Toward the end of May, developer Rob Clapp — known for popular destination projects such as St. Paul Brewing, Can Can Wonderland and the newly reopened Dark Horse Bar & Eatery — logged a win of sorts before the St. Paul Planning Commission, which voted to recommend against the city’s efforts to rezone part of the historic Hamm’s Brewery campus for new housing.
Clapp has long maintained that converting the brewery’s east end parking lot into more than 100 units of affordable housing will eliminate needed parking for his multiple businesses.
Within two hours of the vote, according to Clapp, a senior city planner arrived outside St. Paul Brewing to take pictures that would later be used by the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections to threaten his liquor license. The next day, city inspectors put a stop-work order on a landscaping project at the brewery that was intended to make room for new trees outside the former 11 Wells Distillery.
The stop-work order was resolved within 24 hours through an explanatory telephone call.
The day after that, for reasons that remain unclear, an inspector from the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration stopped by the distillery, which is not currently open to the public.
Clapp said he doesn’t believe in coincidences.
“It’s just harassment,” said Clapp, in an interview Thursday. “Within two hours of the Planning Commission decision not to rezone, she was there, filing this complaint, which just seems retaliatory. This is coming from PED, which is Planning and Economic Development. It shouldn’t be Planning and Reverse Economic Development.”
The mayor’s office has denied any sort of retaliation. A spokesperson said St. Paul Brewing posted a picture to social media on May 29 showing a completed patio expansion onto city-owned land without a use license from the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority. The patio included a portable outdoor stage, sound equipment and lighting constructed without permits, as well as liquor service.
‘Accusations of retaliation are false’
“Accusations of ‘retaliation’ are false,” said Jennifer Lor, the mayor’s press secretary, in a written statement Thursday. “There is no connection between the rezoning hearing on May 30 and actions taken regarding St. Paul Brewing’s unauthorized operations.”
She added: “The city followed standard procedure to confirm the unauthorized operations through interdepartmental collaboration … St. Paul Brewing acknowledged these issues and cooperated with the city to resolve it within a few days.”
Clapp said Friday the simple set-up included string lights that have been on site for several years, as well as a shipping container with no mechanicals, which has been used for the past year as a mobile stage, and a portable generator. City officials from St. Paul Parks and Rec, the Department of Safety and Inspections, Planning and Economic Development and the city attorney’s office had walked through the property on multiple occasions since the stage was installed in June 2004, he said, and they had never previously raised concern.
The war of words between a housing developer, the owner of St. Paul Brewing and top city officials over proposed real estate development at the sprawling, 1865-era brewery on St. Paul’s East Side has entered a new phase, with the restaurant owner accusing city planners of bad faith on the eve of what could be a decisive city council vote.
Developer JB Vang and the St. Paul mayor’s office have long hoped to install dozens of new affordable housing units within the old Hamm’s Brewery campus on Minnehaha Avenue. Those plans hit a major obstacle on May 30 when the city’s Planning Commission determined the proposal involved “spot zoning,” or a zoning reclassification limited to a relatively small parcel of land to accommodate a particular project, which is illegal in Minnesota.
Despite the Planning Commission recommendation, the St. Paul City Council is expected to take up the rezoning question on Wednesday.
Still, the negative decision represented at least a temporary win for Clapp, the principal behind Eclective Creative Collective — a combination of eight restaurants, real estate holding companies and creative businesses — who has argued that housing construction will remove needed parking for a series of businesses he operates on the Hamm’s campus, including St. Paul Brewing, the former 11 Wells Distillery, the Wonder Studio fabrication shop and a planned lounge or event center.
At 11:30 a.m. May 30, within about two hours of the Planning Commission vote, a senior staff member with St. Paul Planning and Economic Development, or PED, was spotted on security video taking photos through a security fence at the back entrance of St. Paul Brewing’s outdoor patio, just as the restaurant was opening, according to Clapp and his Eclective Creative Collective team.
A hand-delivered correction notice
Clapp maintains he recognized the planner and reached out by email to ask what she was looking for and if he could assist. Nicolle Newtown, the city’s PED director, emailed him back to say city staff would be on site from time to time. Part of the brewery campus remains owned by the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority.
“We don’t need anything from you at this time,” she wrote. “Thanks much.”
Instead, on June 16, the restaurant received a hand-delivered correction notice from the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections, or DSI, demanding they correct an apparent violation of their liquor license or lose their license entirely. A section of the back patio, near the back exit dock, sits on city land and had offered outdoor seating under a shared-use agreement between the restaurant and the city’s HRA for four years, according to Clapp. The agreement had apparently lapsed.
“We’ve done this for years, where we’ve had a license agreement with the HRA, and no issues,” Clapp said. “We were surprised to find this correction notice coming from DSI, when I’m reaching out twice to (the senior city planner) to see if she needs anything. Any time they’ve made that request, we’ve turned it around in 24 hours, and that’s the end of it. This had a major impact on 25% of our patio for a week during a summer month.”
Sean Ryan, a former project manager with Can Can Wonderland and government relations manager with Clapp’s collective, said they attempted to determine who filed the complaint over the lapsed license near the back dock, but they were informed by DSI that complainant information is protected under data privacy laws.
“We did push back saying that if a city employee did file the complaint in the course of their public work it should be available,” Ryan said. “No response.”
Ryan said the team had hoped, after the May 30 Planning Commission vote, that city planners would sit down with them and attempt to find common ground. Instead, the spot zoning question will go before the city council on Wednesday.
JB Vang’s development plan shrinks
JB Vang was awarded tentative developer status by the St. Paul HRA in 2023 based on a proposal that included at the time a total of 259 affordable housing units and a two-level indoor marketplace.
Under that plan, an existing brewhouse building would be remodeled to host the marketplace and about 84 mostly one- and two-bedroom rentals, as well as some ownership live/work studios. Elsewhere on the campus, the proposal also called for 11 family-sized, owner-occupied rowhomes next to 164 rental apartments in a new building, which would fill in a surface parking lot on the site’s northeast corner.
JB Vang has now put any effort to establish the rowhomes on pause, and reduced the number of proposed units in the new building from 164 to 110 to allow for a 70-stall parking lot. The company also been unable to find a partner to help develop the marketplace.
“The rowhouses were removed from the project based on regulatory issues that prevented rental and ownership units being under the same roof,” said Stephanie Harr, a project development consultant for JB Vang, in an email Friday. “The marketplace component of the project has not executed any contracts with partners yet; we are continuing to talk with potential partners and determining what the partnership arrangement would look like.”
Clapp has said with JB Vang’s tentative developer status expiring this year, the city should work with him to reconfigure the project entirely.
Over Clapp’s objections, the city has nominated much of the brewery campus for a local historic designation, borrowing the boundaries from a previous nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, which was reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Review Board in January.
The city council likely will consider the local nomination in August, with a vote tentatively scheduled for Aug. 20.
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