URBAN DESIGN CASE STUDIES Vol. 3 No. 2 July-September 2006 St. Paul on the Mississippi Design Center By Linda Mack, Architecture Critic, Minneapolis Star Tribune Sidewalk cafes enliven St. Paul’s downtown streets. The Science Museum overlooks the Mississippi River and physically connects to it with an outdoor public stairway tumbling down the bluff. A new greenspace called Landmark Plaza near the city’s town square, Rice Park, (right) has replaced a one-story drive-through bank. On downtown’s north edge, a sea of parking has been replaced by a New Urbanist neighborhood clustered around a park.
Image from Metropolitan Design Center, University of Minnesota
Not bad for a city that Holly Whyte once called the blank wall capital of America and that lives in the economic shadow of its larger sibling, Minneapolis. Much credit for St. Paul’s polished public realm goes to the St. Paul on the Mississippi Design Center, an unusual public-private think tank/design team that operates under the auspices of the nonprofit St. Paul Riverfront Corporation. The small but effective Design Center was formed 10 years ago to implement citybuilding principles outlined in the Saint Paul on the Mississippi Development Framework by Toronto urban planner Ken Greenberg. The development framework wasn’t a master plan for St. Paul’s four-square mile downtown but a broad-brush vision of a place that would become “a system of interconnected urban villages nestled in a reforested river valley.”
Landmark Plaza, center right, helps link St. Paul's Rice Park to the downtown core.
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The framework set forth ten principles to guide public and private sectors: 1) Evoke sense of place; 2) Restore urban ecology; 3) Invest in public realm; 4) Broaden mix of uses; 5) Improve connectivity; 6) Ensure buildings support city goals; 7) Build on existing strengths; 8) Preserve heritage; 9) Balance network for movement; 10) Foster public safety.
“We have no statutory or regulatory power,” said Patrick Seeb, executive director of the Riverfront Corporation. “No one has to see us or respond to our recommendations. Our power really comes from the mayor or city council, who advise people to talk to us.” “Because it’s a bit of a place apart, it’s a place to lower the temperature,” said Nancy Homans, policy director for Mayor Chris Coleman. “They’re not seen as bureaucratic, so they just meet people as peers. It opens up conversations. The little bit of ambiguity has worked to the design center’s advantage,” said Greenberg, who led the design center for its first year and continues to consult for it. The fact that they are not regulators means that they’ve been seen as a service organization.”
Tim Griffin, the Design Center’s current (and third) executive director, said they use the principles as performance criteria for both private and public projects. “We don’t want to use the framework as a checklist but to hear how the developer thinks he is meeting the guidelines,” he said. Structure: Just Outside City Hall
Thompson said the arrangement also allows the core staff to infuse other city staff with design-center thinking. Otherwise, issues could be tossed aside as being ‘design center’ issues,” she said.
The Design Center’s structure is unusual, if not unique. It is not an arm of city government but uses city staff. It is not an academic think-tank. It sits just outside the city under the nonprofit Riverfront Corporation, which provides half of its $400,000 budget. The city contributes the other $200,000 in city staff time. The funding has been a line item in the city budget for ten years. Core staff includes representatives of the departments of public works, parks, planning and economic development and the city’s artist-inresidence.
A Proactive Approach The center promotes better urban design in four ways. Griffin described the first as vision: “As the steward of the framework, we continually ask how does St. Paul reconnect with the Mississippi River?” With a proactive approach that must be the envy of crisis-bound city planning agencies, the Design Center systematically develops precinct plans for the downtown’s 14 urban villages—before developers are barking at the door. For the past two years, for instance, the Design Center and the St. Paul Studio class that Griffin teaches at the University of Minnesota have been looking at an area of the city between the renovated warehouse district of Lowertown and Minnesota Public Radio’s new headquarters.
