Apparently, we are supposed to believe that the northeast corner of Grand Avenue and Victoria Street is blighted and therefore the developer wishing to build there is eligible for tax increment financing, or TIF. No, he isn’t. Neither the corner nor the buildings to be torn down are blighted. Determined blighted by whom, a developer who wants the taxpayers to help foot his bill?

TIF might make sense when a developer is willing to take a risk on a bullet-riddled vacant warehouse and turn it into something fantastic in a neighborhood with litter blown against the fence and weeds growing through the cratered sidewalks.

Grand and Victoria is not only desirable real estate, but it is one of the few corners left in St. Paul that actually mimics a successful urban location, safe, attractive, charming memories of yesteryear.

An outfit called Afton Park Development wants to create yet another apartment building there, along with retail space and some parking provisions. Go for it. Good luck. But leave us out if it. We are St. Paul taxpayers and we are tapped out, rode hard and put away wet.

Ramsey County approved an 8.25 percent property tax increase. The St. Paul school board, as though they actually have achievement to show us in exchange for their handout, approved a 14.9 percent increase in the tax levy, which includes the special extra tax that voters approved this fall. The city council approved a 5.3 percent increase in the tax levy.

And on top of all this, some developer wants tax increment financing to build in a location that doesn’t even remotely deserve the consideration.

As near as I can understand it, with counseling from my betters, TIF is a loan to the developer, but paid back by other taxpayers. The developer, Ari Parritz, wants a $2.95 million gift. It’s a damn gift! The funds borrowed from the city are paid back by taxpayers who forgo new property taxes from a TIF development for the term of the debt. I could be egregiously wrong, but it sounds to me that, for a time, unspecified, our property taxes pay the city back for the city’s gift to the developer who isn’t paying property taxes that could help lower ours.

(It occurs to me that it wouldn’t be so bad or that I might not even care at all, but I’m looking out the window and the wind is blowing snow around at about 400 mph and the streets will shortly be skating rinks.)

TIF loans – gifts, we should say – are most conventionally issued when a project might jump-start rejuvenation in a distressed area. So, who came up with the preposterous idea that Grand and Victoria is blighted?

“It’s (TIF funding) being used primarily for blight remediation and other qualified redevelopment costs,” Parritz told Fred Melo of the Pioneer Press. “The city already did their third-party blight study and it came back substandard on three buildings. Everything we’ve heard from the city council is supportive of redevelopment here, and an appropriate use of redevelopment TIF. It meets all statutory requirements.”

Nothing against Mr. Parritz. His wishing for TIF is perfectly on the up and up. It’s the game developers play. And the money involved is laughably pocket change compared to the billions of dollars taken from us in theft. But we’re St. Paul taxpayers, remember. We’re exhausted.

The new spread, not so incidentally, would account for the disappearance of Billy’s on Grand and the Victoria Crossing Mall. That corner certainly used to be livelier, but if you want blighted, let’s rent a bus and take a guided tour of downtown.

If the corner of Grand and Victoria is meeting the statutory definition of blighted, we are either in more serious trouble than we thought or we are not thinking outside the box. By the designation assigned to that corner, every household in St. Paul should be awarded a TIF loan. Why don’t we just give each other a little TIF here, a little TIF there?

The city is counting on us to be confused.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

Related Articles

Larry Jacobs: For Kaohly Her’s first 100 days as St. Paul mayor, action and clear ambition

Rick Beeson: Fairview, UMP deal jeopardizes health care statewide

Real World Economics: A reminder on what the Fed rate cut really is

Skywatch: The tiny Christmas tree challenge

Joe Spencer: St. Paul’s budget signals bold push for a stronger downtown

Pioneer Press staffers who cover the Vikings take a stab at predicting Sunday’s game against the Giants in New Jersey:

Dane Mizutani

Vikings 23, Giants 16: J.J. McCarthy has shown growth over the past couple of games while facing some struggling defenses on the other end. That trend will continue this weekend.

