Star Tribune
Carol Carey fought the wrecking ball in St. Paul. She won, a hundred times.
Often, historic preservation focuses on saving from demolition the grand, stately properties of the long-ago elite. To Carol Carey, preserving history also meant infusing new life into scores of St. Paul’s working-class houses and storefronts, one humble address at a time.
From Dayton’s Bluff to W. 7th, Frogtown to Payne-Phalen, Carey’s work at the helm of Historic St. Paul focused on resurrecting old houses into new affordable housing in some of the capital city’s oldest neighborhoods. After 20 years leading non-profit Historic St. Paul, Carey is retiring.
“Her work was not just about preserving properties. She has rekindled the history of the working-class families that made Frogtown what it is,” said Caty Royce, co-director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association.
Jim Sazevich, a St. Paul housing historian who credits Carey for helping save his family’s home in Frogtown, said such properties are often overlooked. Not on Carey’s watch.
“She sees the potential in so many of the ugly ducklings. Preserving working family homes is important because that is OUR history, our immigrant history,” he said. “She always had the ability to see the big picture.”
Carey has no training in preservation or development, she said. She became interested in preservation after moving into her husband’s Swede Hollow-area house after they got married and she learned about aging owners were thinking of selling their historic homes to developers with plans to demolish.
“We started finding like-minded people interested in older houses who appreciated what was here,” Carey said. “We viewed [history] as an asset, as opposed to a liability.”
Rallying neighborhood support, residents helped create a heritage preservation district — St. Paul’s first in a working-class neighborhood, Carey said. In the years since, a number of historic properties have not only been saved from demolition but transformed into new commercial uses and affordable housing.
“Historic preservation is about more than saving wealthy museum pieces,” she said. “At its core, preservation is maintenance.”
For the past 20-plus years, Carey has been Historic St. Paul’s executive director. She helped transform it from a preservation ally into a developer and matchmaker, connecting property owners with loans, grants and financing to save and repurpose properties in the city’s oldest neighborhoods. She estimates she’s had a hand in rescuing 95 to 100 properties.
Aaron Rubenstein got to know Carey in the 1990s, when he was a staff person for the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission. She was a volunteer member of the board. Her curiosity and “a keen interest in understanding urban dynamics” has made her an effective champion of preservation, he said.
“The stories that get the most attention are those pitting the preservationists against the bulldozers,” Rubenstein said. “Carol’s work was much quieter, such as working with homeowners and commercial property owners on façade rehab.”
Joe and Stan’s Pub on W. 7th is an example. With help from Historic St. Paul, he said, the 1940s storefront was remodeled with huge new windows to make the space brighter and more inviting. She also worked to survey historic properties along the Green Line light rail route on University Avenue, partnering with the Frogtown Neighborhood Association to marshal support to redevelop the old Victoria Theater into an arts center.
Former St. Paul City Council Member Jane Prince is a neighbor of Carey’s. In 2016, the city had purchased seven buildings in the historic district that were in various states of disrepair, Prince said. Demolition permits were issued. Instead, Carey helped launch a big marketing push that resulted in the city receiving 14 viable proposals.
“Carol is really gifted,” Prince said. “When I was on the council, and I’d see Carol’s name on my phone, I’d think: ‘Oh, God, Carol’s got another idea. Do I really want to pick up the phone?’ But everything she suggests is really successful.”
Not everything. Despite many victories, Carey counts the recent battle to save the Justus Ramsey House as a defeat. Preservationists had sought to prevent the owner of Burger Moe’s restaurant from demolishing the 1852 stone house on the restaurant patio. In a city-brokered compromise, the building was disassembled, and its stones catalogued and moved to be rebuilt elsewhere.
“It would have been so much better to preserve it at its original site,” she said.
Although she has stepped away from Historic St. Paul, Carey admits she’s likely to keep involved in preservation on some level. “I’m not certain that it’s something I can just quit cold turkey,” she said.
