“If I look to the future
of a signature of a Coleman administration, I hope that riverfront development
will be something that will stand out. It is one of our tremendous natural
resources that should draw people here.”
January 1994, Mayor Coleman speech
before
Chamber of Commerce group
A reporter asked a key question of Dick Broeker, a retired consultant who played a key role developing the Saint Paul riverfront: "What was the moment you realized the city was about to undergo a fantastic transformation?"
Broeker
frowned and replied: "It was in a meeting with Norm Coleman, the new
mayor. It was in April of 1994. I knew Coleman a bit. I have to tell you I did
not vote for the guy. He was the sort of person you sometimes meet who's so
ambitious, who has such big ideas, you wonder if he's completely for real.
"It was
over lunch at Tommy J's, on Selby Avenue, and Norm was sick. I mean, he had the
flu and he did not look good. Up until this time, he had tried to get me
interested in rebuilding Saint Paul, because I was involved in riverfront
redevelopment work with Mayor Latimer in the 1980s. But now I was retired. I
didn’t have the stomach for some enormous new project. Not from some politician
with a head full of ideas.
"But he
had the flu, and he looked like hell, and it was late, but he kept going on
about what could happen if people could just see what he saw. Because it was
all doable. And it was then that a little light went on in me. I was no longer
listening because he was the mayor, or to humor him; he had got to me.
"You see, it occurred to me that only a certain kind of guy is going to be talking up the city when he feels that bad. And I thought, I want some of what he's having. So I went home that night and told my wife I kind of liked the new mayor after all.
"Monday morning, I called him back and gave him my answer. "OK, Norm. Let's get to work."
“The Mississippi. At the heart of the city. The very essence of our
beginning as a community. It will be a squandered resource no more.”
Mayor
Coleman, State of the City
March 21st,
1994
"Find the water, and you’ll find the
people." The city of Saint. Paul, Minnesota spent over a century violating
that adage. For many years it turned its back on the river that was its very
reason for existing. But today, thanks to a major refocusing effort by the
city, we're seeing the river again, and we're liking what we see.
The river was what brought early settlers to Saint Paul: it provided food, water, a way to move about, and the tactical leverage of being at the topmost navigable point on North America's biggest river. It was a place to live; early residents built their homes and businesses along the river. The Mississippi was where things happened. The Minnesota men who fought for the Union in the Civil War left to great fanfare via the Mississippi; at Gettysburg, seven of every eight would die. Earlier, in 1854, a group of journalists joined then-President Millard Fillmore in a trip upriver from Rock Island, Illinois to Saint Paul. This trip was a national news event of the day, spawning stories in virtually every major American newspaper.
The river was everything -- sustenance, transportation, a way to conduct commerce, and a place to look down on from high up. In the nineteenth century people knew what they had. The original plans of architect Cass Gilbert, who designed the state capitol building and the great lawn laid out below it, called for a much bigger mall, one extending all the way down to the water, just as the Great Mall in Washington dips a toe in the Potomac. Land speculators prevented that dream from taking hold, however.
In the early part of the twentieth century, however,
all that changed. The land along the riverfront became increasingly
industrialized. Manufacturing and storage sites became a kind of dirty curtain,
separating the city from the river. Industrial sights, sounds, and smells made
the Mississippi less than appealing.
Unsavory detail: the city's human wastes were
routinely dumped in the Mississippi, along with its industrial wastes, creating
a pungent olfactory stew. At one point, a group of engineers were called to investigate a new island that had
surfaced in the Mississippi. Their discovery? The island was not composed of
dirt.
The decline in quality during the first decades of
this century was precipitous. The number and varieties of life in and around
the river plummeted. Where once more than 30 species of fish thrives, all
disappeared except three. Eagles died out, as the river’s DDT pesticide levels
made their eggshells in bluff nests too fragile for chicks to survive.
Mayflies—one of the humbler mainstays of the regional food chain—nearly died
out. Likewise, human beings began to shun the river. Where once as many as
20,000 weekend visitors had once picnicked and boated, by the 1920s not even
the fish and the birds could be persuaded to stay.
