Star Tribune
Owner of Burger Moe’s wants to tear down St. Paul’s historic Justus Ramsey house
The Justus Ramsey House, built in 1852, sits on the patio of Burger Moe’s on W. 7th Street in St. Paul.
It’s one of the oldest houses in the city and the oldest surviving limestone house from St. Paul’s pioneer era, and it’s listed on three historic registers — including the National Register of Historic Places.
But recent damage has prompted the stone cottage’s owner to seek its demolition.
Neighbors say the owner apparently wants to add more tables to his patio.
“That’s what Moe always says,” said Dave Thune, a longtime area resident and business owner. ” ‘I could get four more tables in there.’ “
Contacted by phone Friday, Burger Moe’s owner Mojtaba Sharifkhani — who uses the name Moe Sharif — was asked why he applied to knock down St. Paul’s oldest stone house.
“I’m not in position to talk about it,” he said.
Asked if he would be willing to sit down and discuss it later, he said, “I don’t need to talk to you.” When asked for the name of his attorney or representative, Sharifkhani said, “No.”
“Moe’s been wanting to get it out of there for eight years,” said Thune, the area’s former City Council member. “He’s been asking me, and I have been saying, ‘Moe, this is an incredible asset. This could be a wedding chapel.’ “
Thune added: “He just doesn’t see it as an option for him. It’s hard to keep a building upright if the owner doesn’t want it.”
Sharifkhani’s move to raze the 16.5-by-34-foot cottage has mobilized preservationists to save another historic building in city’s most historic neighborhood, said Tom Schroeder, an attorney and area resident. The Historic Irvine Park Association, Historic Saint Paul, the Little Bohemia Neighborhood Association and the West 7th/Fort Road Federation have joined in the effort.
Schroeder said preservationists filed an emergency petition with the state Environmental Quality Board for an environmental assessment in order to “stop the clock” on demolition. It was accepted for review.
Because the Justus Ramsey House is a local Heritage Preservation site — on the state and national historic registers — demolition permits must go to the Heritage Preservation Commission for review and approval.
A hearing before the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission has been scheduled for Nov. 7.
Questions about damage
According to Crystal King, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections, Sharifkhani submitted a standard demolition application on June 29. DSI inspectors wrote condemnation orders on Sept. 21 and Oct. 10.
“This means that the house and the patio cannot be occupied,” King wrote in an email.
Schroeder, who owns the historic Waldmann Brewery nearby, and Jim Sazevich say they wonder how such a historic building so quickly came to warrant demolition.
One of five surviving pioneer stone houses in St. Paul — a list that includes Waldmann — the Justus Ramsey House has been extensively reviewed and inspected over the years, Schroeder said. As recently as 2015, it was in “perfect condition.” Now, there is a hole in the roof, the interior has been damaged, and part of an exterior stone wall has collapsed.
Sazevich, a historian with an encyclopedic knowledge of St. Paul’s oldest houses, said he’s known Sharifkhani from when he was “slinging hash” at the diner across the street from Burger Moe’s. That diner is now the Downtowner — also owned by Sharifkhani.
The little cottage is an aggravation, Sazevich said.
“He came to me and said he wanted to tear it down or change it to better serve him,” Sazevich said.
As the owner of an historic property, Sharifkhani should have been required by the city to keep it in good repair, Schroeder said. He wonders why that didn’t happen.
“That’s a great question,” Schroeder said, adding he is required to do so for Waldmann.
Schroeder and others are raising the alarm on a fellow business owner because they say preserving even a few historic sites enriches the entire community.
“I don’t know Moe very well, but I know him enough to know he’s a good person,” he said. “His values may not lie in preservation. Clearly not. I mean, he’s applied for a demolition permit for this structure.”
What now?
In an email, a spokesman for Mayor Melvin Carter wrote that “the mayor is aware of the issue and is monitoring with city staff.”
City Council Member Rebecca Noecker, who represents the area, helped broker a deal in 2016 that saved St. Paul’s Hope Engine Co. No. 3 fire station from being razed. It is now the Hope Breakfast Bar. Preservationists have asked Noecker to intercede again.
“I’ve heard a lot of concern from the community, from neighbors. I’m working to slow [demolition] down,” Noecker said. “Often, we can find more creative solutions than it originally appears.”
She pushed for an independent review of the structure, which has been cordoned off to keep the public away. The cottage’s future, she said, is likely somewhere else.
“Everybody agrees this isn’t the best location,” Noecker said.
Neighbors have suggested moving it to other sites, including several vacant lots in the area or to open space near Keg & Case Market, on the grounds of the former Schmidt Brewery. A meeting is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at Waldmann to discuss alternatives.
Has she heard from the mayor’s office?
“I have heard nothing from the mayor so far,” Noecker said.
The small house was built in 1852 for Justus C. Ramsey, brother of Alexander Ramsey, who owned the property jointly with Alexander and others from 1849 to 1852, according to Sazevich. The first known resident was Robert A. Smith in 1853. Smith would later become St. Paul’s longest-serving mayor.
