{"id":4764,"date":"2024-09-24T14:13:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T14:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/?p=4764"},"modified":"2024-09-24T14:16:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T14:16:51","slug":"downtown-st-paul-property-owners-ok-expansion-of-privately-funded-safety-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/news\/downtown-st-paul-property-owners-ok-expansion-of-privately-funded-safety-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown St. Paul property owners OK expansion of privately funded safety services"},"content":{"rendered":"

The assessment-funded downtown improvement district will double its budget and expand its reach into Lowertown.<\/h3>\n
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By Katie Galioto | The Minnesota Star Tribune | September 11, 2024 at 8:00AM<\/h4>\n

This article has been shared in part from the Minnesota Star Tribune, to read the entire article, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Safety captain Travion “Tray” Thompson with the St. Paul Downtown Alliance picks up trash while on patrolling St. Paul’s downtown improvement district earlier this summer. (Leila Navidi\/The Minnesota Star Tribune)<\/p><\/div>\n

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St. Paul\u2019s privately funded downtown improvement district will stretch into Lowertown next year, a move that will roughly double funding for special cleaning and safety services throughout the urban core.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Though\u00a0the City Council voted<\/a>\u00a0in July\u00a0to expand St. Paul\u2019s existing downtown improvement district<\/a>, property owners could have refused the assessment-funded services if enough of them opposed the plan. City officials tallied objections this week and said the proposal cleared its last hurdle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI think we\u2019re going to be able to provide a level of improvement that downtown really needs right now,\u201d Joe Spencer, president of the nonprofit St. Paul Downtown Alliance, said in an interview Tuesday. \u201cI think people are going to love it when they see what can happen when we add this extra layer of safety, resources and extra amount of coordination.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Paul’s downtown improvement district to expand<\/h3>\n

The current district, funded by assessments charged to property owners, will expand its cleaning and safety services to Lowertown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Downtown Alliance oversees the existing improvement district, which is funded by commercial property owners, with fees based on buildings\u2019 square footage and street frontage. Its boundaries were\u00a0drawn to exclude\u00a0<\/a>buildings owned by downtown\u2019s largest property owner, Madison Equities, which refused to back the concept in 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A change in state law last year allowed the district to start assessing residential property owners, meaning Madison Equities\u2019 objections no longer carried as much weight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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According to an analysis completed by the Downtown Alliance, over the last three years, the district has seen a 40% drop in what St. Paul police call \u201cquality of life\u201d crimes and calls for service \u2014 for issues like graffiti, vandalism, disorderly conduct and panhandling. Over the same period, Lowertown saw the same types of calls increase by 25%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI feel like we have done a really good job these last few years of testing a model and proving that it works,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The new district, which will start next year with a $2.7 million budget, will allow the Downtown Alliance to hire more street cleaners and safety ambassadors. Spencer said the group is looking into new uniforms to distinguish between the safety and cleaning teams, and bikes to help staff more quickly traverse downtown. He\u2019s also exploring whether it might be possible to help fund a city attorney dedicated to prosecuting downtown livability issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Perhaps most importantly, he said, the district will start broadly advertising ways for residents, workers and visitors to report problems directly to the Downtown Alliance\u2019s safety communications center. Officials have refrained from doing so sooner because their reach is limited to district\u2019s boundaries, which are not evident to the average passerby.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The expansion received support from a mix of small and large property owners, including Carl Kaeding, whose development group is behind downtown\u2019s Courtyard by Marriott and the Arlow on Kellogg apartments. The company is also in the process of converting the former Ecolab University Center offices into housing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is something,\u201d Kaeding said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the be-all and end-all. But we\u2019re excited to see if it works well, if it does something.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To continue reading, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The assessment-funded downtown improvement district will double its budget and expand its reach into Lowertown. By Katie Galioto | The Minnesota Star Tribune | September 11, 2024 at 8:00AM This article has been shared in part from the Minnesota Star Tribune, to read the entire article, click here. St. Paul\u2019s privately funded downtown improvement district …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4764"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4770,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4764\/revisions\/4770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}