Lucy Thompson, a senior planner for the city who has worked for the design center from the beginning, said “We did a lot of soul-searching about where the design center should be housed, and made the deliberate decision that it would not be in the mayor’s office.” The primary reason was that a change in administration could end the center’s work. But also important was the additional freedom and credibility that come with outside status. 2
“We’re able to have a conversation about the future of the place without development pressure,” Griffin said.
the mayor, the downtown council member or a neighborhood. Current Mayor Chris Coleman asked the center to manage a planning process for the West 7th Street/Gateway area when he was the area’s council member. Property owners on University Avenue have asked the center to help it prepare for a planned light rail line.
The second major approach is informal design review. If city money is involved in a project, the mayor or city council member or city planner would suggest that the developer consult with the Design Center. If no public subsidy is involved, the developer might approach the center voluntarily.
The center also sponsors design workshops and develops tools that help city residents visualize the future. An ambitious effort to create a 3-D digital model of the downtown that new projects could be plugged into was too cumbersome and expensive, Griffin said. Now they’re developing more accessible tools with Google and Sketch-up.
“It’s part of the development culture in St. Paul to talk to us,” Griffin said. He said it’s typical for him to see projects two to four times before they go to the city’s formal site plan review. The outcomes testify to the power of the informal process.
Using these mass communication devices “is a way to help people understand the policy implications of urban design,” Griffin said. What the center does not do is aesthetic design review.
Water's Edge When U.S. Bank wanted to build new offices across the river from downtown, the Design Center suggested they build perpendicular to the river rather than spread along the edge. The buildings are stepped up away from the river to capture the views, and the siting creates a riverfront address for another future project. The public investment supports the private decision: A new street with a river overlook invites the public to the river’s edge where they might have been blocked off.
“Our specialty is the space between buildings. We don’t get into critiquing great architecture,” said Seeb. “We just don’t think it’s our place.” Developers such as Michael Lander, who has developed condo projects in both the city’s New Urbanist North Quadrant and on the West Side across the river from downtown, hopes it stays that way.
And when the city built a parking ramp along Wabasha Street, the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, as part of a new office project, the Design Center lobbied for retail storefronts to line the parking. ThenMayor Norm Coleman backed the Design Center’s concept and raised $2 million from private foundations and businesses to make the bottom line work.
“It helps to have an operating manual, or an operating organization that asks Can we get this toned up, vs. the city, which says no, it doesn’t work and you figure it out. It’s a more collaborative process,” said Lander. “What doesn’t work is when it starts to get onto the site and get proscriptive. That’s a problem.”
The Design Center also plays a direct city role by acting as an ad hoc design team for
“It’s a way to improve the public realm. No one is looking after that space—not 3
developers, not the city. You can see that St. Paul’s public realm has benefited.”
In contrast, the new Mayor Coleman, who took office in 2006, is a fan of the Center. “He’s always valued urban design,” said Seeb. As the council member representing downtown, he asked the design center to work on the West Seventh, Gateway area.
Political Winds The Design Center is not immune to changes in the political winds. Begun by Mayor Norm Coleman, the center was not embraced by his successor, Mayor Kelly.
This summer he turned to the Design Center to help improve the design of a floodwall the Metropolitan Airports Commission had proposed to protect the downtown St. Paul airport from flooding from the Mississippi River. Environmentalists opposed it. The Airports Commission was adamant.
“Because we had such a close relationship with Norm Coleman, we became the first stop for developers. That was less true with Mayor Kelly,” said Seeb. For instance, Thompson said, Kelly did not involve the Design Center in plans to entice a Target store to downtown St. Paul. And when Kelly supported plans for a 12-story condo tower on the West Side Flats, despite the Design Center’s guidelines for four and five-story development, he informed Thompson that her role was to recommend it, despite the Design Center’s opposition.
“He was in a political vice,” said Seeb. “When he turned to us to figure it out, he was really banking on us.” Greenberg said, “If you compare it, pound for pound and dollar for dollar, I think St. Paul’s Design Center has accomplished more than many larger organizations.” ____________________________________
Photo courtesy of St. Paul Riverfront Corporation.
Linda Mack is architecture columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and writes for Landscape Architecture and Planning.
Leafy Harriet Island offers a view of Downtown St. Paul and new housing on the Upper Landing.
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