After years of city planning, debate and delay, the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday is poised to approve sweeping new development standards along the Mississippi River that would loosen height restrictions downtown while requiring a tiered or stepped-back approach, effectively dropping the roof line of new construction as it gets closer to the river’s edge.

It’s a decision at least seven years in the making.

Nearly a decade ago, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources mandated that the state’s riverfront cities rewrite height standards and other requirements for new real estate development overlooking some 72 miles of the Mississippi River. The state published a model set of regulations in 2019 to serve as a regulatory roadmap of sorts.

Minneapolis and St. Paul were among the first of 25 impacted cities to volunteer to take the lead on drafting their own development rules for the “Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area,” with St. Paul agreeing to have its ordinance finalized by January 2021.

That deadline was not met. On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council is poised to approve the capital city’s MRCCA ordinance, making St. Paul the last of 25 metro cities to complete their river corridor rules.

“Of the other 24 cities and townships, none of them had a delay this long from their deadline,” said Colleen O’Connor Toberman, land use and planning program director with the Friends of the Mississippi River. “It’s been tough to get answers from the mayor’s office about why.”

On the other hand, “now all 25 cities and townships have a consistent standard in place … basically from Dayton down to Hastings,” she said. “We’ve never had that before, and this is a very, very long process.”

Six new riverfront districts

Under the new rules, St. Paul’s riverfront zoning will be separated into six distinct districts.

The downtown St. Paul area — which will have the loosest requirements around building heights — is considered the “urban core” district, as opposed to the more restrictive zoning area surrounding the Watergate Marina in Highland Park, which is dubbed the “rural and open space” district.

“Those are like the two ends of the spectrum in terms of development intensity,” Toberman said.

The new “Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area” regulations are not expected to lead to major development changes along the riverfront, but they do seek to put to bed concerns raised by developers that the rules could impede future projects, such as Ramsey County’s long-delayed RiversEdge housing-and-office tower at Wabasha Street and Kellogg Boulevard.

Early drafts of the MRCCA rules called for imposing numerical standards, allowing an extra foot of building height for every five feet of distance stepped back from the river’s edge, as calculated from midway up the downtown bluff. The sloping or layer-cake effect is intended to preserve views of the city from the river, and vice versa.

A rendition of a proposed RiversEdge development along the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul.
The project would feature four towers of mixed development as well as a bridge extension over Shepard Road and the existing railway to the edge of the Mississippi River, to create a public plaza space. (Courtesy of AECOM)

For the five-acre RiversEdge project, that would likely have limited building heights to 35 feet, or just a story or two above the bluff top near Kellogg Boulevard, before triggering an additional permit process. Proposals, ever in flux, once called for the development to rise as many as 40 stories above Kellogg Boulevard.

“That could chill development from the outset, if a developer says ‘man, I’m never going to meet 35 feet, and I’m going to have to apply for a conditional use permit,’” said St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker, in an interview Monday.

Development advocates weigh in

During a Nov. 19 public hearing before the city council, Claudia Klinkhammer, a redevelopment program manager with Ramsey County, asked the council to loosen height limits downtown in light of the RiversEdge project, which could generate as much as $10 million to $15 million in annual property taxes.

Klinkhammer urged the council to promote the county’s fiscal health while promoting “a more vibrant, a more resilient, and a more economically inclusive downtown.”

Those comments were echoed by John Perlich, a representative of the St. Paul Area Chamber, Jon Fure, executive director of the downtown CapitolRiver Council, and Jacob Hooper, a representative of the pro-development group Sustain St. Paul.

They pointed to the recent loss of downtown commercial properties like Lunds and Byerlys, in contrast to public-facing waterfront projects in cities like Seattle.

“I hope we don’t set back downtown with setbacks,” Hooper said.

Removing numerical standard

At Noecker’s urging, the city council agreed to amend the draft ordinance this month and remove the numerical standard, leaving the more general rules in place surrounding tiered development. The city would still retain some development controls through a site plan review process.

The decision to drop the numerical standard drew some mild pushback at first from the Friends of the Mississippi River, which ultimately accepted the proposal after working closely with the council president.

“The city wants to give developers predictable standards. You don’t want everything to be a public debate,” acknowledged Toberman.

“On the other hand, the downtown riverfront is pretty unique … and the city will want to retain a bit of power over how (downtown riverfront projects are) developed,” she added. “The process this ordinance puts in place will be an OK way to do that.”

Why the delay?

In explaining the delay in 2023, former Planning and Economic Development Director Nicolle Goodman said city planners needed to model how various conceptual projects might fit into the six proposed riverfront zoning districts, including RiversEdge.

“We’re very close to finishing our analysis in the next few weeks, looking at each of those development sites or projects,” said Goodman, in September 2023. “Then we need to decide.”

Goodman stepped down from city employment this year, but Toberman noted the finished plans presented to the St. Paul Planning Commission this fall seemed to reflect hours — not two years — of additional staff analysis.

“Honestly, I think there was some disagreement in the (mayor’s) administration about what direction they wanted to take,” Noecker said. “I think it took way too long to get in front of us. It caused some good questions in the community, and some distrust.”

Bird safety

Even after the council adopts the new rules, some outstanding questions about bird safety remain up in the air, so to speak. Bird advocates have called upon the city to include requirements for bird-safe glass in the riverfront development regulations. St. Paul officials noted that no other city along the Mississippi River corridor had done so, though Minneapolis has created bird-safe standards for its skyway windows.

Still, the St. Paul Planning Commission agreed to conduct a study of how bird-safe glass might eventually be woven into the riverfront zoning rules, “given what a major migratory fly-way the river is for migratory birds,” Toberman said.

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“They’ll be looking at the possibility of putting in a bird-safe standard, possibly citywide, maybe for buildings of a certain size,” she explained. “There’s a lot of good information out there they can use. My concern is not with the study. My concern is with the timing. I don’t think advocates have a lot of confidence in the city following through.”

Noecker said she has asked the city’s department of Planning and Economic Development to update the city council on its progress and findings over the course of the year-long study, rather than waiting until the work is complete.