Lowertown’s decline continues

A couple of years ago, I wrote that:

Shortly after moving to Minnesota in 2017, my wife and I went to see a Saint Paul Saints game. Arriving early, we went for a walk around Lowertown. We loved its assortment of buildings and variety of places to eat and drink. We decided on the spot that we would move there.

Sadly, I went on to write about the closure of some of the businesses that had made the neighborhood so attractive to us. I noted that while COVID-19 had undoubtedly been a major factor in the area’s decline, that wasn’t the whole story, and that a downturn had been perceptible as early as 2019.

I am sad to say that Lowertown’s fortunes have continued to decline. On Monday, the Pioneer Press‘ Frederick Melo reported:

Barrio, a restaurant and tequila bar that brought some badly needed life back to St. Paul’s Mears Park in 2009, called it quits on Friday in Lowertown.

…

The restaurant, which offered sidewalk seating facing Mears Park, maintained a sizable bar inside the historic Railroader Printer building at 229 E. Sixth St., which is also home to the Bulldog-Lowertown restaurant and bar.

Several restaurants situated around the park closed or relocated during the pandemic, including the short-lived Big Biscuit Bar, Public Kitchen & Bar, Noyes & Cutler, the Octo Fishbar and the Handsome Hog, which moved to the corner of Selby and Western avenues in 2020.

World of Beer on Sibley Street closed in 2019. Saint Dinette, located about a block off of Mears Park on Fifth Street, has announced it will likely close in March 2025.

According to Fox 9, this leaves “just one still open in that part of Lowertown St. Paul.”

“[T]he reasons so many [businesses] are failing are complicated,” it goes on. COVID-19 is, rightly, given as a catalyst:

…during the pandemic a huge number of workers left downtown St. Paul offices to work from home.

Most of them have never returned full-time…

But there is, as I noted back in 2022, more to it than that:

St. Paul Planning Commissioner Nate Hood points out St. Paul has a higher minimum wage than most of its suburban neighbors, and taxes and rent are typically higher.

…

“If you want the lunch business to come back, we’re going to need workers,” Hood said. “If you want housing to come back, we’re going to have to do something about rent control.”

Nick Rahn, who owns the veteran-aligned cannabis business Warrior’s Garden, “says more events could help, and he’s hosting comedy shows to do his part, but he’s having to jump through some hoops with the city.”

Kare 11 quotes Jeff Kaster, owner of The Bulldog, as saying that “inflation, remote work and issues with the homeless have impacted business.” The Lost Fox:

…is right next to the Light Rail, but [owner Annie Rose] doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic because of safety concerns on the Light Rail.

“It’s not where it should be in my open [sic], so we don’t get a lot of foot traffic,” Rose said.

Forget it Jake, its Lowertown

We may consider COVID-19 as an exogenous shock, but the stringent policy responses to it — which included vaccine and testing mandates for bars and restaurants imposed as late as 2022 — by St. Paul’s city government were not. That was a choice.

So, too, was hiking the minimum wage, a move which research commissioned by the city itself found to have reduced employment.

So, too, was the imposition of a strict rent control law that has effectively ended the construction of residential properties in St. Paul.

So, too, is the imposition of even higher rates of sales tax.

And so, too, is the decision to go easy on anti-social behavior. Towards the end of my time in Lowertown, it was not unusual to see people either defecating or masturbating in Mears Park in broad daylight. This was too “vibrant” for me, so I moved out. Apparently many others felt the same.

All of this highlights a fundamental problem. “Density” is the buzzword du jour in planning. The suburban way of life is obsolete, we are told, and we should be trading our single family homes for apartments and our cars for buses and light rails.

But if you are going to trade your private outdoor space, like a garden, for a public outdoor space, like Mears Park, it has to be an improvement. If someone began defecating in your suburban garden you can compel them to stop, but what do you do if you are confronted by such while strolling through Mears Park? You rely on the police for that, but the police in St. Paul are told, now, to be more understanding of such behavior. The same goes for the expectation that people will trade a ride in the car with their kids for a ride on the Light Rail with them. Thus the quandary for the “liberal” urbanist: how to make people choose density while failing to do the basics towards making density attractive? The offer of walkable amenities evaporates when you tax and regulate them out of business, as the sad story of Lowertown illustrates.

The positive aspect to this is that what has been done by bad policy can be undone by good policy. Lowertown, and St. Paul generally, are circling the drain because they have been woefully led over an extended period. It has been subjected to a thorough treatment by “progressive” policy with predictable results. If these same policies are implemented statewide or nationwide for an extended period, we will see the same results.

Occasionally, I’ll be driving on 52 and see Lowertown and tell my son that that is the first place he ever lived. I also tell him that it was a great place to live, once upon a time, and that I hope it is so again when the time comes for him to find his own place. Better leadership and better policy is a necessary first step for it’s recovery.