Even when industry began to move out of the riverfront area, the land and water remained polluted by industrial and human waste. The situation began to improve in the 1930s, when the Pig’s Eye sewage treatment plant was constructed. Pig’s Eye helped clean up human waste in the river, though industrial dumping still occurred. In the early 1970s, new rules requiring that sanitary sewers had to be separate from waste helped improve the river’s demeanor, as did improvements to the city’s storm sewer system. After banning DDT, eagles began returning to nesting sites along the river bluffs.
Beginning in the 1960s, a series of Saint Paul city administrations, including that of former mayor George Latimer in the 1980s, took steps to clean up the river. Dick Broeker, Latimer's deputy mayor, and the brain behind much of the city's Lowertown redevelopment, was one of the first to fall under the river's spell. Where other people saw junk and deterioration, Broeker saw possibilities. But there was no leverage at that moment, either political or economic, for effecting grand change. "There was just no heart for it," Broeker says, "no spirit for it." To get things going, he says, you need someone with a big horn and good lungs. No administration was able to make improvement of the Mississippi riverfront a top priority. Until 1993.
Coleman's Bluff
“And cities, like people, need hope to grow and prosper. I believe we can find renewed hope by
tapping into the rich resources of the Mississippi River… and when I talk about
riverfront redevelopment it’s more than a project or a bridge … it’s you and
me, our parents, our children coming together sharing the richness of our
history and uniting in the possibility of our future.”
Mayor Coleman,
State of the City
February 27,
1995
The year 1993 saw
the election of Saint Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, a son of New York City whose
local credentials included stints as Chief Prosecutor
and Solicitor General for the State of Minnesota. Fresh from victory,
Coleman took a long look at the city he had to lead and sized up his situation.
Though it had experienced some revival during the Latimer years, Saint Paul was
a city down on its heels.
Once the finer of the two Twin Cities, it now
suffered from a sense of being the weak
sister to sleek, economically with-it Minneapolis. Conspicuous corporate
citizens were bolting their doors or stealing out of town. West Publishing, a
major employer, had moved to the suburbs, leaving its giant riverside office
building empty. The Saint Paul Holiday Inn had closed, along with the Saint
Paul Athletic Club and numerous other businesses. Downtown contained less than
$300 million in taxable property, down from around $680 million a few short
years earlier, in 1988. “People didn’t have any confidence in the city or in
the community itself,” says Patrick Seeb, one-time top aide to Coleman who
later became head of the Riverfront Corporation, “There was a lot of
skepticism.”
Coleman sensed that the city needed a focus point for
its revival. But what -- a skyscraper, a sports stadium, another museum? Or
something even bigger? “I was looking for some kind of symbolic linkage,
something to rally around, something that was real, and that people would
identify with,” he says. He traveled to Harvard to learn about urban design. He
called on former mayoral opponent Ray Faricy to head a study commission to
explore opportunities for revitalizing the Mississippi. He traveled to other cities, as far away as
San Antonio and Cleveland, and as nearby as Red Wing and Winona, gaining
inspiration and a sense of opportunity, enabling Coleman to think of the
Mississippi River as the touchstone for a rebirth in St. Paul.
The irony was rich. The much-maligned river—never
further, they say, than three miles from any point in the city—would draw the
city together again, linking neighborhoods to downtown, and becoming the supple
spine of a revivified Saint Paul.
The notion was not greeted with enthusiasm in every
corner. Seeb recalls a private meeting
hosted by then-publisher of the Pioneer Press Peter Ridder, “Peter wanted to
bring together this young, energetic new mayor and downtown business leaders
and property owners.” Their response to
Coleman’s vision for riverfront development, according to Seeb “wasn’t polite
reluctance … it was downright opposition.”
Their concern, Coleman said, was that “We’re dying, and here you’re
talking about a river four blocks away. You need to focus on the core
downtown.”
Dick Broeker remembers how tough a sell it was. "You couldn’t believe the beating Coleman took the first year. Everyone called him this mindless cheerleader who kept saying that St. Paul’s best days are yet to come. We'd tell people at meeting after meeting that it was okay to be skeptical, but the question remained: 'Do you want Saint Paul to thrive as a waterfront downtown or not?' And people would say, 'Well of course we want it to thrive, but that’s never going to happen.' That was the standard response."
