Together ALL NOW

By Vicki Johnson

What once was considered by some to be a place for college-aged adults to party is experiencing a rebirth. No longer defined by its stereotypes, downtown St. Cloud is enjoying a resurgence in arts, culture, fine dining, hospitality, and commercial businesses.

Drive down East St. Germain Street or walk along Fifth Avenue, and it’s almost as if the vibe of the downtown region – geographically defined from St. Cloud State University to St. Cloud Hospital and U.S. Highway 10 to Cooper Avenue – is palpable. It is a breath of fresh air that both the city and the greater St. Cloud region is welcoming with open arms. And it is starting to gain the attention of residents and business owners alike.

“Buildings that I would have anticipated staying vacant for long periods of time, the Netgain building, the Aria building, aren’t sitting on the market for very long,” said Doug Boser, president and CEO of St. Cloud-based Inventure Properties. “There really aren’t a lot of buildings left open.”

Within the past year, several new businesses have opened in downtown St. Cloud including Iron Street Distillery and Blue Goose Speakeasy. New businesses and attractions such as Oblivion CoffeeBar & Mercantile, Tequila Town, The Boil, and Great River Children’s Museum are also slated to call downtown St. Cloud home within the next 18 months.

Coupled with the city’s commitment to pursuing a $100 million bonding request from the Minnesota Legislature in 2024, downtown’s postCOVID story of revival and reinvestment is just getting started. “Our commitment to downtown is very strong,” said St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis. “It is absolutely critical for the region to have a healthy, vibrant, and safe downtown.”

Building A Sustainable Future

For years, the focus on building a sustainable downtown – at least from a city planning perspective –was to attract office workers. More people working downtown meant more people going out to lunch at local restaurants and shopping at local retailers, which ultimately resulted in a strong, vibrant downtown. However, several major events during the past five years really challenged that assumption, according to Cathy Mehelich, St. Cloud economic development director. “We had the loss of Herberger’s in 2018. That was a huge retail anchor. Then in

2020 we had the Press Bar fire that impacted that whole block of Fifth Avenue. And of course, COVID.”

Mehelich said downtown’s survival during the pandemic was due in large part to the strength of the small business community. However, battle scars are still present.

While large employers like Capital One and Stearns County – both of which have significant footprints downtown – have seen some of their workforce return to the office since the height of the pandemic, Kleis said those numbers are still not where they once were. “It doesn’t seem like these employers will be fully reverting back,” Kleis said. “So, if we don’t have the employees downtown like we use to, it was clear to us that if downtown was going to thrive, we needed to do something different.”

In December 2022, city leaders hosted a summit on the future of downtown. There, Kleis announced the city’s “bold and aggressive plans” to revitalize the area, including creating a taskforce. Part of the goal with the taskforce, Kleis said, was to put together a bonding proposal focused on walkability and connectivity, redeveloping several existing buildings, and repurposing and redeveloping several parking lots. But the immediate purpose of this proposal is to develop market rate housing within the downtown area. “We want to bring 1,000 housing units to the downtown area within the next five years,” he said.

According to Kleis and Mehelich, having residents live downtown will begin a ripple effect of positive changes, which ideally will manifest itself into substantial public as well as private investment. “We need to bring people downtown,” Kleis said. “Communities that prioritized housing in their downtowns, like Fargo for example, have been very successful, especially during COVID.”

Mehelich agrees. “Offices will not lead the growth in the downtown. Housing will,” she said.

Private Investment

With city officials turning their primary focus to bringing marketrate housing options to the downtown area, the small business community is currently leading the charge on shaping the downtown as a destination hotspot. “Without a strong downtown, there really isn’t much of a city,” said Ray Herrington. “And the only way to ensure a vibrant and fruitful downtown is to make sure there is enough to do.”

Herrington is no stranger to the downtown St. Cloud business scene, owning both 7 West TapHouse and Pioneer Place on Fifth. In addition, he recently opened Blue Goose, a speakeasy on Fifth Avenue.

As owner of Pioneer Place, Herrington said it was hard to sustain the historic theater by relying solely on live shows. And with the growing popularity of speakeasies in places like the Twin Cities and Stillwater, Herrington thought Blue Goose would be a welcomed attraction to the region. “To me, Blue Goose was a missing piece of the puzzle,” he said. “It was something that we didn’t have that others did.”

Across the river, John Martens also felt it important to bring something new to St. Cloud. Together with business partner Kevin Johnson, Martens recently opened Iron Street Distillery in the historic 539 building on East St. Germain Street. “When I began talks with Kevin, we felt that we didn’t want to just bring another brewery to the area,” Martens said. “We wanted to do something different. We wanted to be the first distillery in St. Cloud.”

Specializing in custom madefrom-scratch cocktails crafted with distilled-onsite spirits, Iron Street, along with its upstairs neighbor Harvester Square event center, is seeking to redefine the East Side. “One of the biggest challenges we face is the perceived reputation of the East Side,” Martens said. He hopes the presence of the new business will be just the boost the eastern side of downtown needs. “If people see that we [Iron Street Distillery] are having success, they might want to put down their roots here, too,” Martens said. “Success breeds success. And if people are coming here and seeing what we are doing, it just opens up more opportunities for this corridor.”

Pillars Of Success

Whether the lead for the downtown revitalization and reinvestment effort comes from the city or the business community, both can agree that for this to work, there needs to be action on both fronts. Bridging that gap is the Downtown Alliance.

Lead by Board Chair Bob Johnson, recently retired executive director of the Paramount Center for the Arts, the Downtown Alliance has outlined three pillars to assist in supporting both the city’s and the business community’s short-term goals and long-term visions: Safety and Perception, Occupancy; and Experience. Each pillar has both quick wins, but also strategies for longterm growth and development for

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What began with the Downtown Summit in December 2022 is driving rapid change in downtown St. Cloud from a central hub struggling through a pandemic to a thriving urban core centered on walkability.

250 people gathered at the summit at the River’s Edge Convention Center to learn about trends from Chris Leinberger, a top urbanist in the country, and the vision of Mayor Dave Kleis for downtown St. Cloud, both east and west of the river. The Mayor’s Downtown Taskforce has been busy finding funding and turning it into meaningful projects designed to build a downtown where business and housing thrive.