Star Tribune
Former casket factory on St. Paul’s University Avenue gets new life as affordable housing
For years, Fiona Eustathiades has driven past the striking building on St. Paul’s University Avenue with the clock tower, wishing she had several million dollars to turn it into low-income housing.
Soon, she’ll live there. Eustathiades, 65, got the keys to her sunny one-bedroom apartment with high ceilings and big windows in February. She is in the process of moving in as she looks to downsize to an affordable place as she plans for retirement from a job working with people with developmental disabilities. As a bonus, the apartment is a short walk away from her job and is near where her mother, who she cares for, lives.
When she and her mom — both fans of old houses — toured the apartment, “we walked into the apartment and were like, ‘whoa this is nice,'” she said. “You don’t get apartments with big windows and light — especially in low-income.”
The modern Gothic-style building, which turned 100 last year and is on the National Register of Historic Places, recently opened as Twelve22 Living, an apartment building with 55 income-limited affordable housing units. St. Paul developer J.B. Vang extensively renovated the building — a casket factory in its first life and offices and warehousing later on — into one and two-bedroom apartments.
Twelve22 was the first project to receive aid from a St. Paul fund designed to help build deeply affordable housing, as defined under federal housing standards at 30% or less of area median income. It also received support from state and federal historic tax credits, low-income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bonds and tax increment financing from the city, among other sources, said Ashley Bisner, senior development manager at J.B. Vang.
“When we say affordable housing, we don’t mean cheap housing.” St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the building in January, praising the finishes in the apartments and wide hallways. “This is a place where neighbors in our community can afford to live with dignity.”
Fifteen of the units are considered affordable for people at 30% of area median income, with rent between $665 and $785 per month. Forty units considered affordable at 60% of area median income rent for between $1,365 and $1,624. J.B. Vang has agreed to keep the units affordable for 50 years.
In St. Paul, there are fewer than 14,000 units of housing considered affordable at 30% or less of the area median income — and most of them aren’t income-restricted, meaning people in higher income brackets may live in them, said Tara Beard, St. Paul’s housing director. Meanwhile, there are about 27,000 families in the city who make 30% of the area median income or less. The shortage of units at 60% of area median income is only somewhat less dire. Additionally, Beard noted what’s defined as area median income is based on the broader metro area, not just St. Paul, where median incomes are significantly lower.
“What is especially fantastic about this project is that it’s all affordable, but at very different levels,” Beard said. That helps toward the city’s goals of building more deeply affordable housing in mixed income buildings and neighborhoods.
The St. Paul Casket Company built the factory and showroom in 1922-23, according National Historic Register nomination materials. The company had outgrown its North St. Paul location as increasing professionalization in the funeral industry created demand for professionally made caskets.
Instead of building a sprawling site, the casket company made use of available space in a “vertical urban factory” model, the application says, using different floors of the building for different parts of the manufacturing process, culminating in a showroom on the second floor. The building’s later uses include Snyder Drug and Landfill Books and Music.
Many aspects of the building’s original architecture, including a staircase with wrought-iron, as well as ornate plaster work, have been restored and kept in place. Others, like the old freight elevator gate, are on display elsewhere in the building. The clock in the tower has been refurbished, too.
Because the building was rehabilitated with state historic preservation tax credits, developers had to preserve characteristics of the original structure, Bisner said. Some apartments located in the building’s former casket showroom include terrazzo floors; others, wall cutouts that highlight the building’s mushroom-shaped columns, a hallmark of industrial buildings of the era.
“Each one’s a little bit quirky and has their own differences,” said Gene McClurg, regional manager Premier Housing Management, the property manager.
Interest in the building’s apartments has been high, Bisner said. The company received about 400 applications to live at Twelve22 just after the leasing process opened.
Kori Scott found Twelve22 on HousingLink, a local affordable housing website. She applied, and she and her young daughter moved into Twelve22 in January. Scott said there’s much to love about their new apartment, including an in-unit washer and dryer, a grocery store in walking distance and thick walls that dampen almost any sound coming from University Avenue.