Not everyone, of course. Here and there a few civic leaders stepped up and acknowledged that the brash young mayor was onto something, and the city would be foolish not to hear him out. "Paul Verret was one, and Mike O’Keefe was another, and Doug Leatherdale of the St. Paul Companies stood up for the idea," Broeker said. "Bill Morrish from the University's Design Center was there, and Ken Greenberg, who worked on the waterfall project for the city of Toronto, was there and a couple dozen other people who said, 'Hey, this is powerful stuff, let’s put it into play, let’s see if we can’t get it moving forward.' Ron Clark, of the Pioneer Press editorial page, took us seriously from the first. Governor Arne Carlson soon became interested." One person, then a dozen more, then a hundred, then an entire city -- it was a classic story of communicating a vision and propagating it until it was irresistible.
One by one, Coleman and his supporters took business
owners aside and explained how riverfront development could form part of a
total plan for downtown economic revitalization, and how that phenomenon could
then spread throughout the entire city. “We’re treating downtown as the
waterfront and the waterfront as downtown, which is the way Saint Paul really
grew up,” Broeker says. People who had drifted away from the river lost their
ability to see that connection. Coleman's task was to remind people of what
once was, and what could be again. It was a bluff, in a sense, selling something
marvelous that was as yet invisible. But Coleman saw it, and so he sold it, and
sold it again.
Knowing the city hall would have a tough time
effecting change on its own, Coleman revived and regrouped the Saint Paul
Riverfront Corporation. He called on
business and neighborhood leaders, civic activists, foundations, and public
officials. Early supporters included
Carl Drake, David Lilly, and Jay Cowles.
And financial support soon flowed from the McKnight, F. R. Bigelow, and
Saint Paul Foundations.
“Let’s turn vision into action.
I want you to join me as we initiate a reforestation project. By this fall we will plant over 12,000
trees, shrubs, and perennials.”
Mayor
Coleman, State of the City
March 21st,
1994
Inspired by the vision of Saint Paul native son and
internationally recognized urban designer Ben Thompson, Coleman championed the
idea of restoring the urban greenery.
Thompson’s concept of the Great River Park was his way of saying “that
if you should approach the entire river valley as a ‘river park’ and build out
from that framework, you can’t go wrong,” according to Gregory K. Page,
director of special projects at the Saint Paul Riverfront Corporation and the
group’s unofficial historian.
So long as Saint Paul remained a stewpot of industrial
pollution, however, progress was impossible. Whole sections of riverfront
property were occupied by industrial businesses. Some were past their prime and
a few were downright unsightly. These properties were owned by a hodgepodge of
businesses and individuals, who would have to be dealt with individually. Other
sections were just blank spots, empty lots strewn with rubbish. The entire area
was overrun with non-native vegetation -- weeds.
The challenges involved in changing the area from a
trashed waterfront to the centerpiece of a new Saint Paul can hardly be
underestimated. Private owners had to be contacted and negotiated with. The
land had to be cleaned up, and where necessary, bulldozed and recontoured. Then
it had to be refurbished, with native plant species that could survive not just
the Minnesota winter, but the havoc of living in a popular place. Last but not least was the problem of who
would do the actual physical labor of installing and caring for new plantings.
To begin, Coleman put out a call to volunteers to go
down to the river and collect the readily accessible junk for disposal. People
did not respond all at once: some of the first trees were planted, not all that
enthusiastically or well, by prisoners at Ramsey County Jail. Before long,
however, regular citizens got word that something major was up, and then they
responded, with greater enthusiasm than the people in lock-up. Almost
immediately the riverfront looked better, minus its usual blanket of flotsam
and debris.
With funding from The Saint Paul Foundation, the
Coleman charged Great River Greening, a newly created organization, with the
responsibility of replanting the
riverfront area. When Great River Greening started excavating potential
reforestation sites, they found asphalt, old roads, and brick from decayed
buildings—but very little soil. What’s more, they discovered that the soil pH
of the land around the river was as high as the river itself —the result of
limestone and cement particles.
