Four-story luxury building on the St. Paul river bluff would displace some moderate-income renters
After her divorce, Emilie Libson lived for a while in her uncle’s basement before lucking out this summer on a large one-bedroom apartment overlooking the Mississippi River in St. Paul. Her sizable find rents for $850 per month with a garage included, which falls well below the citywide median price for a one-bedroom, which is $995 according to the listing service HousingLink.
“I wouldn’t be able to live on my own without this opportunity,” said Libson, 40, who was happy to join the small, close-knit community of renters in the 15-unit apartment building at 706 S. Mississippi River Blvd. in Highland Park. “On my salary, I can’t afford a rent much higher than this.”
However, Paster Properties, which has owned the Doneda Apartments for decades, has made clear that it plans to tear down the three-story structure this year, as well as the shuttered First Church of Christ Scientist building next door on Highland Avenue, and replace them with a single luxury apartment building spanning 93 units.
Revised site plans for a new four-story building were submitted to the city of St. Paul in October. About a third of the Doneda Apartments tenants have already moved out, though Libson said at least two people moved into the building after her. Most, if not all tenants, are on month-to-month leases.
“The people who are still here don’t know what we are going to do,” she said. “I had a conversation with a woman I had just met. I have some prospects, but it sounds like they’re really going to struggle. They have two children and they’re a young East African family working hard.”
City reviewing updated plans
The fate of the Doneda Apartments has underscored tensions and fault lines among housing advocates and other stakeholders in a debate over how best to house low-to-middle-income residents while expanding the city’s tax base.
Now add to that the question of respecting the riverfront character of a capital city that dubs itself “the most livable city in America” but is losing some of its lowest-priced housing to redevelopment generally aimed at wealthier tenants.
The city of St. Paul may be weeks away from approving a series of state-driven zoning regulations that would limit building heights along the Mississippi River bluffs to 35 feet in most areas outside of downtown, but those new rules would not apply to the Paster Properties project, as a preliminary site plan was submitted to the city last June under the existing river corridor zoning rules.
The city granted the site plan conditional approval in August, and city staff are currently reviewing updated plans.
Greater housing density
Efforts to reach a representative of Paster Properties for comment were unsuccessful, but some area residents have celebrated the arrival of greater housing density in Highland Park, home to many of the larger single-family homes in the city.
Less than a mile away from the Doneda Apartments, some 3,800 housing units — mostly but not exclusively multi-family apartment buildings — are planned at the 122-acre Highland Bridge development, the former site of the Ford Motor Co.’s Twin Cities Assembly Plant.
The logic goes that even a pricey new luxury unit takes some pressure off the housing market by providing options for high-end renters who might otherwise displace middle-income renters.
That’s slim consolation to the Doneda Apartments’ existing tenants, who are sure to be displaced during construction. Several declined to be interviewed on the record, noting their month-to-month leases leave their housing situation precarious.
“It’s disrupting peoples lives,” said a longtime tenant, interviewed in September cleaning out his garage. The tenant, who declined to be identified, said he and his wife pay $1,500 per month for some 1,900 square feet of living space.
While increased housing density can improve options for many renters, the new units replacing the Doneda Apartments aren’t likely to be affordable to existing residents like Libson, who have come to rely on what’s known in the housing industry as “naturally occurring affordable housing,” or NOAH units.
Scarce commodity
An increasingly scarce commodity, NOAH units are privately owned and unsubsidized but remain relatively affordable simply as a result of their age or limited upkeep.
They’ve become prime targets for redevelopment into high-end units in hot housing markets like Denver, Seattle and the Twin Cities.
HousingLink, which tracks affordable housing availability, chronicled some 519 vacancies in NOAH units in St. Paul as of November, roughly double from a year prior. The affordable housing listing and data service attributed most of the increase to federal definitions of affordability, which have gone up with inflation and overall incomes.
By that definition, in the Twin Cities metro, a two-bedroom unit that rents for $1,584 is technically considered affordable to a family earning 60 percent of area median income, or no more than $70,380.
Neighbors rally for aesthetics, bald eagles
While acknowledging the plight of some existing tenants, immediate neighbors have rallied against the proposed luxury building for other reasons. They’ve called the future building too tall for the riverfront, even though it sits directly across Highland Parkway from 740 River Drive, a 163-unit, 23-story apartment tower dating to 1961.
“Our biggest concern is the height of the building,” said Kurt Klussendorf, a resident of a one-story single-family home on Woodlawn Avenue. “It doesn’t seem like it’s the right thing to do. In the next few months, the maximum height is going to be 35 feet, so I don’t think it’s right it’s going to be 50 feet tall.”
Klussendorf and other homeowners attempted to petition the state’s Environmental Quality Board last year citing concern for their river views, potential impacts on wildlife, groundwater runoff during construction, two nearby bald eagle nests and what they’ve deemed the need for further environmental assessment.
The EQB Board notified him in late October that the project is allowable under existing zoning and they would not be moving forward with a further review.
Residents have asked for the height to be lowered and for construction to respect a band of mature trees situated behind the building. They’ve also asked that a series of balconies situated in renderings on the east end of the structure be relocated to the west end, away from their backyards.
“It’s not in my backyard, because it’s in everybody’s backyard,” said Tom Romans, who joined fellow neighbors on the lawn of the Doneda Apartments last September to highlight concerns. “We are sitting at the edge of a nationally-recognized resource, the Mississippi River, and it’s been designated as such.”
Even the opponents have acknowledged that the luxury building needs no special variances and is not relying on public subsidy, which limits public review.
The St. Paul Planning Commission has scheduled a public hearing for Jan. 20 on the “Mississippi River Corridor and Floodplain Overlay Zoning Amendments,” which would separate the riverfront into six new overlay zoning districts. The districts would set real estate development standards for river and bluff setback requirements, height restrictions and protection of river corridor views from public parks and parkways, as well as exterior lighting and bird-safe glass. Looser standards would apply downtown.