Jace Frederick

Vikings 17, Giants 13: Do I think JJ McCarthy will play well again? No idea. But pretty sure Brian Flores will make Jaxson Dart’s life miserable.

John Shipley

Vikings 29, Giants 17: It’s been 25 years since the Vikings rolled into the Meadowlands as favorites in the NFC Championship and lost 41-0. This won’t exactly serve as revenge, but it will help set an optimistic tone for next season.

Charley Walters

Vikings 21, Giants 20: This could be J.J. McCarthy’s fifth victory in nine starts if he performs the way he did in Dallas last week. Big game for the kid.

Related Articles

Meet the Century Club, a group of Vikings fans who never miss a game

Vikings star left tackle Christian Darrisaw out for the season

The Loop NFL Picks: Week 16

Vikings fan injured in hit-and-run outside Cowboys stadium in suburban Dallas

How comments from Kirk Cousins help explain J.J. McCarthy’s struggles

It’s been almost exactly 20 years since the last time diehard Vikings fan Bob Repin missed a game.

He wasn’t in attendance on Christmas Day 2005 when the Vikings suffered a 30-23 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on the road. He was in attendance the following week when the Vikings earned a 34-10 win over the Chicago Bears at home.

As unbelievable as it might sound, Repin has attended every single game the Vikings have played since. His streak sits at 323 straight games heading into the matchup between the Vikings and the New York Giants on Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium.

“This is my hobby,” said Repin, who actually lives in the suburbs of Chicago. “This is what I like to do.”

He isn’t alone. The man affectionately known as Viking Bob by his peers serves as the ringleader of the Century Club, a group of Vikings fans who never miss a game, regardless of where it’s being played.

The members include Repin, 55, Bryan Obeidzinski, 62, Mark Pietig, 66, and Rich Young, 46 — all with streaks in the triple digits — as well as Rick Fredin, 55, in line to reach that milestone sometime next year.

Viking fans Rick Fredin, Bob Repin, Rich Young and Bryan Obeidzinski tailgate before the Vikings game against the Baltimore Ravens at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Though nobody in the Century Club will ever catch Repin as long as he has anything to say about it, Obeidzinski has been to 273 straight games, Pietig has been to 238 straight, Young has been to 188 straight, and Fredin has been to 83 straight.

They all agree that Repin is the heartbeat.

He’s had Vikings season tickets since 1992 and has only missed a couple of home games in that span. He’s been a fixture in the stands at the Metrodome, TCF Bank Stadium and U.S. Bank Stadium, and has found way to make sure some of his closest friends have also been in attendance.

“It’s like a drug,” said Obeidzinski, who lives in Naples, Fla. “I call Viking Bob the dope dealer because he’s the guy who convinced us all to try this and got us all addicted.”

As something of the founding members, Repin and Obeidzinski can trace their friendship back to at a random bar on the Florida Gulf Coast. They met in 1999 before the Vikings played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football. They stayed in touch over the next decade or so until Repin eventually convinced Obeidzinski to run the table.

That’s the terminology the Century Club uses for anybody that goes to every single game in a season.

“I ran the table for the first time in 1999,” Repin said. “I thought after the Vikings lost in the the NFC Championship Game that they were going to come back and run through the rest of the league. You get hooked pretty fast. It’s easy to do.”

Ask anybody in the Century Club. They all started out by going to a handful of games here and there. That served as the gateway to what has slowly but surely become a borderline obsession.

“I went to maybe 10 to 12 games a season for a while there,” Obeidzinski said. “Then I broke up with my girlfriend and started running the table.”

The camaraderie is what keeps the Century Club connected. They know they can count on seeing each other at least once a week during the season, whether it’s meeting up to tailgate before every home game or getting together for a steak dinner before every road game. They all come from different walks of life and have forged a bond that none of them take for granted.

“It’s all because of Viking Bob,” said Pietig, who as a Bloomington resident is the only member of the Century Club who actually lives in Minnesota. “He’s the guy who pulls it all together.”