And most of the land to be replanted was privately
owned; some private landowners had to be convinced to accept and maintain
public plantings on their land. Many of the landowners are small business
owners working hard to survive, and they were not interested in any project
that would cost them a lot of time and effort. The simple challenge of
‘planting trees’ was much more complicated than most realized.
Rob Buffler, the organization’s executive director,
brought in some secret weapons to get the job done: environmental experts and a
local hockey star. While the need for
environment folks was apparent, Buffler also needed an ambassador. He turned to Bob Paradise, who Buffler
describes as “someone who walks in the room, and you love him right away.”
Charming and personable, Paradise’s role was to help persuade landowners of the
merits of this initiative. Hockey and
horticulture -- who knew?
Ultimately, about 80 percent of the 85 private
riverfront landowners agreed to a deal. Initial funding would come from the
Saint Paul, McKnight, Mardag, and F. R. Bigelow Foundations, as well as from
the Helen Lang Charitable Trust, the State of Minnesota and a knot of
corporations that included HB Fuller, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and Arthur
Andersen. Great River Greening would arrange volunteer labor and administer the
program. In return, landowners would let Great River Greening plant on their
property, and they would maintain the plantings. The various parties negotiated
to balance the needs of property owners, such as signs, sight lines, and
security, with the city's desire that the area be attractive and authentic.
But in Coleman’s mind, the greening program was more
than about trees, it was about people making a commitment to their city. In his mind, every person who dug a hole and
planted a tree had a new stake, in this case quite literally, in the future of
the city. Volunteer getting their hands
dirty became a metaphor for people caring.
“We got volunteers by running articles in the papers
and running really good events,” Buffler says. “Our events are very well
organized—we tell people when to come, what to bring, and what to wear. Plus we
provide bathrooms, food, and trained supervisors, who are also volunteers.” As
a result, Buffler says, “People were able to come down and apply their
volunteer labor in an intensive way, and when they were done they had these
tangible benefits that they could see. I think that’s why we were really
popular. It was fun, and there was a sense of hope with all the neighbors
working together for the community. They love it, and we do, too.” Great River
Greening still puts out a newsletter for volunteers, encouraging them to roll
up their sleeves for future events.
By May 2001, 10,000 volunteers had put around 35,000
trees and shrubs into riverfront land, at a cost of about $4 million. The Greening project’s success in Saint Paul
has enabled it to spread its influence throughout the region, now applying its
technologies and practices in the St. Croix and Minnesota River valleys as
well.
The next step in Norm Coleman's plan was overhauling the infrastructure. Saint Paul has more Mississippi river bluff than any other city, but by 1994 there was literally no place downtown a person could get to and stand alongside the river and gaze. The area’s infrastructure had been designed with the needs of railroads and other industry in mind; not much thought had been given to allowing ordinary citizens to gather at the water moving through their midst.
Worse, what infrastructure was already in place looked
bad. Saint Paul riverfront roads, bridges, and other public works projects were
about as dispirited and down at the heels as the river itself. Pitted concrete
and rusty steel discouraged investors and business owners from putting money
and effort into the downtown area. Navy Island, the funny little island
occupying choice space alongside the Wabasha Bridge, needed to be "stormed
and liberated," in Dick Broeker's words.
In renewing the riverfront’s infrastructure, the city
had several goals in mind: making the river more accessible to Saint Paul’s
citizens, improving the riverfront’s appearance, and by meeting the first two
objectives, attracting new business and investment.
Saint Paul wanted people to live, work, and play
closer to the river, so their first objective was to make sure that citizens
and their property were safe from storms and floodwaters. To do this, in 1995
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a $22 million floodwall and
esplanade that reaches the length of the Great River Park, from the Saint Paul
Airport to the high bridge. In good weather, the esplanade feature allows Saint
Paulites to stroll alongside the river, away from the rush and bustle of
traffic.
