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

There s no magic bullet for revitalizing downtown St Paul but if there was it might look something like Detroit At least that s the working theory from one local developer Ari Parrish mentioned a scarce months ago in Axios This spring I was lucky to attend a conference in downtown Detroit where I gathered a list of observations Because it s an extreme and high-profile example Detroit is a fascinating place to think about urban planning ideas good and bad A St Paul-Detroit city comparison Before going further down this road it s critical to compare Detroit and St Paul side by side because there are specific fun economic and social similarities and differences between these two midwestern cities First there s the size Detroit is and was huge geographically and was and is no longer huge in population The geographic area of the city of Detroit is famously massive like combining the land area of Minneapolis with St Paul and then throwing in Bloomington Detroit was once the fourth-largest U S city by population peaking in at almost million people Second Detroit is curiously both older and newer than St Paul It s older in the sense that it was settled by French explorers and fur commerce folks in over a century before Fort Snelling arrived on the scene It s also newer in the sense that the city s big increase years happened in the th century decades later than St Paul s or Minneapolis economic boom That s central for urban planning reasons the first being that Detroit was well established when th century ideas like the City Beautiful movement were en vogue Then it boomed during the single-family early automobile era and became less dense than a multitude of parts of the th century Twin Cities The third thing of subject is the industrial legacy and concentrated business sector While St Paul had several urban industry like the M Amhoist and Seeger sites Detroit s boundaries contained various times the industrial manufacturing The legacy of post-industrial land is visible nearly everywhere The similarities are fun too Both downtowns have Churches of Scientology empty office towers seas of parking sports stadia and delectable coney dogs St Paul almost built a people mover in the early s but Detroit authentically did so and it s still there spinning one-way into its retro-future obsolescence They both have s-era failed urban skyscrapers though Detroit s Renaissance Center is larger and more alienating than anything St Paul could ever afford One key contrast downtown Detroit is booming right now seeing a renaissance of street life assets and vibes in stark contrast to St Paul There are lots of reasons for this a large number of involving billionaires buying up land and making often subsidized investments Still there are selected fascinating contrasts between the two downtowns Here s my list Use of murals Murals are an affordable way to improve vacant spaces without waiting for an angel investor to transform your property One of the first things I saw when I arrived in downtown Detroit was a giant mural of Stevie Wonder overlooking a block-long expanse of surface parking It is a great sight A mural of Stevie Wonder greets vistitors to downtown Detroit Credit Bill Lindeke For a few reason downtown St Paul doesn t have a multitude of fresh murals common elsewhere in the Twin Cities When I think downtown St Paul murals the fading Twin Cities Marathon painting on the back of the Athletic Club building is one that comes to mind This seems like an obvious oversight Fun beautiful murals in downtown St Paul would go a long way to revitalize specific spots A healthy improvement district Part and parcel with the wealthy benefactor theory Detroit has a very present and functioning DID called the Downtown Detroit Partnership DDP DIDs are something of a mixed bag they can be everything from a privately controlled quasi-police force to geographically targeted branding function to coordinated urbanist placemaking efforts When done well though I generally find them to be a useful tool for downtowns Walking around Detroit s downtown the DDP s presence is felt all over the place from the society art to the signage and kiosks I didn t see the ambassadors which are so common in Minneapolis Not all of it is great placemaking but there s certainly a healthy budget for amenities like benches signage populace art trash cans decorative lighting and the like St Paul s Downtown Alliance budget is much smaller though at least it s beginning to grow The city could really use a larger presence for its DID project A placemaking bench near the Q Line in downtown Detroit was added as part of the city s downtown improvement district Credit Bill Lindeke Smart use of alleys Downtown Detroit has a lot of empty surface parking lots open spaces between things that come to at times dominate the built conditions In places there s so much empty space that the negative space becomes the positive space a parking lot polarity switch But it s such a large area with so several historic buildings with alleys running through them and downtown had a scant notable examples of using them creatively St Paul also has a handful of alleys that could be spruced up as fascinating destinations already beloved by