As much as I enjoyed Jay Boller’s 10 Ambitious Ideas That Might Actually Save Downtown Minneapolis, and the earnest comments it generated many months back, I was more excited about the prospects of a second article focusing on the needs of downtown St. Paul.
My city’s downtown needs some love, too. I wondered, waiting with anticipation: What would the Minneapolis-based Racket staff come up with?
Then I continued waiting. And waiting.
Hey, I get it. St. Paul is used to playing second fiddle to Minneapolis, and it’s hard to compete for reader attention when you can entice them with nearby fried ranch dressing. To be fair, Racket published that intersection article about St. Paul this year, and of course there's the 2023 one about a Minneapolitan discovering the magic of St. Paul.
But downtown St. Paul is important to me and more important to St. Paulites, generally speaking, than they might want to admit. It deserves more attention!
The lengthy list of challenges, you may have noticed, includes: money St. Paul doesn’t have for needed improvements to the Xcel Energy Center and RiverCentre parking ramp; Madison Equities' decision to sell 10 downtown buildings at once; a startlingly high commercial vacancy rate; empty land around a troubled Central Station; a big empty spot near the river, one that the developer AECOM once teased with photo renderings of four towering buildings; government workers staying home; and developers requiring TIF for market-rate housing.
In March, the St. Paul Downtown Alliance released a Downtown Investment Strategy that was honest and practical in its assessment. It’s true the downtown isn’t dead yet, but something has to change soon. And by "something," I mean more money needs to come into St. Paul. Likely from the state, perhaps to make amends for allowing its workers to eat lunch at home.
No doubt somewhere in St. Paul serious people are having serious conversations about downtown’s future. I’m advocating here for something a little different. Let’s not keep St. Paul boring. Let’s not discuss the floor plans of office conversions. Downtown needs to thrive in its own independent way. We need to create a downtown that entices people, for living and for play, with something unique to the Twin Cities metro. This past summer's first-ever Yacht Club Festival, which was held on Harriet Island thanks to heroic flooding clean-up efforts, served as a bright spot; with 60,000 attendees, it was deemed successful enough for organizers to expand it to three days next year.
Could St. Paul’s downtown problems be answered by making it more fun? I have some ideas. Are some or most of those ideas unrealistic? Of course. But hear me out...
Funiculars!
Funicular: It’s a train car for a hill or a mountain, and you sit upright the whole time. Sounds fun and practical! Residents and visitors alike would be inclined to use it, and it would provide an important connection from the top of the bluff to the river below. Pittsburgh, a city similar in size to St. Paul, has two funiculars. We should put one on each side of our river.
Connect the Funiculars with a Passenger Ferry Crossing
We are a river town. Sometimes, as recent flooding demonstrated, there's a little too much river, but that’s just the Mississippi giving St. Paul some free PR. Housing is going up on the West Flats across the river from downtown, and we need to connect it better. Envision taking one funicular to the ferry to the other funicular. We also need to figure out how to keep Harriet Island dry early in the summer, thus making it possible to host more activities and, crucially, put a permanent attraction there...
Observation Wheel on Harriet Island
Something similar to the London Eye. Yes, I know the 443-foot Eye is almost as tall as St. Paul’s tallest building, the 471-foot Wells Fargo Place. But we can put it at the edge of the water, where it'll become a permanent attraction for regular visits. Now that we’ve connected everything together down by the water, we can set our sights higher up the bluff.
Observation Decks and Public Space on Our Taller Buildings
We don’t have the tallest buildings, but let’s not get blasé about 400 or so feet. If you live downtown, shouldn’t you be able to spend time or eat a meal at the top of one of the tallest buildings? Add one of those glass floor protrusions for a little thrill. Bring in school groups and host adult tours.
Downtown Gym, Possibly Next to a Workout Hill on the Bluff
St. Paul will not steal the nightlife scene away from Minneapolis. But a giant downtown gym could lure the young and fit. And if we welcome all sports *cough* pickleball *cough* the not-so-fit among us would feel welcome. Put the gym on the top of the bluff, add a year-round workout hill, and host an annual Sisyphus competition.
Water Park or Aquatic Center
Water is cool—indoor and outdoor pools, water parks, saunas, you name it. Only my cat would object. Why not a whitewater course to take things up a level? As our winters become gray, snowless, and increasingly life-draining, let’s add an indoor beach for good measure. We can transition from a Winter Carnival city to a Water Carnival one—the branding writes itself!
New at Union Depot: Roaring '20s Festival and More Trains
Folks were excited when the Union Depot doubled its Amtrak trains to two, but they need to raise their expectations. The Depot needs more trains and more events. What better than a new, extended Roaring '20s Festival with gangsters, architecture, trains, speakeasies, and Fitzgeraldses centered around the Depot? As for more trains, the city and county can start by demanding that the proposed Northern Light Express, currently planned between Minneapolis and Duluth, stop at the Depot.
Add a New Museum
St. Paul has science, children’s, history, and American art museums. Why do we need another one? Because we don’t have a Museum of Water in a city on the banks of the Mississippi River in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It could focus on both water art and engineering, in addition to serving as HQ for our previously mentioned Water Carnival.
Enormous Local Artist Gallery
Proposals for developing Central Station, a blighted block of land bisected by the Green Line, should be released soon. If none of the options are acceptable? Let’s build a giant art gallery on the site. Easy enough.
Big-Time Shopping Experience
As someone who recently bought pants at Kohl’s, I may not be the best person to suggest any specific type of retail. But with the only grocery store downtown limiting its hours and no Target, there's an opportunity for the city to help a clever entrepreneur invent a new type of shopping experience for residents.