The travel doesn’t deter anybody in the Century Club from keeping the streak rolling. No matter the distance. They have all racked up their fair share of Delta miles and Marriott points while traveling the world in the name of their fandom.

“It’s a priority,” Pietig said. “I don’t give a flying (leap) about anything else.”

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some near misses along the way. It seems like everybody in the Century Club has a horror story about how their streak almost came to an end.

Like the time Repin drove through a blizzard during the infamous snowstorm that caused the Metrodome to collapse. He managed to evade state troopers in rural Wisconsin who were closing the highway only to have the game be relocated.

Or the time Pietig missed a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this year because he literally fell asleep at his gate. He paid for his mistake by having to drive more than 10 hours to see the Vikings play the Detroit Lions.

“I had to leave a wedding in the Bahamas a little early to make it to a game,” said Young, who lives in Miami. “That was during the pandemic. They were doing COVID checks before we left the hotel. I was nervous because I knew if I tested positive, my streak was screwed.”

Though some cynics would argue that the Century Club should have had to reset their streaks after the pandemic, Repin, Obeidzinski, Pietig and Young have a reasonable rebuttal. They still have been to every game that has allowed fans. They paid a pretty penny to watch the Vikings play the Indianapolis Colts, the Houston Texans, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New Orleans Saints, all of which allowed fans in a limited capacity during the pandemic.

That means the streaks are still intact, at least in their eyes.

“I have age on my side,” Young said. “The next youngest guy is 10 years older than me. I always give them a hard time about when they kick the bucket. I just have to stay healthy and keep it going and I’ll eventually catch them.”

All jokes aside, Young said he couldn’t imagine his life without the Century Club, and takes pride in the fact that they all share the same passion.

“It’s a great group of guys,” Young said. “It’s a tradition that we’re going to keep going for as long as we possibly can.”

How long will that be?

“We always say we’ll stop going to games when we’re dead,” Young said. “They could play a game on the moon and we’d be there.”

All part of being in the Century Club.

“I tell every fan they should run the table at least once,” Repin said. “Just try it and see what happens.”

LET’S GO STREAKING!

Bob Repin

Age: 55
Current Streak: 323
Streak Start: Jan. 1, 2006, vs. Chicago Bears

Bryan Obeidzinski

Age: 62
Current Streak: 273
Streak Start: Jan. 4, 2009, vs. Philadelphia Eagles

Mark Pietig

Age: 66
Current Streak: 238
Streak Start: Sept. 11, 2011, at San Diego Chargers

Rich Young

Age: 46
Current Streak: 188
Streak Start: Sept. 14, 2014, vs. New England Patriots

Rick Fredin

Age: 55
Current Streak: 83
Streak Start: Sept. 19, 2021, at Arizona Cardinals

Related Articles

Vikings star left tackle Christian Darrisaw out for the season

The Loop NFL Picks: Week 16

Vikings fan injured in hit-and-run outside Cowboys stadium in suburban Dallas

How comments from Kirk Cousins help explain J.J. McCarthy’s struggles

Vikings star safety Josh Metellus out for the season

A relatively mundane middle-aged rite of passage — shingles vaccination — might offer an added benefit: protection against, or even the slowing of the progression of, dementia.

Over the past several years, a growing body of research has suggested that immunization against shingles may reduce the risk of dementia by up to 20%. Now, a new study adds a tantalizing twist: The vaccine may also have a therapeutic effect in those who already have the condition. This wasn’t a modest effect, either — the shot appeared to lower the risk of death associated with dementia over the course of almost a decade by nearly 30%.

The findings are yet another reminder of the remarkable and often unexpected ways that vaccines can protect us well beyond their intended role of preventing infection. And if the findings hold up in more rigorous studies, the results could point to a relatively inexpensive and widely available tool with the potential to meaningfully improve population health. That would be an astounding development.