Shepard Road, for decades a mainstay of traffic in the
metropolitan area, followed every twist and turn of the river. Its location
made it convenient for the needs of railroads and other industry. But the busy
four-lane road also made it difficult for pedestrians to get to the
Mississippi. “Shepard was like a concrete dam that separated you from the
river,” Broeker says. “If people can’t go down to the river and put their feet
in it, you’re never going to bring the riverfront back.”
So the city pried Shepard Road away from the river,
creating a buffer zone of green for the river area, making it quieter and more
attractive; it also created the real estate necessary one day for possible
housing and other urban development along the Mississippi at that point.
To make the river even more accessible, the city
installed a $1 million public dock and gazebo, stretching 500 feet downstream
from Harriet Island. That dock was finished in time for the summer of 1995, and
attracted boaters and fisherfolk of every stripe.
Revitalizing the Core
“But we should not
squander this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Therefore, I will continue to
call on the corporate community, the foundations, private citizens, other
levels of government, and neighborhood groups to work with me in revitalizing
the urban core.”
Mayor
Coleman, State of the City
February 25, 1997
Next, the Coleman’s team turned set its sights on
Harriet Island itself. The island, on the river’s west bank near Wabasha, was
an undervisited wasteland of slag parking lots and rundown picnic
facilities. “At
the south end of Wabasha is Harriet Island, ready to reclaim its historic role
as the city's community gathering center," the mayor said. "I will
work aggressively to rebuild Harriet Island as a true waterfront park and
regional destination center, restoring Wabasha Street and Harriet Island,
creating housing opportunities."
With the leadership from Riverfront Corporation board
members Jay Cowles and Pat Donovan, the community choose to condense a 15-year
plan for rebuilding Harriet Island down to a 3-year campaign of raising money,
gaining necessary regulatory approvals, and generating an inspiring
design. The private sector rose to the
challenge, contributing more than $5 million including $125 contributions from
more than 2000 individuals who wanted to leave their permanent mark on the community. "Stepping Stones," brick pavers
with personalized inscriptions, gracing Harriet Island's new promenade reveal
the community’s pride in its waterfront birthplace. Megan Ryan, the city's
marketing director, calls a case of “capitalizing on the affection people feel
for Saint Paul.”
It seemed that everyone wanted to have a hand in
bringing Harriet back to life. Here are
just some of the organizations that pitched in: The St. Paul Companies, Target
Corp., Wells Fargo Bank, the Saint Paul Foundation, the Katherine B. Andersen
Fund, the Star Tribune, MAHADH Foundation, Firstar Bank, McGough Construction,
Hugh J. Andersen Foundation, U.S. Bank, Benis Company, F.R. Bigelow Foundation,
Mardag Foundation, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, the City of Saint Paul, Dellwood
Foundation, Helen Lang Charitable Trust, McNeely Foundation, Saint Paul
Firefighters Local 21, Knight Foundation, Ecolab Inc., 3M Foundation, Mary
Livingston Griggs Foundation, Marbrook Foundation, Peanuts on Parade, The Beim
Foundation, TKDA, Ramsey Medical Society, The Bayport Foundation, Northern
States Power Company (Xcel Energy), SRF Consulting, Saint Paul Port Authority,
the Frey Foundation, Saint Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Regions
Hospital. A long list, but it isn’t complete.
Today, with the bandages removed following its
reconstructive surgery, Harriet Island is a friendly expanse of green where
once there was only litter and cement. Jogging and biking trails invite
visitors to circumnavigate the island’s dimensions. Picnic tables, gazebos, a
playground, a band shell named for Target Corp., and community events on the
island promise to make Harriet Island a place families spend the day at again.
For those with a slightly more formal evening in mind, the island now boasts
the Mildred Pierce, a restaurant serving upscale continental food. On the Saint
Paul side of the river near Harriet Island, Joseph’s serves family-style fare.
Step aboard a permanently moored barge and you are in a brand new bed and
breakfast, the Covington Inn. Soon,
Harriet Island will be home to more than a million visitors a year.
