Star Tribune
St. Cloud looks to Fargo for downtown revitalization inspiration
ST. CLOUD – Twenty-five years ago, downtown Fargo was a hodgepodge of half-filled office buildings, a few bars and crumbling parking lots along the city’s main drag.
“Broadway was just dead,” said Jim Gilmour, strategic planning director for Fargo, who started with the city in the mid-1990s. “There was no one there. You could probably shoot a cannon down the street and not hit anyone.”
But today, after a concerted effort by leaders to attract more than $500 million in public and private investments, the downtown core is bustling: It has an array of boutiques and one-of-a-kind restaurants. It has a historic theater and ambassadors who plant flowers, pick up trash and help visitors. It even has an ice skating rink, which was featured in a social media post shared by actress Alexandra Daddario on New Year’s Eve.
“It got 11 million views and 500,000 likes on TikTok,” said Rocky Schneider, who leads the Downtown Community Partnership in Fargo.
The North Dakota city’s success has garnered attention from national urbanists as a playbook for how to revitalize a downtown. And leaders in another Midwest city — St. Cloud — are trying to put that playbook into action right now.
“We’re essentially just kind of copying what Fargo did but at a little bit smaller scale,” said Greg Windfeldt, president of St. Cloud-based Preferred Credit, Inc. and head of a task force created by the mayor to help revamp the downtown.
So how did downtown Fargo reinvent itself to become a hotbed of Instagrammable activities? Leaders credit a long-range plan to bring people downtown to live in new apartments and condos, which then helped usher in other redevelopment.
St. Cloud looks to be Fargo 2.0
Windfeldt and a group of task force members visited Fargo last June to see its transformation. They left with serious Fargo envy — and a strategy to revitalize downtown St. Cloud with new housing and a plan to pay for beautification efforts.
St. Cloud’s downtown, just west of the Mississippi River, has several beloved local restaurants, a few bars that draw crowds in the evening and some small specialty shops. But it’s struggled in recent years, especially since the pandemic when many office workers went remote and some never returned.
Fargo has nearly double the population of St. Cloud, but the cities are similar in other ways as college towns, as well as a regional hubs for jobs, shopping and health care.
But downtown St. Cloud has a serious perception problem in the community, according to Windfeldt.
“When I’m out in the community, all I hear is, ‘Oh, I don’t go downtown. It’s not safe,'” he said. “It’s like we have this need to bad-mouth our community or bad-mouth our downtown. Well, that doesn’t do any good.”
Police Chief Jeff Oxton said downtown is not one of St. Cloud’s problem spots for crime.
Crime data shows no assaults, robberies or burglaries during the daytime and only a handful of calls for service beginning after 10 p.m. since the beginning of the year, Oxton said. Most calls for service are between midnight and 3:30 a.m., and are typically mutual fights after bar close.
“The types of crimes that typically worry people when you see what’s on the news in the downtown area of Minneapolis — robberies, carjackings, shootings — we have zeros in the downtown,” Oxton said of this year’s data.
Windfeldt has also found that residents aren’t aware of the positive changes downtown: In the past few years, more than 25 businesses have either moved into the downtown, moved locations or expanded. The city has also installed meters connected to kiosks or a mobile app to simplify parking, and made the parking ramps free in the evenings and on weekends.
The city has recently offered grants for downtown businesses to improve building exteriors and is requesting $100 million in bonding to improve pedestrian safety and walkability. But the downtown lacks housing, which is the key to bringing foot traffic downtown, according to Chris Leinberger, an urban strategist who spoke at a 2022 summit organized by St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis to spearhead revitalization efforts.
Kleis has said he hopes to add 1,000 downtown housing units in the next five years. It’s an aggressive goal — and takes a page from Fargo’s playbook — but it is in line with the community’s housing needs: A study recently released by the city estimates demand for more than 4,000 new general apartments and 1,500 new senior units by 2030.
Adding apartments and condos will help create an epicenter of activity that benefits the entire community, said Windfeldt, whose lending company is based in St. Cloud and wants the area to attract employees who might otherwise choose remote work.
“How do we get them to move to the community and be part of the community?,” he said. “I think a vibrant downtown helps with that.”
A ‘lesson in persistence’
Fargo’s downtown housing boom had a champion in former Mayor Bruce Furness, who was mayor from 1994-2006.
“The analogy he always used was if an apple is rotten at its core, then the rest of the city is going to be in poor shape,” said Gilmour, the city planning director.
Fargo leaders started by changing city ordinances to allow more housing downtown and changing a law to allow for new tax incentives for downtown redevelopment. Changed happened slowly, with Gilmour calling it a “lesson in persistence”: first 10 units in 2001, then 14 in 2004, and then a big project with 104 units completed in 2008. It kept going from there.
Altogether, more than 1,500 units have been added downtown through about 30 redevelopment projects totaling $234 million.
“Somebody kind of has to go first — take the risk — and then when they’re successful, other developers look at doing it,” Gilmour said.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was among the developers who invested in redevelopment projects. His company Kilbourne Group has completed five projects totaling $80 million since 2018 and currently has two projects under construction.
Fargo leaders also credit the city’s creation of a downtown business improvement district, which collects special property taxes to pay for beautification projects, enhanced snow removal and ambassadors who empty garbage cans and guide visitors.
