good number of for-sale options that are generally moderately priced. 1-bed condos sell btwn 100K-350K, good diversity with 2-bed condos selling btwn 150K-600K, and some 3-bed condos selling btwn 330K-700K.
• Solid cultural/regional amenities including a decent # of restaurants & bars, plenty of cafes, good array of Dwtn museums and a couple art galleries, a minor league sports arena/convention center & ballpark, a couple night clubs & live music venues, and several theaters mostly located near each other. Good concentration of governmental buildings Dwtn augment by all the state offices surrounding the Capitol Building.
• Pre-pandemic Dwtn hosted around 60K, a respectable # considering Minneapolis hosted over 100K in a metro of 3.7 M
• Decent retail amenities include a supermarket, a couple drug stores, some boutiques & gift shops, a couple book stores, a major Dwtn public library & historic post office, plenty of banks, several dessert joints & a couple gyms, a major hospital & several doctor’s offices.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

• Not a fan of much of Dwtn St. Paul’s modern in-fill. There is limited mixed-use residential and plenty of bland office towers and auto centric uses.
• While there is a decent dwtn population, Dwtn Saint Paul feels pretty dead. This is likely due to a lower amount of cultural & retail dwtn amenities as most American Dwtn, lots of bland office towers, parking lots, and more autocentric urban renewal uses, and a local a strong civic center to Dwtn.
• Dwtn grid is fine but too many boulevards and large 1-way streets. Its way too easy to drive to Downtown St. Paul.
• Neither Mears Park or Rice Park are strong Civic Spaces. While they do a fair amount of programming they generally feel pretty dead and the design is nothing special.
• Excellent Performing Arts High School Dwtn. But not much else schoolwide other than a couple small charter school and underperforming public middle school.
• Two community colleges on the edges of Dwtn (St. Paul College and Metropolitan State) with a combined enrollment of about 7K. Given these are commuter colleges and not well connected to Dwtn, not sure if they add much vibrancy to Dwtn.
• 3-bed rentals are very limited.