Dr. Bill McGuire, owner of the Minnesota United, is readying plans to construct an eight-story, 160-room hotel along St. Paul’s University Avenue.

The move comes after McGuire made a $54 million land purchase last month that put him firmly in the driver’s seat of United Village, the future real estate development surrounding Allianz Field.

“The big parcels around where McDonald’s is, Bill has the controlling interest now,” said Mike Hahm, one of the consultants working with McGuire’s development team, in an interview Friday.

With the goal of moving hotel construction forward at the site of the former Midway Shopping Center, a permit application with major variance requests was submitted to the city this week, Hahm said.

Snelling-Midway ‘super block’

In mid-January, property owner RK Midway — an affiliate of New York-based RD Management, which is led by principal and president Richard Birdoff — sold 10 parcels of land within the Snelling-Midway “super block” site to Snelling-Midway Redevelopment, LLC. The Golden Valley-based development team, which is led by McGuire, shares a business address with Minnesota United team management. The three transactions totaled more than $54 million.

Residents living near the 19,000-seat stadium, which opened in 2019, have taken the team owner and its development partners to task for the lack of promised real estate activity surrounding Allianz Field.

Between stadium construction and the developer’s decision to cancel leases after the May 2020 riots, some 30 small businesses have been cleared from the super block, which is now largely composed of grass, parking and fenced-in lots.

The one exception is a McDonald’s situated along University Avenue that offers service through its drive-through and pick-up window only, and has limited time left on its lease.

Playground, sculpture garden and hotel

McGuire and his consultants have promised better days ahead. The St. Paul City Council last October approved plans for a sizable “all-abilities” playground next to the stadium, as well as a sculpture garden anchored by a giant loon that will be installed at the corner of Snelling and University avenues.

A statue of a giant loon taking flight — the emblem of the Minnesota United soccer team — will be installed in 2024 at the corner of University and Snelling avenues in St. Paul, according to project advisers with the Snelling-Midway Redevelopment Group. (Courtesy of the McGuire Family Foundation)

“The sculpture garden and the playground, the foundations are already in place,” said Hahm, a former Parks and Rec director for the city. “We’re expecting the public to see visible construction this year.”

In renderings, McGuire and his consultants have laid out locations for a future restaurant pavilion, offices and other unnamed development. Snelling-Midway Redevelopment has been working with the architecture and design firm Populous, the civil engineering firm Loucks and real estate advisers with the Tegra Group.

In the short term, city planning officials will have to determine whether a flurry of zoning variance requests associated with the hotel and adjacent structured parking must go before the St. Paul Planning Commission or the Board of Zoning Appeals. Any further appeals could reach the St. Paul City Council.

A real estate adviser with the Tegra Group submitted an updated block diagram to the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Commission on July 14, 2023, showing an updated plan for development near Allianz Field at Snelling and University avenues in St Paul. (Courtesy of United Village)

Renderings shared with the Hamline-Midway Coalition and the Union Park District Council toward the end of January depict an eight-story hotel with a maximum height of 90 feet along its western wall. A 75-foot height limit under current zoning likely would require a conditional use permit to accommodate that end.

The hotel would be installed mid-block with an entrance along University Avenue, and a secondary entrance opening onto the “Great Lawn” in front of the stadium, Hahm said.

But rather than being situated directly on the avenue, as laid out under current zoning, the structure would be set back from the avenue some 44 feet to accommodate a vehicular loop for passenger unloading, which would run the length of the building.

“The setback will be a little different off of University because we need to have a drop-off in the front,” Hahm explained.

Too walled off from neighborhood?

Members of the Hamline-Midway Coalition have expressed optimism around seeing development plans in motion, but they’ve also raised concern that the hotel and hotel lobby are too oriented toward the stadium, leaving the University Avenue face feeling like a backdoor, at best.

They’ve also called for clearly-defined pedestrian and bike connections to the Green Line light rail and the surrounding area.

“The real challenge is this is taking up a lot of real estate and a lot of air in the neighborhood, and it’s not facing the neighborhood,” said Cole Hanson, president of the Hamline-Midway Coalition, in an interview on Friday. “How integrated into the neighborhood, and how much a part of the neighborhood, is the project going to be?”

Hanson said he looked forward to the sculpture garden’s giant loon, which could measure some 35 feet in height with a wingspan 90 feet across, but he expressed concern that the playground adjoining the stadium “is not going to be anywhere close to people who live in the neighborhood. … It feels tucked in, and designed for people coming on game day.”

The city’s design guidelines for the area lay out expectations for ground-level windows and door openings on eastern and western sidewalls. The development team has asked the city to be relieved of those requirements, a request that Hanson called less controversial.

“If you can imagine most hotels — regardless of the type of the hotel — the sides that the room don’t orient toward don’t have windows on them,” Hahm said. “Our intention is to do good design there, but for something as specific as a hotel or the parking structure, typically on a hotel, on the ends of the corridors you have stairwells.”

“We’re talking about variances that are very specific to what a successful and viable hotel property is going to look like,” Hahm added.

From 7 to 8:30 p.m. on March 14, the Hamline-Midway Coalition and Union Park District Council will co-host a community meeting at Allianz Field to allow the developer a chance to answer questions and offer updates on development progress. The community groups will announce registration later this month.

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