“That’s helpful to have those boots on the ground,” Schneider said of the contracted employees who wear bright blue shirts and are easily identifiable. “You’re hiring good Samaritans to walk up and down the street and do all the things we all should do: If you see garbage, throw it away. They make it look like a place you want to be in.”
In St. Cloud, Windfeldt and other task force members are reaching out to downtown business owners, asking for support of a petition to implement a business improvement district like Fargo’s. He hopes to ask the City Council to create the district this summer and begin collecting taxes next year.
To help offset the assessments to property owners and jumpstart the hiring of ambassadors, task force members asked businesses, nonprofits and individuals from across the region to commit to donations over the next five years.
The response was overwhelming, Windfeldt said: “We went out and said a vibrant downtown really benefits all of central Minnesota. And in seven weeks, we raised $600,000.”
Star Tribune
Federal guilty plea outlines a rash of violent carjackings across Twin Cities since 2021
A 21-year-old St. Paul man linked to a vast spree of violent robberies and carjackings in the Twin Cities has now pleaded guilty to federal charges that also include possessing a stolen handgun.
Ricardo Rydell Walker, Jr. entered a guilty plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court that included admitting to stealing a sport-utility vehicle after striking the owner in the head with a handgun June 28, 2022. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Walker also admitted to aiding and abetting three other carjackings that took place between 2021 and June of this year — the latter taking place while Walker was in jail on his federal charges.
His convictions carry a maximum 15-year federal prison sentence, but prosecutors have agreed not to request a sentence above 6 1/2 years. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez has not yet scheduled a sentencing date.
A message seeking comment has been left with the federal defender representing Walker.
According to court records, Walker was arrested in Maplewood after police and Ramsey County deputies found him and his accomplices sleeping inside a different stolen car than the vehicle he carjacked six days earlier. Walker rammed a nearby squad car after being stirred awake and fled onto public roads before colliding with another vehicle. Police arrested Walker and others following a brief foot chase.
Police also found Walker in possession of a Springfield Armory Hellcat 9mm handgun. After tracing the firearm’s serial number, officers discovered that the gun had been reported stolen out of Minneapolis. Walker later told a detective that he bought the handgun from an unknown man in Minneapolis a day before his arrest.
Walker’s crime spree netted criminal charges in multiple counties before his case went federal. The June 2022 carjacking followed three violent robberies on June 28 that took place on the Augsburg and University of Minnesota campuses and at a West St. Paul apartment complex. According to charges, Walker and his accomplices pulled off another robbery in West St. Paul earlier on the morning of his eventual arrest.
Walker’s penchant for armed robbery began in February 2021, less than two months after he turned 18. Within a year, one criminal complaint read, officers said they were “well-acquainted” with Walker and at least one of his accomplices for “having been involved in numerous robberies/carjackings. [They] were known to display firearms and known to target expensive vehicles.”
NEW YORK — This Thanksgiving, solar storms may produce faint auroras across the northern rim of the United States.
Pale auroras may be seen across many northern states Thursday and Friday, but they may be brief and and seeing them will depend on how intense the solar storms get, NOAA meteorologist Mike Bettwy said in an email.
Much of the following states are best positioned for potential auroras: Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine. Northern parts of Idaho, Wyoming, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire may also see auroras.
Space weather experts say auroras could be visible from 10 p.m. EST Thursday to 1 a.m. Friday EST, though it’s difficult to pin down an exact window. Updated forecasts may be available as the event draws closer on NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center website or an aurora forecasting app.
To spy the spectacle, wait for clear skies to get dark and then go outside, ideally away from bright city lights. Taking a picture with a smartphone camera may also reveal hints of the aurora that aren’t visible to the naked eye.
The sun is currently at the maximum phase of its 11-year cycle, making solar surges and northern lights more frequent. Earlier this week, the sun shot a pulse of high-energy plasma towards Earth.
The active period is expected to last for at least another year, though scientists won’t know when solar activity peaked until months after the fact, according to NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Experts don’t expect major communication disruptions from this week’s solar storm.
Officials on Wednesday publicly identified the man who was fatally shot outside a Minneapolis gas station this week.
Hussanee Abdul-Malik Harris, 23, of Minneapolis, was shot in the back Monday at the Full Stop Gas & Food at 1818 Lowry Av. N. and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
Police said no arrests have been made as of Wednesday afternoon in connection with this homicide.
The shooting occurred about 11:45 a.m., when someone approached Harris, words were exchanged and gunfire erupted, police said.
This block in the Jordan neighborhood has earned a reputation for drug dealing, prostitution and, occasionally, gunfire in recent years — with neighbors singling out the gas station on the corner as a longtime magnet for trouble.
Police calls to the business number in the hundreds since Jan. 1, records show, mainly for directed patrols, various disturbances and drug activity. But officers have also responded at least 15 times to reports of a person with a firearm, shots fired calls, assaults and robberies on the property this year.
In 2020, a teenager was killed and another person wounded when a dispute between two groups escalated into gunfire. A few weeks earlier, a 48-year-old man died after being shot while sitting inside a car near N. Logan and Lowry avenues.
The previous year, 16-year-old Caleb Livingston suffered permanent paralysis and was left in a near-vegetative state after being shot in the head while on a quick detour at the Full Stop to fill his gas tank. The boy was in Minneapolis, visiting from Illinois, when a brief confrontation erupted near the pumps.
