What will it take to revitalize downtown St. Paul?

CATHY WURZER: An organization that was created to rejuvenate downtown Saint Paul will soon include all commercial and residential buildings in the area. The Downtown Improvement District provides services like street cleaning and security.

Saint Paul city council voted this summer to double the size of the district and include residences, not just businesses, for the first time. The district is funded by property owners who had until this month to reject the measure. They did not. So the new boundaries will take effect in January.

Now, this comes as Minnesota's capital city deals with spaces sitting empty, office workers staying home, and restaurants that are closing. Joining us to talk about the state of downtown Saint Paul, which I should note is where MPR's headquarters are located, is Downtown Alliance President Joe Spencer and Tim Niver, an owner and operator of restaurants Mucci's and Saint Dinette, the latter of which is in downtown Saint Paul. Joe and Tim, thanks for joining us.

TIM NIVER: Hey there.

JOE SPENCER: Thanks so much for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Hey. Thanks for taking the time. So, Tim, I'm going to start with you. Saint Dinette's a really popular place there in the lowertown area. And I'm wondering what you thought when your neighbors, your friends at Barrio closed after 15 years.

TIM NIVER: Well, it was a little surprising but also not surprising. It's an interesting economic climate out there, especially in our industry. So when it happened, it's an immediate shucks. And then you understand the reasons why doing what I do.

CATHY WURZER: OK. So what would be the reasons why and how they dovetail into your plan to, I understand, not renew your lease when it ends in March of next year?

TIM NIVER: Yeah. Well, there's just been all types of change since COVID, since the murder of George Floyd. And so downtown has really also changed. It's a younger demographic there now. Say, inflation and the overall economics of things have affected how many visitors we have downtown.

So in that particular space in lowertown, we're at a deficit of customer visits as compared to prior years. So increasing wages and so forth and so on, add layers of expenditures that are becoming harder and untenable. It's just been a more difficult run since all these other big happenings went on.

CATHY WURZER: And, Joe, it seems like it's pretty tough sledding in the lowertown area. And there are, as you know-- I mean, I drive through it every day-- a lot of folks having some serious social problems, addiction, homelessness. What's being done to deal with that?

JOE SPENCER: So one of the things that we've found-- when we started our organization six years ago, we looked around the country to see what was working in terms of improving downtown spaces.

And this model of an improvement district really stood out as ubiquitous. And so we piloted it on the other end of downtown, on the Rice Park side of downtown. We found that it was terrifically impactful.

So we've got ambassadors, safety ambassadors, cleaning ambassadors, out in high-visibility uniform. They are connected through a safety communication center to the police officers, to private building security, and social service providers.

And just their presence and their service really proved to make a huge difference. We reduced calls for what we call quality of life crimes by 40% in the district, while they went up in lowertown and elsewhere in downtown.

So we had a perfect experiment with the test subject and a control group and really found that it worked. So we're excited that we finally passed this final hurdle and that next year we can look to deliver these increased safe and clean services through the entire downtown.

CATHY WURZER: Well, shoot, Tim, it doesn't sound like you're going to be around long enough to enjoy that.

TIM NIVER: Well, I wish I could be. There's a lot of timing involved in our decision too. Saint Paul's been an awesome place to have our business. But looking out five years from a financial promise perspective, we're able to maybe not withstand the time it takes for things to come back.

And I do appreciate Joe's efforts towards making the city better. It's really been an awesome place. And it's a great place to live, not at all uninhabitable. I would hate for anybody to get that idea. It's just not as many people right now.

CATHY WURZER: And really, as you probably both saw the Axios article that Nick Halter wrote, the vacancy rate in downtown Saint Paul is like, what, 31% or something like that, which is higher than previously thought. I don't know. Joe, what do you do about that high vacancy rate?

JOE SPENCER: First, I think it's important to point out that not unlike downtowns across the country, our visitors actually have bounced back really quite well and are at or either just under or just over prepandemic levels. Our residential counts are higher than they were before. But our day-to-day office attendance is still maybe 65% of where it was prepandemic.

And that kind of impact on a restaurant that-- it's a tough business in any environment. And to see any kind of reduction goes directly to the bottom line. So there's definitely a kind of market adjustment.

We saw this coming as we came through the pandemic. We put together our downtown investment strategy and put that out this earlier this year. That shows what we think is our best path to a new downtown where we triple the population, still continue to add jobs, and then also double down on our strength, which is our visitor attraction.

I think even Tim would agree. And Tim, by the way, always just-- he and I have gone back over the years. And I just deeply appreciate what he's done with his place at Saint Dinette, and before that, over at Strip Club. Just a great, great partner.

But I think even Tim would agree that this past November, we had a great month with new visitors coming in for different attractions. And we're going to try to keep building on that existing strength as we go forward.

CATHY WURZER: With the empty buildings, though, how do you get folks to come downtown to live down there? I mean, is there some sort of a move to maybe repurpose some of this empty office space for apartments and condos?

JOE SPENCER: Yeah, that's our hope. And it's something we've been doing for a while. Our key is how can we find ways to accelerate that? So looking at subsidy tools like a tax credit for conversion and those kinds of things, getting the city directly involved-- TIF, I think, is going to have to come into play-- and finding other ways that we can accelerate that conversion of unused office space into residential space.

Probably half of the growth in downtown over the last 10 years has been that kind of conversion. And we have a number of projects like that underway. We're just looking and calling on our public sector partners at the state and city and county to find ways to accelerate that because we really see that as being essential.

CATHY WURZER: So I want to ask you both about this, but Tim first. We were talking to a new restaurant owner in Saint Paul. And that person says they're struggling because one of the big issues they face is a really serious parking problem, especially during St. Paul Saints baseball games. Tim, did you notice that yourself?

TIM NIVER: Well, I hear that a lot. There are multiple places to park. It never feels convenient in a busy city to find a place to pack and what you will be willing to pay for or not. So I think there's a lot of parking in general. But I don't think it's necessarily always so obvious to say new visitors and could be a frustrating aspect.

CATHY WURZER: And, Joe, what can be done about this problem?

JOE SPENCER: Well, I think there's partly a matter of expectations in people just knowing you're coming into a downtown environment, you're likely going to have to pay and likely to park in a parking ramp or something like that.

I think we can probably do a better job collectively at putting out signage and wayfinding so that people can find their way to those parking spaces, especially if they're new to downtown, if it's a new restaurant that might have a new audience coming in. That's something we want to get a little better at, is helping them find their way to those parking spaces in a more convenient and expedited fashion.

CATHY WURZER: So, Tim, there's going to be a bunch of us that are going to miss Saint Dinette. What are you going to do after that closes? How will you focus your time after that?

TIM NIVER: That's nice of you to say. Thank you. I'm not exactly sure. I've run multiple restaurants over the last 10 years. And as things potentially end up at Dinette, I might just try to enjoy what I have left at Mucci's and maybe some other new things.

CATHY WURZER: All right. I appreciate the time, both of you. Thank you so much. And best of luck.

TIM NIVER: Thank you, Cathy.

JOE SPENCER: Thanks so much, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Tim Niver is the owner and operator of Mucci's and Saint Dinette. And also with us is the Downtown Alliance President Joe Spencer. And as I mentioned prior, this new district-- of course, MPR's world headquarter is included in this new district in downtown Saint Paul.