Michel Taylor recalled the days when everyone she knew worked at 3M, Whirlpool or the century-old Hamm’s Brewery campus located just steps from the front door of her childhood home near Payne and Minnehaha avenues in St. Paul.

And by everyone, “I mean everyone,” said Taylor, eyeing the massive brewery’s red brick walls with sad nostalgia.

After the Stroh Brewery Co. packed up operations there in 1997, vandals broke its windows. Paper records from its abandoned offices flew out and down the street, decorating her East Side neighborhood with small, bitter reminders of disinvestment. Men in pickup trucks drove in and out with loads of stolen copper.

Ornate stairs and columns grace the old brewhouse at the former Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

What had once been hailed as one of the city’s largest employers fell to literal ruin. Taylor, president of the Friends of Swede Hollow, is hoping for better days ahead.

‘I felt like I was home’

She joined representatives of the JB Vang real estate development company and St. Paul’s Department of Planning and Economic Development for a walking tour Tuesday of the brewery’s graffiti-strewn stock house and laboratory, two multi-story buildings slated to be reinvented as artist-style housing attached to commerce — 86 affordable lofts adjoining a multi-story indoor marketplace.

“When I was in there, I felt like crying,” said Taylor afterward, moments after removing a lantern-style headlamp she and other visitors had used to navigate the structure’s unlit hollows. “I felt like I was home.”

Ashley Bisner, vice president of development with JB Vang, said officials are hopeful they’ll have a site plan ready to present to city planners in early 2026. If all goes well, they’ll pull together financing throughout the year and then begin a historically sensitive construction of the buildings into housing and vending space by fall of 2027.

That prospective timeline received a boost this month when the St. Paul City Council approved a local historic designation for the 23-acre Hamm’s campus, opening the door to potential state and federal historic tax credits expected to help finance redevelopment.

Ashley Bisner, left, a vice-president for development with JB Vang real estate development company, leads a tour for city and neighborhood officials on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025 of the century-old Hamm’s Brewery campus, including the brewery’s graffiti-strewn stock house and laboratory, two multi-story buildings slated to be reinvented as artist-style housing attached to commerce — 86 affordable lofts adjoining a multi-story indoor marketplace. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The tax credits and historic designation will require the developer to preserve what it can of stairways and other elements, though each building’s sizable glass-block windows likely provide insufficient natural light for a living space and may need overhaul. Cavernous floor openings where beer barrels once passed from level to level will be central to the 2½-story marketplace, which will feature a mezzanine.

Even some of the more intricate or elaborate graffiti could be saved, depending upon the condition of the tile and what contractors find behind it. Discussions with the State Historic Preservation Office are already underway, said Bisner.

“We have had environmental consultants and engineers throughout the building, as well,” Bisner said. “There is definitely some environmental abatement to take place. … We’ve gotten some preliminary feedback from SHPO with these glass-block windows. …  It’s not as easy to see outside. … They are open to flexibility with that, to changing the window type. We won’t know the final approval until we get further into those conversations with SHPO and the National Park Service.”

Light from still intact windows illuminates a large warehouse as representatives with the JB Vang real estate development company and St. Paul’s Department of Planning and Economic Development lead a walking tour on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025 of the century-old Hamm’s Brewery campus. (John Autey / Pioneer Press),

Other housing plans

JB Vang also has plans to add new housing construction to the Hamm’s Brewery in a parking lot east of the historic buildings, which is on its own financing and construction timeline.

The lot will be partially filled with 110 affordable apartments spanning one to three bedrooms, above two levels of underground parking. All the JB Vang units will be income-restricted to families earning 30% to 60% of area median income, Bisner said.

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Melanie McMahon, interim director of Planning and Economic Development, said it’s rare to see a developer assemble such different types of affordable housing next door to each other, with a mix of incomes.

“You don’t normally get that range in a project,” she said, noting the redevelopment also will feature future connections to surrounding walking and cycling paths.

The second coming of the city-owned portion of Hamm’s Brewery has not been without controversy. St. Paul Brewing owner Rob Clapp sued the city of St. Paul this year, accusing the city council of resorting to illegal “spot zoning” to rezone portions of the 23-acre campus for the JB Vang development. Clapp and the city remain at loggerheads over the prospect of filling in a shared parking lot with housing.

Peeling paint flakes off an ornate column in the old brewhouse of the former Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)