“All the exposed brick,” she said. “I just love it.”
Star Tribune
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
NOVI, Mich. — Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.
”I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is ”great,” but he thinks it ”needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the ”whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump’s stop in Novi, after an event Friday night in Traverse City, is a sign of Michigan’s importance in the tight race. Harris is scheduled for a rally in Kalamazoo later Saturday with former first lady Michelle Obama on the first day that early in-person voting becomes available across Michigan. More than 1.4 million ballots have already been submitted, representing 20% of registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it four years later.
Michigan is home to major car companies and the nation’s largest concentration of members of the United Auto Workers. It also has a significant Arab American population, and many have been frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters ”could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. ”We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.
Star Tribune
‘Take our lives seriously,’ Michelle Obama pleads as she rallies for Kamala Harris in Michigan
”We are looking at a health care crisis in America that is affecting people of every background and gender,” Harris told reporters before visiting the doctor’s office.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden went to a union hall in Pittsburgh to promote Harris’ support for organized labor, telling the audience to ”follow your gut” and ”do what’s right.”
Harris appeared with Beyoncé on Friday in Houston, and she campaigned with former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen on Thursday in Atlanta.
It’s a level of celebrity clout that surpasses anything that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has been able to marshal this year. But there’s no guarantee that will help Harris in the close race for the White House. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost to Trump despite firing up her crowds with musical performances and Democratic allies.
Trump brushed off Harris’ attempt to harness star power for her campaign.
”Kamala is at a dance party with Beyoncé,” the former president said Friday in Traverse City, Michigan. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is scheduled to hold a rally in Novi, a suburb of Detroit, on Saturday before a later event in State College, Pennsylvania.
Tired of hearing about north Minneapolis kids having to go trick-or-treating in the suburbs, business owner KB Brown started throwing a costume bash at the Capri Theater with the goal of bringing together families and the organizations that care for them.
Now in its fourth year, that Halloween party has become a stone soup of community organizations cooking out, roller skating and giving away tote bags of candy to tiny superheroes and princesses.
Elected officials, including state Rep. Esther Agbaje, DFL-Minneapolis, and Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde, dropped in on the festivities Saturday to get out the vote in the final stretch of door-knocking season. KMOJ’s Q Bear DJed the party.
KB Brown and his grandson Zakari, 3. Brown founded Project Refocus, a nonprofit dealing with youth mentorship, security along the West Broadway business corridor and opioid response in the surrounding neighborhoods. (Susan Du/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Farji Shaheer of Innovative SOULutions provided a bounce house and inflatable basketball hoops. A violence intervention professional who offers community training on treating traumatic bleeding, Shaheer recently purchased land in Bemidji to redevelop into a retreat center for gun violence survivors.
He in turn invited Santella Williams and Dominque Howard to bring Pull and Pay, a former Metro Mobility bus retrofitted as a mobile arcade full of vintage games such as “NBA Jam” and “Big Buck Hunter.” The bus was a pandemic epiphany for Williams and fiancé Howard when they suddenly found themselves with four kids and nowhere to take them after COVID-19 shut everything down. Pull and Pay now shows up to community events throughout the North Side.
Pull and Pay owner Dominique Howard showed kids, squeezed elbow to elbow, how to play “Big Buck Hunter” inside his homebuilt mobile arcade. (Susan Du/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“This is the first time I’ve been able to come through, but we figured we’d stop by check it out. It’s so perfect, and such a beautiful day,” said Shannon Tekle, a Northside Economic Opportunity Network board member attending with her two-year daughter, both of them dressed as monarch butterflies.
“North Side, we’re a big family,” said Brown, proudly toting his grandson Zakari (a 3-year-old Chucky with candy-smeared cheeks) on one arm. “Everybody here is from the community.”
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
‘Take our lives seriously,’ Michelle Obama pleads as she rallies for Kamala Harris in Michigan
North Minneapolis Halloween party for kids brings families together
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
‘Take our lives seriously,’ Michelle Obama pleads as she rallies for Kamala Harris in Michigan