If the properties at river level needed help, so did
the infrastructure above it. Coleman inherited a wobbly Wabasha Street bridge
that threatened to direct motorists to the bottom of the river instead of
across it.. Until that happened, it wasn’t much to look at, either. Years
earlier the city commissioned a plan for a new bridge from renowned architect
Jamie Carpenter; that bridge would have cost $75 million, completed. The city
didn’t have that kind of money, and they had no luck convincing businesses to
chip in for the project. “Saint Paul was bleeding so badly that they didn’t
want to put money into the waterfront because they couldn’t see the relevance
to downtown,” Broeker says.
But now Coleman had their attention. Seeing all the
other changes, and believing that a revived riverfront would be good for
downtown business, merchants agreed with the mayor that a new bridge would
contribute to a new and improved city. So the coalition started over from
scratch, commissioning a new, less expensive bridge plan from a city/community
design firm that included architectural firm TKDA. The resulting Art Deco-style
bridge that was opened in 1998 now serves as a fanciful landmark and visual
delight to the four lanes of motorized traffic that pass over it every day. The
refurbished link also includes bicycle and foot traffic lanes, as well as
improved access to Raspberry (formerly Navy) Island. “We didn’t just build any
bridge,” Ryan says. “We built a beautiful bridge.”
In the future, the city and its
coalition may turn other former industrial sites into public projects. There’s
a possibility that the Lift Bridge will be turned from a railroad bridge into a
bike trail, once the railroad no longer needs to use it, says Riverfront Corporation
executive Patrick Seeb. The transformation of the riverfront has everyone
seeing the city in a new way. Liabilities become assets. Eyesores are
inspirations. “Part of the role of the Riverfront Corporation is to see things
not as they are," Seeb says, "but as they could be.”
Anchors by the River
“Riverfront development is
about revitalizing the urban core. It
has brought hope and investment to the heart of the Capital City. Its focus spreads beyond the river
itself—will result in a reenergized Wabasha Street—from the West Side over the
new bridge, right up to the steps of the State Capitol.”
Mayor Coleman, State of the City
February 28th,
1996
Coleman's vision was rapidly gathering steam. Littered lots became green parkland. Roads were rerouted, bridges rebuilt. But to be successful, the riverfront needed something special, a world-class reason for going down there. It needed at least one large, indoor destination site that would attract visitors and residents alike and form a physical connection binding the downtown to the river.
One of the first victories for Coleman's resettlement
efforts was attracting Lawson Software from downtown Minneapolis. Coleman's
vision was that the city had a jewel at its heart, the river, and that was
something other cities would kill for. Bill Lawson, chairman of Lawson
Software, was one of the first to glance up and see that Coleman was on to
something. The focus of that attraction? That knowledge workers like software
developers need to let off steam, and the riverfront made an exquisite jogging
track for professionals fighting burnout and depletion from long hours. The
move of Lawson to a sensational new office building in Saint Paul more than
made up for the departure of West Publishing.
But the city still needed a killer attraction, a
charismatic presence about which the population of the entire region would sit
up and say, "Hey, I need to get over to Saint Paul and check that
out." It happened that The Science Museum of Minnesota had been looking
for a new building since 1992, to replace the Cedar Street quarters it had
outgrown. The museum was exactly what the coalition was looking for as an
anchor attraction. In addition to its regular and special exhibits, the Science
Museum is a scholarly resource through its collections and research programs,
the site of the second Omnitheater in the United States, and a traveling
educational resource for schoolchildren, with five vans and an army of
educators that serve classrooms throughout the upper Midwest.
In the early 1990s, museum
administrators realized that the existing building, located on the northern end
of downtown, couldn’t accommodate the number of visitors who wanted to come,
nor the space to store its collection of 1.75 million objects. Educational
programs were bumping up against space shortage, too. “It’s kind of an
interesting problem—it’s coping with success,” notes Kathleen Wilson, who has
spent the past eight years as the museum’s vice president of planning and
external relations.
The museum was committed to staying
in Saint Paul, the city where it had begun in 1907. But museum officials were
not initially enthusiastic about building on the downtown side of the river.
“They did not want to come over to the downtown side of the river because all
their marketing studies said people didn’t want to come visit them downtown,”
Broeker says. With some arm-twisting from Coleman and other coalition members,
however, the Science Museum eventually agreed to build in its current location.
