Carl Pedro, Sr. arrived at Ellis Island in New York from Italy in 1906, a few years before opening his first shoe shop in St. Paul. His granddaughter, Gina Pitera, 72, has waited years for the former site of her father’s and grandfather’s luggage store — which was demolished in 2011 — to welcome a new generation of visitors.
For decades, residents of the Fitzgerald neighborhood have longed for some green space of their own in the area south of the Minnesota State Capitol campus and tucked between Interstate 35E and Seventh Street, a few blocks from the core of downtown St. Paul.
On Thursday, they finally got their wish. A who’s who of elected officials and downtown advocates, including Mayor Melvin Carter, City Council President Rebecca Noecker and longstanding community residents, gathered to inaugurate the city’s newest parkland — Pedro Park, at 10th and Robert streets.
Measuring about a half block, the new park spans a covered event pavilion and picnic shelter, cafe tables, seating, a dog run, play area, gardens, plaza space, tree plantings and open lawn area directly across from the former Lunds & Byerlys grocery and down the street from the former St. Joseph’s Hospital.
“We’re so excited,” said Lowertown resident Jamie Daniels, who visited the park Thursday with their 8-year-old daughter. “It went from a place you might accidentally find yourself at to a place you want to go to.”
The 0.87-acre park fills in the area previously occupied by a public safety annex building and Pedro’s Luggage and Brief Case Center, on a block ringed by apartments and condominiums, restaurants and the former grocery store. When they weren’t at loggerheads over financing and design, St. Paul Parks and Recreation worked closely with the Friends of Pedro Park and the St. Paul Parks Conservancy on the project, which was laid out on paper, in various concept iterations, as far back as the late 1990s.
The $7 million park project drew funding from state bonding dollars, city general funds, private fundraising and the city’s new 1% “Common Cent” sales tax, which was approved by voters in November 2023, the same year the annex building was demolished.
It also drew support from no shortage of gardeners, fundraising volunteers and community advocates, who kept hope alive over the decades that Pedro Park would become reality.
“There were 30 people out here on a Monday night planting annuals,” said conservancy director Michael-jon Pease to a sizable crowd huddled in the rain Thursday under the covered shelter. “People were emailing me, ‘When can I start weeding?’”
Senior residents of the Pointe and City Walk condominiums had advocated for a park in the center of the Fitzgerald neighborhood since the mid-1990s. The Fitzgerald Park “Park at the Heart” concept was included in the St. Paul Riverfront Corp.’s master plans for the area in 1997, and then the city’s comprehensive plan in 2006.
Pedro’s business was demolished in 2011, with the Pedro family gifting the underlying 0.45 acres of land to the city on the condition that it become greenspace within five years. Instead, facing a hefty maintenance backlog for Parks and Rec projects, the city planted flowers — a half-acre “urban flower field” — in sloping, recessed earth, creating a placeholder of sorts in 2014.
Then-Mayor Chris Coleman tried to convert the neighboring public safety annex building into modern office space in 2017, over the objection of neighbors who had expected to see the building eventually torn down to make room for Pedro Park. That year, during his first campaign for mayor, Carter seemed to embrace the idea of a full-sized park, but later promoted the development plans for modern office space proposed by the Ackerberg Group.
Legal action against the city filed by Pedro family member Marilyn Pitera and a group of downtown residents led into the pandemic and a national shift to remote work. Ackerberg eventually withdrew its plans, and the city and neighborhood residents went back to literal drawing boards, leaning on community surveys and a bevy of both public and private funds to finally move the new Pedro Park toward reality.
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