Anyone who has had chickenpox is at risk of shingles, characterized by a painful, blistering rash. That’s because the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox hibernates in our nervous system until it re-emerges later in life.

What, then, could a vaccine against shingles possibly have to do with dementia?

Researchers have two plausible theories. The first focuses on the virus itself. If the chickenpox virus is repeatedly activated and then suppressed by the immune system, it could cause brain inflammation that contributes to dementia, says Pascal Geldsetzer, a Stanford University population health scientist who led the vaccine study.

That theory aligns with what we know about the sneaky ways viruses can wreak havoc long after we’ve recovered from an infection.

Increasing evidence has also linked the Epstein-Barr virus — a member of the same herpesvirus family — to multiple sclerosis. The theory is that the virus features a protein that resembles one found in the brain and spinal cord, so when the immune system mounts an attack, it mistakenly chips away at the protective coating on nerve cells. (Several groups are working to develop a vaccine against Epstein-Barr in the hope that it might protect against multiple sclerosis, too.)

The other hypothesis rests on some vaccines’ ability to offer broader health benefits — benefits that come not from targeting the virus, but from triggering the immune system to be on the hunt for bad actors.

For example, researchers recently found that mRNA-based COVID vaccines might extend the lives of certain cancer patients. This effect appears to result from enhancing the immune system at precisely the right time, enabling it to eliminate tumors more effectively. A large body of work indicates that a tuberculosis vaccine offers protection against other infections and, notably, has reduced the infant mortality rate in some countries. More recent research suggests that this Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine may also reduce the risk of dementia.

Researchers, meanwhile, also need to address two big caveats about these findings.

The first is that the connection is based on studies that looked back at people who did or did not receive the shingles vaccine, rather than on randomized, placebo-controlled trials that can definitively establish an effect. To be fair, these were unusually robust observational studies that compared people born within weeks of each other in the UK, either before or after a strict age cutoff for vaccination.

The second has perhaps greater real-world implications: The studies all rely on data collected when people were receiving the older shingles vaccine, Zostavax, which is no longer used in the U.S. or Europe. That shot was made from a weakened form of the varicella-zoster virus, whereas the current vaccine, Shingrix, exposes the immune system to only a portion of the virus.

Does the effect hold up with the current shot, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the preferred choice in 2018? We just don’t know. If the benefits come from shutting down the virus, they may be as good or even better with the newer vaccine, which is far more effective and longer-lasting than the old one. But if the way the vaccine triggers the immune system’s response is what matters, then the newer shot might not help.

Related Articles

Matt K. Lewis: The Democrats are already blowing up their chances in the Senate

Bruce Yandle: America chugs along in a ‘K-shaped’ economy

Bret Stephens: Good people and good nations do not stomp on the grief of others

Abby McCloskey: What the GOP accomplished with all that power

Elizabeth Shackelford: Normalizing Russia normalizes the mass abduction of Ukrainian children

It is also worth exploring whether a booster could extend those benefits. And what does all of this mean for younger generations who have grown up with the chickenpox vaccine? While many Gen Xers and older Millennials have visceral memories (and maybe a few scars) from their days of itchy misery from chickenpox, a vaccine against varicella was added to the routine childhood immunization schedule in 1996. It will be decades before we determine whether lifelong protection from chickenpox affects brain health.

All of these questions need to be explored in the lab and in clinical trials. Geldsetzer has been trying to raise money to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the older vaccine to conclusively determine its effectiveness in preventing or treating dementia. Getting that off the ground has been a slog. He told me about his plans to run the trial two years ago, and yet the funding still hasn’t materialized.

Let’s hope that changes as evidence of these potentially significant additional benefits of vaccination mounts. Ideally, such a trial would also examine the current shingles vaccine, too. After all, if the effect holds up, it could mean the world would have a relatively inexpensive, one-time intervention to lower the risk of dementia, or even slow it down. That’s something everyone surely would be clamoring to get.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.