Paul on Thursday, Dec. The premise: offer an artist, an eatery or retail entrepreneur the opportunity to prove themselves to a downtown St. Paul landlord through a temporary, sweetheart lease.
As a business sector, startups are notorious for rarely getting too far off the ground, but the best blossom and turn heads. The St. Paul Downtown Alliance, a partnership between City Hall and major downtown employers, launched the Grow Downtown program around May in hopes that at least a few new retailers will take seed, fill growing ground-level and skyway vacancies and draw needed foot traffic to downtown St.
Not all the shops have stuck around, but organizers say the results have been even better than expected. Grow Downtown has matched 18 new businesses β almost all of them run by women and people of color β with property owners to date, filling more than 40, square feet of empty retail space.
At least a dozen of those businesses are still open in their original locations, occupying a total of 27, square feet. The majority have either signed long-term leases or at least extended past their initial six-month agreements. A handful of shops remain in business in new locations or continue to host pop-up hours downtown or elsewhere.
Paul Port Authority, who arranged the lease deals after studying similar efforts in Denver and Minneapolis. Downtowns everywhere have contracted since the onset of the pandemic, which heightened the move to remote work and online retail, and St. A candle and lotion shop, for instance, might have a tough time situated next to a food court vendor selling fragrant recipes, Krueger said. Other vendors might need a restaurant hood and ventilation system or a washable tile ceiling.
