St. Paul’s newest neighborhood shows signs of life after years of debate and delay

When Ian Taggart decided to come back to Minnesota this summer after a decade moving across the country, he looked around the metro for a place to land.

Uptown? Too dead. Northeast Minneapolis? Too many partyers. Edina? Too stuffy.

Then Taggart and his girlfriend found a just-right place in Highland Bridge, the neighborhood starting to take shape on the site of St. Paul’s former Ford plant.

“The more time I’ve spent around here, the better it’s gotten,” Taggart said of his new neighborhood. “Now the hardest decision of my life is do I get a bike or an e-bike?”

Creating the neighborhood has taken 20 years since Ford Motor Co. announced they would stop building Ranger pickups in St. Paul and shut down the plant. Planning for the future of the 122-acre site took a contentious decade, with nearby Highland Park residents putting up yard signs for and against apartment buildings. In the end, the city and developer Ryan Cos. planned a “dense urban village,” in the parlance of St. Paul’s planners.

Eight years later, it’s starting to feel like a community is taking root in the development’s parks and in the senior living buildings, said DeAnne Parks and Craig Evans, who moved from another St. Paul neighborhood earlier this year.

“It’s fun walking around, because people actually like to talk,” Parks said on a recent afternoon stroll around the sidewalks near a pond at the center of the Highland Bridge area.

Within a couple weeks of moving in, Parks said she found a group of musicians to jam with, and she and Evans have settled into the routines of walking their two small dogs, Flossie and LadyBones, around the park. Both the dogs have taken to apartment living, Evans said — as has the couple.

“This is probably the best example of high-density housing we’ve seen,” Evans said.

“I’m glad they didn’t just let people come in and build houses,” Parks agreed.

Even on a warm summer afternoon, it can feel like there are more geese than people at the park that sits at the center of the new development. But there are signs of life and even flashes of vibrancy in the Highland Bridge neighborhood.

Shannon Johnsen and her boyfriend moved into another apartment in November, and loved how easy it has been to walk out the door to the dog park, or the trails near the Mississippi River, or to run errands at the nearby Lunds & Byerlys or shops on Cleveland and Ford Parkway.

Like Taggart, Johnsen said she liked being in the city while also feeling like there is plenty of open space, which she said has eased her transition to the metro area from northern Minnesota.

The dog park was a particular draw, and even inspired Johnsen to start a small business that opened in late June: an ice cream truck catering to canines and their humans, with dog-friendly flavors like pumpkin and chicken along with flavors for people, like a blueberry waffle cone.

A new pickleball court and a skate park that has been open for a few years have drawn residents from nearby neighborhoods, too.

For longer-tenured St. Paulites, it has been boggling to watch the townhouses, apartments, houses and parks spring up on the sprawling former factory site.

“It’s kind of strange, how it popped up over here,” said Zach Sabri, who bicycled from Merriam Park to the dog park with wife Shelley, toting their Pomeranian mix Mica in a backpack. “You drive through it and it doesn’t really fit in,” he said.

Andy Schultz, who lives in the Desnoyer Park neighborhood and brought his dog Nellie to the park, told the Sabris that he liked that it is possible to walk around the new development, unlike some sidewalk-less suburban subdivisions.

“I like that model,” he said.

Developer Ryan Cos. significantly backed off the density and mix of uses once planned for the area. The original master plan had included new office buildings, but those plans were scrapped, and some newer buildings include larger parking lots and fewer apartments than before the pandemic. Construction cost increases put a yearslong pause on development. Ryan also lobbied heavily to get new apartment buildings permanently exempted from St. Paul’s rent control ordinance.

Zach Sabri also wondered about the cost of the new homes, with townhouses now on the market for over $600,000.

“It’s good to build housing, but who can afford this?” he asked. “I always wonder what the target audience was for those things.”

Despite the construction setbacks and higher cost for the new dwellings, residents say they can see a real neighborhood taking hold.

“I think it’s starting,” Johnsen said. “I am curious to see what it’s going to look like in five years.”