wedding photographers They could be little nooks for people to discover preferably not to do drugs but to shop and hang out There have been one or two such attempts in Lowertown to revitalize alleys the former Golden s Deli and the former Eyes Brewing but both were hampered by restrictions on historic buildings A Detroit alley has been activated for a restaurant one of the techniques the city is revitalizing its downtown Credit Bill Lindeke Pedestrian streets While I visited I watched a construction project on Monroe Street in the heart of Greektown a insufficient blocks of wonderful old buildings full of bars restaurants and shops I watched a crew working to turn it into a pedestrian street I wish I could say St Paul has an opportunity do something similar but there s just no retail density that might allow that to work well The one-block-long Seventh Place is a great development review of the benefits Years ago there were plans to change Fourth Street along the light rail line into something called a Sector District by removing cars I still think that s a decent idea if done tactically and thoughtfully That street remains the best candidate for a quality pedestrian experience A construction project on Monroe Street in downtown Detroit s Greektown Credit Bill Lindeke Riverfront connections Both cities have rivers and use them underwhelmingly Detroit isn t great in this regard but still better than St Paul You can at least walk from downtown over to the river without transiting a freeway and there s a riverwalk waiting for you when you arrive Granted you have to cross freeway or two in nearly every other direction when leaving downtown Detroit Perhaps St Paul can try harder to activate the Kellogg Mall Park but the real idea here is the combination of the River Balcony project and Ramsey County s massive River s Edge advance Both are still struggling for funding My favorite idea is to reduce the size of Shepard Road Done in coordination with converting Sibley and Wacouta streets back into two-way streets the city could turn one of its river access points into a biking and walking connection Use of pavers Somehow downtown Detroit has a limited paver streets that seem well maintained It adds a ton of sense of place slowing traffic adding visual and acoustic texture and emphasizing the historic nature of much of the century-old downtown Meanwhile St Paul has crappy pavers that looked nice when they were installed but are nearly impossible to maintain Pavers are a luxury to be sure but they really do create a sense of place I would love it if this could be something the city could find money to maintain One engineer friend swears that they are cost effective over the long run actual brick pavers that is not the concrete facsimiles installed by the Norm Coleman administration only if city workers could develop institutional knowledge around installing and maintaining them Masses art and plazas Curiously to me given what happened in the rest of the th century Detroit s downtown had a classic city beautiful plan that it implemented early in the th century The plan created citizens vistas axial avenues and a street pattern full of population space For example Campus Martius a wonderful residents plaza at the heart of downtown Hart Plaza a wide-open space full of art Grand Circus Park a pair of statue d spaces at the north end of downtown or the green median spaces along Washington Boulevard or Cadillac Square Almost all of these spaces are edged with dense buildings A view of the Detroit skyline from Campus Martius with a people mover in the background Credit Bill Lindeke Downtown St Paul has three or four nice small parks around the downtown but its city beautiful spaces like Kellogg Mall Park or Cleveland Circle are underwhelming to say the least Our majority of concerted effort at city beautiful planning resulted in the desolate and to me anti-urban Capital Approach plan which detracts from the downtown rather than adds to it The green space is too large and surrounded by often empty executive offices and zero commercial space Detroit s lessons for St Paul Detroit boomed higher and bottomed out much lower than St Paul or even Minneapolis For the majority part that s a good thing You don t want to have cities cresting and crashing every years producing vast amounts of waste and loss That s maybe one reason why enticing billionaires to build new buildings and rehab old ones while funding stadia and vanity streetcars seems like a tall order for St Paul Detroit s highs were higher and its lows were lower and if you think the current limited years of bad headlines in downtown St Paul are a lot to tolerate imagine decades of that experience combined with the nation s largest municipal bankruptcy It s worth pointing out that post-COVID St Paul might have a limited advantages While both cities need a lot more downtown housing Detroit s existing residential population is even less than St Paul which makes a balanced post-COVID future demanding That noted Detroit offers particular urban lessons around care and creativity and Detroit s placemaking playbook could help St Paul as it works to attract commitment The post Seven ideas for downtown St Paul from a revitalized downtown Detroit appeared first on MinnPost