Star Tribune
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
LONG PRAIRIE, MINN. — The school district superintendent dressed up as the school mascot, Thor, on football nights. He read the graduation address in both English and Spanish. He even set up office hours in the cafeteria, granting easier approachability to students.
But now, two months into the school year, Daniel Ludvigson is gone. Or, rather, “on special assignment,” according to the terminology of the Long Prairie-Grey Eagle School Board, which voted 4-3 earlier this month to remove him as superintendent. The move came weeks after voting to not renew his contract, which expires at the end of the school year in June.
Four board members — two of whom voted to oust Ludvigson, including Board Chair Kelly Lemke — are up for re-election next week.
The dismissal is the latest blow in this central Minnesota community on the edge of the prairie. Over the last nine months, the town of 3,400 residents and seat of Todd County has lost its mayor, a city manager, two school board members, and now its superintendent.
Students walked out earlier this month in support of Ludvigson. Signs in support of Ludvigson can be seen across town on the lawns of apparent Democrats and Republicans alike. And last week, hundreds packed the American Legion off Hwy. 71 to eat beef sandwiches and sign support letters for Ludvigson, who only swung by to pick up his child for hockey practice.
In a time of great divide in America, this fight has nothing to do with politics.
“You’ve got Harris buttons and Trump hats side-by-side, arm-in-arm,” said Amanda Hinson, a former local newspaper reporter who is concerned the board is not being upfront about why they placed Ludvigson on special assignment. “We want transparency in our government.”
Lawn signs around Long Prairie, Minn., now include people weighing in on the dismissal of Superintendent Daniel Ludvigson by the school board. (Christopher Vondracek)
School board members say Ludvigson has repeatedly shown he is not ready for the prime time of a school district bigger than the one in central North Dakota he arrived from two years ago. They have twice disciplined Ludvigson, but did not state the reason for placing him on “special assignment,” beyond insinuating that staff are fearful to raise official complaints.
Rain and potentially heavy snow are on tap Thursday around the Twin Cities, just before families set out for Halloween trick-or-treating.
Temperatures were expected to drop throughout the day, creating conditions for flurries. A winter weather advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. covering the Twin Cities metro area and parts of south-central Minnesota. Steady rain drenched the Twin Cities on Thursday, making for a soggy morning commute.
“As colder air begins to move in this morning, the rain will transition to heavy snow from west to east with snowfall rates of an inch per hour at times into early afternoon,” the National Weather Service in Chanhassen said in a weather advisory.
The Twin Cities and surrounding areas could get between 2 and 4 inches of snow, according to the weather service. The winter weather advisory is expected to affect Anoka, Chisago, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington and Le Sueur counties.
It’s unclear how much of the snow will actually stick, with warm surface temperatures likely leading to melting on contact in many areas.
“Exact totals will depend on snowfall rate, surface temperatures, and melting — which increases uncertainty with the snow forecast,” the weather service said in an early Thursday briefing.
“Thundersnow possible!” the weather service emphasized.
The good news for Halloween revelers is that the snow and rain are expected to wrap up in time for trick-or-treating, though temperatures will remain in the 30s with a sharp windchill.
An off-duty Washington County sheriff’s deputy caused a head-on crash while under the influence of alcohol and injured a couple in the other vehicle, officials said.
The crash occurred about 10:40 a.m. Sunday in Afton on Hwy. 95 at Scenic Lane, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
Campbell Johnston Blair, 58, of Hastings, was heading north in his Subaru Crosstrek, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with a southbound Ford Expedition, the patrol said.
Blair and the other vehicle’s occupants, 38-year-old Erik Robert Sward and 36-year-old Heather Lynn Sward, both of Lake Elmo, were taken to Regions Hospital with non-critical injuries, according to the patrol.
The patrol noted the alcohol use by Blair was involved in the crash.
Blair, who was driving a private vehicle at the time of the crash while off-duty, has been a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office since 2020 and is currently assigned to our Court Security Unit.
The Sheriff’s Office has been asked for reaction to the crash involving one of its deputies.