St. Paul tiptoes toward reforming its safety inspections process

Wes Burdine, the owner of a University Avenue bar in St. Paul, was pretty excited when construction was set to begin on his new outdoor tap building. His business, the Black Hart of Saint Paul, offers a unique combination: an historic GLBTQ bar that regularly hosts drag shows, and a soccer bar within walking distance of Allianz Field. It’s a juxtaposition on full display during the once-in-four-years collision of Twin Cities PRIDE and the World Cup soccer tournament. 

In preparation for the big event, Burdine began planning months ago to build a new outdoor building where staff could serve drinks. It would allow him to take better advantage of a patio he’d installed a few years ago, essentially doubling the capacity of the bar for large crowds. The new structure would house taps and another bar, allowing Burdine to sell drinks outside and cutting down on the long lines during events. 

But then, the bad news. Despite being ready to begin construction, he was notified about another form that needed to be filled out and approved. The process would take another month. 

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“One person will tell us ‘OK, you’re in good shape, we’re ready to give you a permit,’ and then someone else will say ‘Oh, actually we just got this comment in from another department,’” Burdine said. “So essentially there’s no coordinated response or treatment. No one talks to one another.”

For business owners, the back-and-forth bureaucratic rigamarole is wildly frustrating, disrupting investment timelines and making it hard to schedule contractors. In the case of the Black Hart, a day after celebrating the groundbreaking of his new building, Burdine had to pull the plug on the construction and postpone it until after the World Cup. 

A regular St. Paul complaint

This is a common St. Paul story. Listening to business owners over many years and multiple administrations, one common refrain emerges: people are quick to complain about the Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI). For many businesses, seemingly simple projects take far longer than anyone estimates, and the rules and regulations seem to be largely arbitrary. 

I routinely hear stories about how DSI erects needless barriers and causes delays. Most stories reflect Burdine’s experience, where one hand doesn’t seem to know what the other is doing. Liquor licenses or building permits seem to appear or disappear without much warning.

When I bring this up to city staff or elected officials, they usually shrug. 

“People always complain about things,” one former staffer told me a while back. “We can’t compromise on safety.” 

Over the years observing St. Paul’s government in action, my sense has been that DSI operates in a bit of a bubble relative to other city departments. Its offices in an office building on 375 Jackson Street (ironically owned for years by Madison Equities, long the city’s biggest building code violator) are literally set apart from the rest of city government. In addition, because it relies on fees and fines, DSI generates its own revenue more than other city services. 

I suspect that the city’s leeway around DSI was partly in response to the St. Paul 2012 mini-scandal over city-run restaurant inspections, where DSI’s lax approach went afoul of state law to such an extent that the city was stripped of its power to license restaurants. With that history, the tendency has been toward erring on the side of overregulation. 

Under the surface, though, DSI has been a well-known thorn in the side of business owners. As a result, promising to “cut red tape” and streamline things for small businesses have become a stump speech clichés during elections. 

It’s easier said than done. This year, with a new mayor in City Hall promising to improve things for businesses in the city, there’s another bite at the apple.

“Managing change is a huge priority of mine,” explained Nick Stumo-Langer, the assistant mayor in for Housing, Economic Vibrancy, and Infrastructure. “DSI should not exist in a silo, away from the principle project managers in PED, the sewer engineers and other folks.” 

As one of four assistant mayors directly reporting to Mayor Kaohly Her, Stumo-Langer oversees DSI as well as the city’s Public Works and Planning and Economic Development (PED) departments. He says he has been aggressive with “leaning in” to operations in the hopes of improving communications between staff. 

For example, the city regularly performs site plan review processes for larger new developments, and Stumo-Langer is working to make that process more transparent for developers and businesses.

“Previously, they really operated like they were in a silo,” Stumo-Langer said. “You would check a a box over in DSI, and you would get sent to Public Works, and they would say ‘Why did you do this?’”

That kind of back-and-forth rigamarole provokes frustration for business owners trying to make investments. That said, over the past year city officials have pointed toward a new public-facing database, called PAULIE, as one of the big accomplishments of Mayor Melvin Carter’s administration. Certainly, replacing administrative software systems is no easy task — ask the state licensing department — but the on-the-ground results have been slow to emerge as the system has gotten off the ground. 

Improving the process

Stumo-Langer also says that the city will be focusing again on prioritizing large, multi-acre projects like The Heights and Highland Bridge, both city-led redevelopments where construction has been continuing for years. 

“We’re making sure the process is linear and understandable, especially for businesses coming in,” he said. “If you delay projects that they think are going to take a year… I’ve talked to folks who have gotten their projects through [our process], but after this they’re in a lower cash position [and have lost money].”

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If the new mayor can streamline DSI to allow for both large-scale and small-scale investments, it would be a big shift for St. Paul’s business culture. The city could see more development and make it easier to open businesses — say to build a patio, a new building, expand a café, start up a new shop, or whatever.

It’s all too late for Wes Burdine and the Black Hart bar. The World Cup kicked off two weeks ago and has hit full stride. The PRIDE celebration peaked with packed-house celebrations. The lines for drinks were indeed long for the recent USA men’s World Cup knockout match.  There’s no sign of the new patio building. Construction will have to wait until the crowds are gone.

“It would have been nice to have,” Burdine said. 

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