Downtown St. Paul Lunds & Byerlys closes, leaving neighborhood without grocery store
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The downtown St. Paul Lunds & Byerlys closed its doors for good Wednesday, leaving the area with no grocery store.
Barb Izdepski, 76, lives above the supermarket with her chihuahua, Pelli, short for Peligroso. That means “dangerous” in Spanish. (He’s anything but.) She’s been a resident of The Penfield apartment complex since 2018 and said she’ll feel the loss of the store.
She suffers from lung disease, she said, though she’s quick to point out that she never smoked, done illegal drugs or worked in a factory. She’s been reliant on supplemental oxygen for about four years. The Lunds store downstairs is convenient because she prefers to walk with her oxygen pack in tow, she said.
“Having oxygen, carrying oxygen is a little challenging getting in a car. So it really facilitates the fact that I can just put my backpack on and walk over to Byerlys,” Izdepski said.
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The store was known for being a bit pricier than other markets, but Izdepski said the supermarket was still worth it.
“Although it is fancy and it’s a little higher price, when you have to think about if I can just walk to the location versus getting in a car, driving, the gas, the parking, the tires, all that you know,” she said. “Certainly it’s more expensive, but what you have to factor in those other aspects too.”
Izdepski won’t have a choice after Wednesday when the store is expected to shutter for good at 6 p.m. The news has left some local residents and St. Paul leaders feeling disappointed, even sad.
“The news about Lunds was so painful for me, and I know for so many of my downtown constituents,” City Council President Rebecca Noecker said. “It’s hard to overstate how important that anchor institution was.”
Downtown is a neighborhood like every other neighborhood, and it needs grocery stores, said Noecker, who represents the area where Lunds is located.
“That’s just one of those foundational businesses that just makes the community feel like a true home,” she said.
It’s another hit as St. Paul — much like other downtowns throughout the U.S. — have struggled to find post-pandemic stability.
Lunds & Byerlys said harassment, shoplifting and vandalism have made it difficult to retain employees and managers.
“It’s a decision we didn’t want to make, but one we needed to make given the significant staffing and financial challenges we’ve experienced over the past five years,” the store said in a statement in early March, when they announced the store’s upcoming closure.
According to St. Paul Police Department data, in a 12-month period from 2015 to 2016, city police received 63 calls to the grocery store. That’s about 200 fewer calls than the peak in 2019 and 2020. In that year, police were most commonly called for disturbances or disorderly conduct. Theft calls were also high, about 17 percent of the total calls in that year.
The number of calls for police service has started declining in the past three years but is still high: 175 calls were made from March 2024 through March 2025.
City leaders said they are determined to get a grocer inside the space on the corner of Robert and East 10th streets. No contenders have been named to date, but Noecker said the city is not limiting the field: it will consider co-ops, local stores or national chains.
Lunds & Byerlys said it will partner with the city and landlord to keep store equipment and infrastructure in place for a future grocery store.
The new grocer will be looking at a different St. Paul than the one Lunds faced its opening year in 2014. The downtown population back then was 5,000, according to the Downtown Alliance. Today, it’s nearly 10,000 residents.
“We want to grow that much further to 30,000 residents in downtown St. Paul,” said Joe Spencer, the president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance. “That population base is going to be really essential for the success of any grocery store.”
Lunds suffered a bit from what Spencer called “misalignment of timing.” For example, long-term construction has been ongoing around the store for the last two years. Both Robert and Minnesota streets were reconstructed, and Pedro Park has been under major construction that involved the demolition of the Public Safety Annex. Spencer said construction on the three projects will wrap up by the end of the calendar year.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic hurt businesses in downtowns across the country, as workers stayed home. The store is near the State Capitol complex, and a hybrid work policy for state workers had an impact on Lunds and other businesses in the area, Spencer said.
“It’s really important that we see some of those workers return to help bring back that market, or just basically build a market without any dependence on those workers,” he said.
Gov. Tim Walz announced Tuesday that most state agency employees will be required to come back to the office beginning June 1 for at least 50 percent of scheduled workdays. And as more businesses require workers to come back, Walz and other government officials are hoping it will provide a needed boost to the city's economy.
In response to the governor’s decision, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said having the state employees return to the office “gives us the opportunity to tell those pizza shops, to tell those barber shops, to tell those burger joints and restaurants and all those other types of places downtown that there's a customer base there.”