“I mark this as the major turning point in Coleman’s political life,” Broeker
says. “He played a card that was very dangerous. He essentially said, 'If you
come over to our side of the river I’m going to support you and get you a lot
more money. And if you stay over there you’re not my friend.'”
Coleman got the Science Museum the money they needed
to build a new plant, and museum administrators became happier about the move.
“Science happens all around us, not just inside buildings, and we thought it
would be wonderful to have some exhibits outdoors,” Wilson says. “The Science
Museum’s mission is telling stories, and the river has many stories to
tell—anthropological, archeological, environmental, and we thought it would be
wonderful to locate near the river.” The riverfront location has also allowed
the Museum to have a boat, the River Eye, which does environmental
scanning on the Mississippi.
The Science Museum finalized its plans in fall 1994
and broke ground in the spring of 1997. City and state funds, as well as
donations from private citizens, fueled the new construction, to the tune of
about $100 million. On December 11, 1999, the museum held its grand opening,
and it was grand opening. People from across the region swarmed to the new
quarters. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2001, the Museum had 925,000
visitors, and served another 200,000 through educational outreach programs.
“The Science Museum has been a key component in riverfront development and in
the residents’ perceptions of the river and its use,” says museum President Jim
Peterson. “It’s been a centerpiece in the midst of a lot of other activity and
has called a good deal of attention to new uses of the riverfront.”
The story of the Science Museum's
success is one of synergy. While officials originally balked at a riverside
location, the museum nevertheless third in its expanded incarnation. In turn,
the museum brought visitors to other downtown destinations. It even offers a
grand staircase, so that even visitors who haven’t bought a ticket can go down
and dip a toe in the source of all this synergy, and of the city itself, the
Mighty Mississippi.
An Urban Village
“And now we are experiencing a remarkable economic and community
renaissance, the Mississippi River will continue to provide the energy. For the
first time in a generation we can look at adding three to four hundred housing
units in our downtown and riverfront.”
Mayor Coleman, State of the City
March 23, 1999.
Saint Paul’s original settlers lived along the river,
and the coalition to recreate the city was eager to see a new generation of
settlers there. Creating a residential enclave beside the purling waters was a
good investment in several ways, they decided. First, people would want to live
there, because it was a beautiful place. Second, it was a convenient place to
live for downtown workers. Third, the arrival of new people would itself be a
stimulus to downtown business, as shops and restaurants sprang up to serve the
growing community.
And so a plan took shape. New housing would be grouped
into three distinct urban villages. The first, the North Quadrant, is the
furthest along in its development plan. It will eventually consist of eight to
ten blocks downtown, with 900 housing units, retail businesses, and a new
public park. By fall 2001, Minneapolis developers Sherman Associates and the
Michael Lander Group had built 35 condominiums and 120 apartments, ranging in
purchase price from $125,000 to $350,000, and costing $850 to $1400 a month to
rent. Twenty percent of the project is devoted to affordable housing, with 10
percent priced at 50 percent of Saint Paul’s median income of $74,700 and
another 10 percent priced at 30 percent of median income.
The second planned grouping, the
Upper Landing project, will stretch for about 25 acres along the river between
Chestnut Street and the High Bridge. After spending about $12 million on
remediation for the site, Texas developer Centex Corp. plans to put 600 housing
units there. Despite the cost of getting the land detoxified, according to
Saint Paul Director of Planning and Economic Development Brian Sweeney, the project
will still turn a profit. “How can we not develop such a prime location?” he
asks. “It’s probably the most prime development opportunity in the Upper
Midwest.”
The Upper Landing was Saint Paul historic Italian
settlement village, turned refuse site.
Soon it will be home to 600 families, building on the already vibrant
West Seventh neighborhood. Wrapped with
bike trails, green spaces, and retail shops, it will become a new gateway into
Saint Paul’s entertainment district.
Already ground has been broken on the third premier
urban village, the West Side flats.
Beginning with the US Bank office development, this new neighborhood
will include townhomes, apartments, and condominiums in the area between
Wabasha, Roberts, and Plato Streets.
