St. Paul zoning board challenges developer to make former Ford plant complex denser

St. Paul’s Board of Zoning Appeals has denied two requests from Minneapolis-based developer Ryan Companies to build one-story commercial buildings on a slice of the Highland Bridge development, challenging the developers to build taller buildings with more apartments.

Ryan Companies on Monday was denied zoning variances that would have let the company to build smaller one-story commercial buildings in two lots at Cretin Avenue and Ford Parkway instead of three- and four-story buildings with both commercial space and apartments. Some zoning board members said the resulting buildings would feel like a strip mall, not the urban, walkable neighborhood the city wants to create at the former Ford plant site along the river.

“The end result is short buildings, low density and a lot of parking, which I’m not sure is part of anybody’s master plan,” board Chair Daniel Miller said.

Maureen Michalski, senior vice president of real estate development with Ryan, said the company disagrees with the board and plans to appeal. The changes did not take the development too far from the city’s plans and earlier proposals from the company, she said.

Where the initial proposal called for 287 apartments, Michalski said, the revised plan now calls for 222. Instead of 100,000 square feet of commercial space, now there will be only 75,000 square feet.

“Overall the intent is the same,” she said. “The overall Highland Bridge is the same.”

The 122-acre Highland Bridge site along the Mississippi has been inching toward development for the last decade, after Ford closed its factory in 2011, cleared the land and addressed pollution that remained after some 90 years of making cars and pickups. Ford picked Ryan Companies to redevelop the site in 2018.

Before development began, St. Paul undertook a yearslong planning process before the city approved zoning and street layouts.

“The plan calls for no short buildings,” Board Member Christian Schweitzer said. “They just don’t even attempt to meet the density requirements.”

Business and economic headwinds may be making this development challenging, he said, but Schweitzer said it should be up to the City Council to make the higher densities viable — either with policy changes or subsidies — or decide the new neighborhood should be less dense than hoped.

Over the summer, Ryan Companies asked St. Paul for $18.6 million to subsidize this part of the development, on top of $53 million in tax-increment financing used to build infrastructure across the site.

St. Paul’s rent control ordinance would not impact any new construction for the first 20 years of its existence: That is, a building that opened today would not be subject to rent control’s 3%-per-year limit on rent increases until 2045. Mayor Melvin Carter has proposed no rent control for any buildings built after 2004, but the City Council has yet to take up that policy.

Zoning board Vice Chair Jerome Benner II said he wanted to see work start again at Highland Bridge, and if this is what the developers can make work, he would support the variances. Board Member Marilyn Porter agreed, but four other members outvoted them, denying the variances.

Michalski said after the meeting that Ryan will appeal the decision.

“Since we signed that redevelopment agreement in 2019, we’ve had black-swan type of events,” Michalski said, citing the pandemic and its lingering effects.

“We’ve brought forth several iterations of this plan and none of them have been able to work on this block.”