St. Paul City Council has given its final approval for a plan to rezone parts of the former Hamm’s brewery to make way for new housing development — despite earlier concerns from the city’s planning commission about illegal zoning and a lawsuit challenging changes at the site.
Council members voted 6-0 at a Wednesday meeting to approve an ordinance that will switch multiple parcels of land at the Hamm’s site from industrial into traditional neighborhood zones to accommodate affordable housing.
If the rezoning survives a legal challenge, it will allow the city and developer to begin work on building a new apartment building and lofts on land owned by the city Housing and Redevelopment Authority at the 19th-century Hamm’s Brewery campus off Payne and Minnehaha avenues on St. Paul’s East Side.
Supporters argue that St. Paul needs more housing, and the former Hamm’s brewery, which closed in 1997, is seen as an ideal location for development. Council Member Cheniqua Johnson, who chairs the HRA, said converting space to housing will help the city collect more tax revenue from what she called unused space.
“It will create needed affordable housing in our city. It will redevelop the use of the land that has sat vacant for 30 years,” she said, envisioning a future “walkable and transit-oriented neighborhood.”
Businesses at Hamm’s site
Businesses have already developed large parts of the Hamm’s site after the HRA started selling off parcels in 2012. After major recent expansions, they worry that new housing construction will eliminate parking spaces in the area — which they say the HRA promised when it sold off property.
St. Paul Brewing owner Rob Clapp has said he doesn’t oppose turning a brewery building across the parking lot from his business into housing, but worries a new building in a 148-stall surface parking lot could hurt the businesses at the site.
Clapp, who also owns Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in Lowertown and Can Can Wonderland in Hamline-Midway, acquired property on the Hamm’s site in 2021.
Since acquiring Hamm’s property four years ago, his businesses have expanded. St. Paul Brewing now has a sprawling patio, and there are plans to open a cocktail lounge tied to the 11Wells distillery in another building on the site. Clapp has started a fabrication shop where artists build new works for display at his businesses.
Lawsuit
In anticipation of a council vote that would eliminate parking and potentially interfere with his access to spots around the Hamm’s site, Clapp filed a lawsuit against the city last week. He’s asking a judge to block the rezoning and ensure he keeps parking rights and other easements on the site.
The patio at St. Paul Brewing is surrounded by the historic walls of the original Hamm’s Brewery. (Courtesy of St. Paul Brewing)
Clapp’s argument? The city sold off property at the Hamm’s site years ago with the promise that businesses would have access to parking, which he says is vital to the continued health and survival of the brewery, distillery and other future expansions.
Parking isn’t the only issue. In a 9-2 May vote, the City Planning Commission found that two of the five parcels the city planned to rezone constituted illegal “spot zoning,” a practice where a city reclassifies a small part of a land parcel to allow a project to go forward.
One of those two spots is the parking lot, and is one of the things Clapp is hoping a judge will stop. The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled against spot zoning in the past.
Despite the Planning Commission’s ruling, Nicolle Newton, director of the city’s Department of Planning and Economic Development that the city attorney’s office disagreed.
Housing plans
St. Paul Developer JB Vang has developed plans for housing at the Hamm’s site, something the mayor’s office has backed as well. Original plans called for 259 affordable housing units and a two-level indoor marketplace.
The brewhouse building would hold the marketplace and 84 artist lofts. The east parking lot would have been turned into 11 rowhomes and 164 rental apartments.
Rowhome plans are no longer moving forward, and JB Vang cut the number of proposed units from 164 to 110 to allow for a parking lot with 70 spots.
But Clapp says that still won’t allow for enough parking at the complex. His lawsuit claims that if fully developed, the area could require as many as 450 parking spaces under the parking minimum requirements the city repealed in 2021.
The Dayton’s Bluff Community Council and Payne-Phalen Community Council support the change, arguing the area has a high rate of evictions and needs more affordable housing.
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