His mother, a white German Catholic and one of seven kids raised in Frogtown, was the chief soloist at the St. Paul Cathedral, believed in social justice, helping the homeless and regularly took Williams and his three siblings to war protests and civil rights marches. She was a force, friends said, noting that for years she helped lead the Model Cities health care nonprofit that serves 1,200 Ramsey County families.
Williams’ father, Charles, the oldest of 10 children, became one of the few Black attorneys in St. Paul at the time. Charles, now 94, first served as a Ramsey County public defender and spent the last 20 years of his career as Ramsey County Family Court referee.
The Williams branch migrated to Minnesota from Topeka, Kan., in the 1920s and settled in Rondo. His grandfather founded the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.
“They ran restaurants and stuff on University Avenue and were all very active in community,” Williams said. “They weren’t rich, but they were hardworking, prosperous people who cared about the community.”
Charles H. Williams Jr., 94, raises a glass to toast his son Paul Williams during a farewell party for Williams Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024 at the Machine Shop in Minneapolis, Minn. Williams is the iconic 10-year leader of affordable housing giant Project For Pride In Living, the former deputy mayor of St. Paul and the former head of LISC Twin Cities. ] AARON LAVINSKY • aaron.lavinsky@startribune.com (Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Williams ended up serving as deputy mayor to Chris Coleman, current head of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. The two become friends in second grade at St. Luke’s Elementary School.
“He was a kid of color in a very white grade school. He and his cousin were one of only a handful of students of color in the school,” Coleman said.
Never in a million years did Christina Snaza imagine she would move to Wisconsin.
A native Minnesotan whose phone still sports the 218 area code of the state’s northern half, Snaza and her husband were drawn across the St. Croix River three years ago from their home in Oakdale when they learned how affordable and convenient it would be to move to Somerset, Wis.
“We still call ourselves Minnesotans,” said Snaza, who now has a Wisconsin-born toddler.
Whether by happenstance or by design, thousands have made the same move into western Wisconsin since the four-lane St. Croix Crossing Bridge opened in 2017 and slashed commute times to the Twin Cities and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The rural hamlet of Roberts has grown 20% since the bridge opened, with some of its 2,100 residents moving into a subdivision jokingly referred to as “Little Woodbury.” Vikings flags snap in the breeze outside homes in the Somerset neighborhood of River Hills. And at Sweet Beet Bakery in New Richmond, owner Ashley Adkison says she has house hunters stopping in every Saturday to pick up tips on the local schools as well as some of her fresh-baked “Croixnuts” pastries. “They ask ‘Is everything open all week?’ ” she said, the city residents trying to prep for life in a small town.
The residential boom has made St. Croix County the fastest-growing county in Wisconsin. The bridge opening was like a “green light switch went on,” said Rob Kreibich, the president and CEO of the New Richmond Chamber of Commerce and a recently elected Republican member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.
Less crime, lower taxes and a small-town feel all play a part in drawing folks out of the Twin Cities, he said. Some new arrivals are looking for a place to start a family, but plenty of retirees or near-retirees have come as well, some citing lower sales tax or the absence of state tax on Social Security income as a factor. For others, a move to New Richmond has meant being closer to their up-north cabin.
Realtor Gina Moe-Knutson said some town councils have courted the growth while others were reluctant to let go of their rural identity. The first locale across the bridge, St. Joseph Township, has seen modest growth of 8% since the bridge opening, while it’s 19% in New Richmond. The city invested in infrastructure 25 years ago, said former director of planning and development Robert Barbian, building out water and sewer connections and plotting roads across farm fields as adjacent township land was annexed into the city for developments that became Waters Edge, Fox Run, Whispering Pines, and Gloverdale. The result is the city’s footprint has grown from 6,183 acres in 2015 to 7,674 acres today, said New Richmond City Administrator Noah Wiedenfeld.
“We looked ahead quite a few leaps,” Barbian said.
The trees in your city look different when you’re the one planting them.
It’s work that doesn’t stop when the snow flies and the ground is too cold to dig. So on a frigid December afternoon, Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway echoed with the buzz of chain saws and the creak of timbers as a Tree Trust crew pruned the trees and brush, cut back invasive species and freed saplings from strangling vines. All the hard jobs it takes to keep the metro evergreen.
Caring for an urban forest means taking care to train the next generation of skilled workers who are drawn to hard, rewarding jobs out in the cold and the heat and the rain.
“A program like this really changes how you view the outdoors,” said arborist-in-training Gianna Broadhead, taking a break from stacking logs taller than herself in tidy piles beside the greenway. She lives near the Mississippi River and now, when she walks by its banks, she can identify trees on sight, spot the invasive species and marvel at the old-growth giants.
Broadhead and her teammates are in the final weeks of Tree Trust’s Branches program — a 10-week paid apprenticeship in tree care and landscaping, under the supervision of experienced staff.
This has been Tree Trust’s dual mission since the nonprofit was founded almost 50 years ago. Minneapolis neighborhoods, decimated by Dutch elm disease, needed trees. The city’s teens and young adults needed work.
Antonio Juarez, a Branches trainer with Tree Trust, waits for a cyclist to pass before crossing the path while cleaning up trees and vines along the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis on Dec. 10, 2024. (Leila Navidi)
The idea of an office job didn’t appeal to Broadhead, but Tree Trust’s mission statement did: transforming lives and landscapes.
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