Revitalize downtown St. Paul by getting people back on the streets

St. Paul’s downtown recovery, as it now stands, is a bet on buildings. The 187-apartment Landmark Tower conversion opened at a cost of $97 million, made possible in part by tax credits from the city, state and federal governments.

The former Ecolab building will soon lease 178 more residential units at a cost of another $68 million. A $30 million private fund from Securian and the Bush Foundation is buying out the old Madison Equities portfolio and figuring out which can be converted economically, and which will require demolition. These are long-term, expensive bets on the future of downtown.

The problem is that none of these investments will save downtown on its own.

It bears saying plainly: Buildings are great, but downtown St. Paul needs people. You cannot fill 187 apartments at the Landmark, 178 at the Stella or the thousands more yet to be developed by asking people to move into a city neighborhood that empties at 6 p.m.

Related: Promising ideas emerge for both Minneapolis and St. Paul downtowns

Colliers put downtown St. Paul office vacancy at 39.5% at the end of the third quarter of 2025. Prospective renters see the same headlines the rest of us do. They tour downtown before signing a lease and they notice whether anyone else is on the sidewalk. If not, they move to Northeast Minneapolis or Uptown. The conversion pipeline needs a downtown that already feels alive.

This is not a new problem. Every peer city that pulled its downtown out of a similar hole did it the same way: by getting people on the streets. Street activity creates a flywheel effect, where more people lead to more bars and restaurants, which leads to more storefronts, which increases the perception of safety, which leads to more people and so on.

Philadelphia’s Sunday Open Streets increased sales at participating businesses by an average of 38% and in-store foot traffic by 26%. New York remade Bryant Park — once a place pedestrians avoided — by pairing physical improvements with daily sanitation, security and varied programming. Similar success stories can be seen in Detroit’s Campus Martius District, Pittsburgh’s Market Square and Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine.

Local government can start this flywheel by creating a predictable and recurring street level activation. Rather than a festival here or there, imagine if every Friday and Saturday evening from May through September, a stretch of 5th Street was given over to pedestrians. Live music performers set up on corner platforms, food trucks and farm stands line the curbs, dining tables fill the streets, and string lights overhead invite community under a starry canopy.

Uniformed ambassadors help direct visitors, clear rubbish, maintain public restrooms, and serve as additional eyes and ears for public safety. Everything is measured objectively: pedestrian counts, merchant sales, 311 and 911 calls, noise complaints, cleanliness, transit access and resident perception. At a season’s end, we publish the numbers, and let the data decide whether we expand, adjust or fold.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her has a tremendous opportunity and mandate to make this happen. The legal tools are within her reach.

In her own house, the City Council should codify a recurring Friday–Saturday closure of 5th Street rather than making each week a one-off event permit; the Department of Safety and Inspections and Public Works should rewrite vending rules so food trucks can be permitted for a whole evening on an activation block, rather than riding a meter; the mayor’s office should appoint a single nightlife point of contact — one staffer with a phone and a mandate; and the council should create a busking safe harbor on designated blocks.

Related: Seven ideas for downtown St. Paul from a revitalized downtown Detroit

From Ramsey County, a fraction of the $320 million Building Stronger Together plan can be allocated to physical improvements at “first moment of truth” locations, where potential visitors make a snap judgement as to whether the corridor looks safe, clean and fun enough to earn their business.

From the Legislature, a narrow, event-zone open-container exception and — more ambitiously — state authorization for a bounded “social district” model that would let approved activations serve on-street. Bills that touch alcohol move slowly, and with an opportunity as big as this, the mayor should ask early.

Politicians have a natural incentive to swing big for the press-grabbing home runs, when any Twins fan can tell you that ball games are won with singles and doubles. Ramsey County’s RiversEdge proposal — a costly riverfront megaproject with an uncertain future —illustrates how hundreds of millions of public dollars can be tied up chasing a headline while the more immediate work activating storefronts, improving sidewalks and making downtown streets feel safe and alive goes underfunded.

Let’s get someone on base. Let’s start cheap, quick and in the streets.

Nathan Bruschi is a veteran, father, small-business owner and a Humphrey Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota.

The post Revitalize downtown St. Paul by getting people back on the streets appeared first on MinnPost.