In St. Paul, professional soccer stadium renderings have been floating around City Hall for nearly two years, with a wide variety of sites entering discussion, at least in passing, and the owner of the Minnesota United soccer team appears to be engaged.
Months of internal emails on the subject of where best to situate a professional soccer stadium in St. Paul reveal that Mayor Chris Coleman's administration isn't pussy-footing around with the idea of making the old Metro Transit "bus barn" happen. Hizzoner is dead serious.
Coleman's email to key planning staff back in April perhaps sums it up best: "Hell yeah."
St. Paul Mayor Coleman to staff on soccer stadium: "Hell yeah!" But MLS "just not into us" back in the day. And now? pic.twitter.com/eqWjaDByOs
— FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) July 17, 2015
The 200 pages of emails show that the powers that be at St. Paul City Hall were rolling up their sleeves and taking a serious look at the prospect of a professional soccer stadium near Snelling and University avenues as far back as August 2013, if not months earlier.
At soccer team owner Bill McGuire's prompting, even the subject of potential traffic improvements along Ayd Mill Road to improve site access came up, though apparently not a lot.
In fact, it appears that McGuire -- a former UnitedHealth Group CEO, lung doctor, philanthropist and butterfly expert -- was trading notes with St. Paul city planners and higher-ups in Coleman's administration long before the words "Major League Soccer" ever crossed the lips of some of the fine folks on the Minneapolis City Council.
A year and a half ago, McGuire's renderings for a soccer stadium on the vacant Metro Transit "bus barn" site off Interstate 94 called up the prospect of a 24,000 seat stadium (you read that right), 560 parking stalls, and 1 million square feet of housing and retail space (you read that right, too), as well as a 4.5 acre park.
More recently, McGuire has been talking to Minneapolis about a soccer stadium spanning 18,500 seats. In a one-sentence email to Coleman, McGuire re-shared his renderings with the mayor in May, following an informal chat: "Thanks for chatting today. Here are the rough concepts we created a year and a half ago. Bill."
Of course, you can't fit a stadium, 1 million square feet of residential and commercial space and a public park on Metro Transit's 10-acre parcel in St. Paul.
Discussions two years ago also included New York-based strip mall developer RK Midway, which owns a vacant 5-acre parcel next door to the Metro Transit property, and another 18 - 20 acres or so to the north -- the Midway Shopping Center. The two vacant sites together are bounded by Pascal and Snelling avenues to the east and west, and by Interstate 94/St. Anthony Avenue to the south and Midway Shopping Center to the north.
According to an internal memo from October 2013, RK Midway principal Rick Birdoff, owner of RD Management LLC, one of the largest shopping center developers in the country hired the Stantec engineering and consulting company to study the feasibility of redeveloping his entire shopping mall property.
Midway Shopping Center is anchored by Rainbow Foods, and also home to Office Max and Foot Locker. It's less of a strip mall than a giant circle of retail surrounding a sea of parking, and to the frustration of many at City Hall, it's not pedestrian-friendly or well-aligned with Metro Transit's Green Line light rail corridor.
A free-floating McDonald's, Perkins Restaurant and a Little Caesar's pizza shop front University Avenue to the north of the parking lot, and Rainbow Foods sits in the strip mall portion to the south. Also freestanding, Big Top Liquors is set back in a corner closer to Snelling Avenue.
Getting customers from the Rainbow (or from any of the retail, for that matter) to the nearest light rail stops at Snelling and Hamline requires wheeling shopping carts a good distance through parking and traffic like a giant game of chicken.
Redevelopment of all 35 acres -- the two vacant lots and the shopping center -- depended on finding the right developer, and discussions between St. Paul, Metro Transit, the Metropolitan Council and RK Midway basically hit a wall a year ago, despite St. Paul crafting an entire website dedicated to marketing the Snelling Avenue "SmartSite." Estimates for Coleman's stated vision -- a walkable urban village composed of parks, retail, offices and housing -- came back $30 million above what the private market would bear, according to consultant studies pursued by the Met Council.
With the Met Council still studying the market, the city's option to buy the vacant RK Midway lot came and went, closing without a deal.
At some point along the line, McGuire switched focus instead to Minneapolis, where reaction to the prospect of a Major League Soccer stadium appears mixed at best. Too much has been written about "stadium fatigue" to revisit here.
Back in St. Paul, internal discussions about where best to situate a soccer stadium reignited back in April, partially in reaction to public inquiry and media blogs.
On April 15, St. Paul Planning Director Jonathan Sage-Martinson emailed Coleman and the deputy mayor to indicate he had had "several people approach me about the possibility of a new soccer stadium being located in St. Paul (both a CM [council member] and a developer). I understand that you Mayor met with the owners a year or more ago and sent a pretty clear message. Let me know if anything has changed from your perspective."
(The council member is later described as Chris Tolbert and emails show the developer to be the Exeter Group).
In response to the planning director's email, Coleman on April 15 acknowledged from his iPhone that discussions with McGuire had previously fizzled, but that the mayor himself remains gung-ho...
"The message I have (for) them was 'hell yeah.' They don't seem interested in us -- just not that into us. Thought we could integrate them into the new Midway/bus barn site."
On May 15, St. Paul project manager Martin Schieckel sent an internal memo to Sage-Martinson and City Finance Director Todd Hurley informing them of ways in which the city could help make the "bus barn" site work, from rezoning to financial support through tax increment financing. Schieckel's five-point plan included having the city's Housing and Redevelopment Authority expand the city-owned Spruce Tree Centre parking ramp at University and Snelling avenues to 600 spaces.
How can St. Paul help pay for a professional soccer stadium? Funny you should ask… pic.twitter.com/pfQ3QCjWSJ
— FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) July 17, 2015
By June 1, however, McGuire had apparently read the writing on the wall in Minneapolis. Major League Soccer had given the city of Minneapolis until July 1 to have a stadium package in place, complete with tax breaks, but state lawmakers were unimpressed with the shotgun-style deadline and the Minneapolis City Council seemed equally in no rush. In fact, Minneapolis now plans to convene a working group in September, with a report due back before the end of the year.
In a June 1 email to St. Paul Deputy Mayor Kristin Beckmann, McGuire indicated he had already crafted a non-disclosure agreement with RK Midway over their site. It's unclear from the email if the non-disclosure agreement involves a potential sale or lease or co-development, and if so, of which parcel -- the shopping mall owner's vacant land or the entire strip mall to the north, or both.
McGuire wrote:
"We are still waiting on the requested documents and price expectations from RK Midway. ... Two discussions have taken place, a NDA was executed and we are reportedly to receive something today. Urgency seems to be lacking on their end, but we have advised them that seeing this piece now is essential."
McGuire and RK Midway go way back, sort of. McGuire, back in August 2013, had been talking to RK Midway's Birdoff about working together on making a redevelopment of the mall and vacant parcels happen.
The city had also discussed redevelopment of the Sears site near the State Capitol building with McGuire, but neither Sears nor McGuire seemed overly enthused.
In an April 2013 email from then-St. Paul Planning Director Cecile Bedor to then Deputy Mayor Paul Williams and others in her planning staff, Bedor said:
"Bill has not contacted the Sears folks ... said he wasn't too keen on this."
More recently, the Exeter Group -- a redevelopment group active in St. Paul -- broached the topic of situating the soccer stadium near University Avenue and Minnesota 280, which has plenty of underused warehouses and commercial buildings.
Also back in 2013, McGuire expressed interest in learning more about Ayd Mill Road, a major traffic corridor that has been the subject of constant public debate in terms of its future. The emails don't reveal much about the city's plans.
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