Like the other urban villages, however, it will include walking and
biking trails and retail outlets when it’s completed by Saint Paul developer
JLT West Side LLC. “The West Side is going to be a destination point in the
Upper Midwest in three to five years,” Sweeney says. “It is just going to be
neat.”
The riverfront-based fix-up will touch other parts of
downtown as well. Lowertown, which has benefited enormously from urban renewal
during the past decade, will continue to get new coats of paint. The city hopes
to spend $4 million renovating the farmer’s market, adding indoor, year-round
facilities. “It’s twenty years old—it simply needs to be refurbished,” says The
Riverfront Corp.’s Seeb. Other Lowertown priorities include moving the post
office and renovating Union Depot, which both the city and Amtrak would like to
use for train service.
One big question remains: Will the
next mayoral administration see to it that these projects—some of which are
little more than a blueprint and a shovel—come into being? Coleman believes
they’d be foolish not to. “I don’t think they have a choice,” he says.
Expectations are high. Deals are in place. The incentives to continue are
enormous. Even so, Sweeney adds, the city is “doing everything we can do to
make sure that there’s no turning back. It would take an idiot to screw this
up.” And, says Seeb, “its what the
community wants. That trumps all, doesn’t it?”
From auspicious beginnings of riverfront clean-ups and family fishing events, Coleman always returned to a central theme: “Cities are about people." Whether it was the American Smithsonian, the Ramsey County Fair, or Minnesota Orchestra concerts under the stars Coleman always looked for ways to engage, involved and include people of Saint Paul and the region.
And even his riverfront planning effort, found a way of engaging thousands of citizens over hundreds of meeting. When the Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development Framework was unveiled in June of 1997 it was greeted by standing-room only crowds who responded with standing ovations. “I have spoken at a dozen conferences around the country,” said Patrick Seeb. “No city can tell the same story of community support for a planning process.” Coleman had tapped into pent-up demand in the community.
The demand was more than about planning, it was a demand for action, for participation, and for enjoyment. That was a theme Coleman returned to again and again. What do we do in the city of Saint Paul? We live here. What do we expect from the experience? Satisfaction. Engagement. Happiness.
“And so this evening, I ask you to join me on our journey as we begin a
walk into the future. I call it Saint
Paul: Vision 2004…”
Mayor Coleman, State of the City
March 13,
2001
In his final State of the City
speech, Coleman presented his vision for where Saint Paul was headed and what
it could achieve by the year 2004. “The Mayor operated on a belief that you had
to inspire people to greatness, then work to get something done, something
tangible, tomorrow,” said Seeb. “For him, The Grand Excursion 2004 was a
vehicle to keep people headed in a direction while navigating the challenges of
day to day life.”
They say that simple satisfaction is the proper reward
for a job well done. But the public/private team that envisioned and then
enacted this remarkable dream of a city revitalized by the river flowing through
it, plans to cap it all with a fabulous perk -- a recreation of Millard
Fillmore’s ballyhooed 1854 riverboat trip from Rock Island, Illinois, to Saint
Paul.
That original trip was billed as a journey into
America’s heartland, and featured the president and a small army of dignitaries
and journalists. The journalists—who knew a good press junket when they saw
one—filed stories in virtually every major American newspaper about the river,
about Rock Island and Saint Paul, and about the towns they traveled through
along the way. The stories they wrote fired the imagination of the entire
country, about this romantic outpost on the frontier, and helped propel the
territory of Minnesota to statehood.
The recreation of the Grand
Excursion, as it was called, will take place in 2004. It will celebrate the
work that has been completed in Saint Paul and the entire region at that point,
and help generate extra energy for whatever projects are yet to be completed.
As Norm Coleman says, “There are always dreams that don’t have a shovel.” The
Excursion will also celebrate the regreening of America’s heartland and the
part that Saint Paul has played in the resurgence.
Historical footnote: When the
original Grand Excursion reached Saint Paul, it did so a day early. Communication
being what it was in the mid-19th century, the party planners on
shore had no idea that the boat would dock ahead of schedule. The dignitaries
and journalists had to wait a day for their fete.
This time around, the city will be
ready for the party and to show itself to the world.