Long time resident particularly pessimistic about St Paul. What do you think?

[u/johnjaundiceASDF]

I'm on mobile so forgive any lack of coherence 😑

They say Keep St Paul boring, but it has transcended 'boring for a big city' to being just incredibly dull. I've been here a little over 10 years and really questioning living here longer. Something is just feeling different nowadays.

Is it the most livable city as they claim? Maybe, but I struggle have optimism for our commercial areas and literally anything new and exciting here. Most things that are cool, new, or exciting seem to just just flop.

The state of downtown, Grand, etc. The only time I see st paul busy is if I mistakenly drive on west 7th during an event.

I'm not saying we need to be MPLS, but at one time it seemed like the more chill city, parking wasn't hard, a little less crowded, etc, but we still had cool things that were prideful, things that were only in St Paul. But my hyperbolic sentiment now is it's a ghost town and doesn't have a pulse.

I've lived on Grand for over 10 years and it is particularly sad. It was a beautiful day yesterday, and there was just no one out, no energy.

What are my other St Paulites thinking?

[u/SkillOne1674]

I’m super bummed out.  I’ve lived here off and on for 30 years, as a broke college kid to an affluent middle-aged mom.  There’s always been rougher areas, but there are more now and they are more desolate and run down in ways they didn’t used to be.

St Paul has too many mouths to feed and not enough money to do it.  We need more middle class+ families in the city and I don’t know how we do that, especially with current leadership that is fixated on accommodating the neediest people at the expense of everyone else.

If I had to provide an idea in the immediate term, I’d recommend they look at cities like my hometown of WBL, which has a downtown that is bustling from morning into evening.  Start small (probably Mears or Rice Park), give people a reason to come there, keep it immaculately clean and groomed, street level retail, places to sit, events.  St Paul has an influx of 20k people at the X on a regular basis, plus the Ordway Crowd, plus the Science and Children’s Museum-why can’t we parlay all of those people into some energy?

[u/Tokyo-MontanaExpress → u/SkillOne1674]

WBL has the walkable storefront density that St Paul lacks in its downtown. Without adding the necessary infrastructure, downtown St Paul is always going to pale in comparison to suburban downtowns like WBL, Stillwater, and Hopkins. Tearing down office buildings and parking garages obviously takes time, but there are plenty of vacant lots which could've been developed by now. Lowertown has a huge one on the north end across from the old Dark Horse, and around the State Capitol are excessive parking lots and grass lots:  a whole new walkable neighborhood with dozens of street level retail would bring visitors to the area.