At the age of 11, Courtney Henry began working at his father’s first McDonald’s franchise, which still stands on University Avenue near the Minnesota State Capitol. With a heavy heart, tired of hearing that young employees had to remove heavy drug users from the bathroom, Henry in recent years converted the sizable location into a drive-through venue with an interior walk-up counter but no customer restroom or indoor seating.
Most of the space is now used for training purposes.
The longstanding Midway McDonald’s, also located on University Avenue in St. Paul near Snelling Avenue and Allianz Field, has been no less problematic. During the pandemic, it switched from being a sit-down restaurant to a drive-through with a walk-up window, and no interior service at all. On Dec. 8, at the end of its lease, Henry plans to shutter the site for good. Demolition could quickly follow.
Some are cautiously optimistic for better days ahead. Dr. Bill McGuire said he plans to tear down the franchise location and replace it with a hotel fronting two future restaurant pavilions and the green in front of Allianz Field, the 19,000-seat professional soccer stadium he built in partnership with the city. No hotel or restaurant tenants have been announced, though a spokesman for the development said heavy construction is likely to get underway next year. A giant loon statue will be installed overlooking Snelling and University avenues by the end of the month.
Henry said McGuire invited him to reopen McDonald’s somewhere else in the burgeoning development, but he declined.
“I want out of the Midway,” said Henry on Thursday, during a boat tour of the St. Paul Port Authority’s Mississippi River terminals.
Henry, who oversees 19 McDonald’s franchises, was recently appointed to the board of the Port Authority, the city’s leading economic development partner. He points to heavy loitering and open drug sales outside the shuttered CVS pharmacy in the northwest corner of the Snelling/University intersection as signs of blight and neglect.
“I’ve never seen the Midway this bad,” Henry said. “We’ve been there for 30 years. It’s literally an open-air drug market. It’s a slap in the face. If there’s a soccer game going on, it’s one of the safest areas in the city. But as soon as the game (is over)… it’s back to an open-air drug market. Business owners are at wit’s end. Something’s got to change.”
Challenges and changes ahead
That sentiment has become increasingly widespread in the Midway.
On a Saturday afternoon in late July, a man was shot and robbed of his e-bike by a bus shelter at Snelling and Spruce Tree Drive. On Friday, burglars stole an estimated $30,000 in computers, cell phones and assorted equipment from Tuan Auto Repair at University and Pascal.
“In all our years here these past couple to few years are the worst I have seen it,” wrote owner Raks Pham on Facebook.
Financial adviser Nneka Constantino, who served on the Port Authority for 18 years and lives in Hamline-Midway, said her husband’s University Avenue furniture store — Elsa’s House of Sleep — has been negatively impacted by the loss of foot traffic in the area and the uptick in loitering.
“I am absolutely disgusted with what is happening with Snelling and University, specifically the CVS,” said Constantino on Thursday. “If a small business owner had a business that has been boarded up … (the city) would be all over it. It’s an open-air drug market. It’s terrible for the kids in the neighborhood. … There’s been absolutely no accountability.”
St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali, who represents the area, said this month that the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections is aware of challenges at the CVS location and visits frequently, sometimes daily. The property owner — a real estate management group owned by or closely affiliated with CVS — has plans to install fencing and a motion detector, she said.
Some have blamed the Midway’s challenges on the national uptick in homelessness and fentanyl addiction during the pandemic, mismanagement of the Green Line light rail, the loss of small businesses following the 2020 riots and the developer’s decision to clear out businesses from the Midway Shopping Center to make room for new real estate around Allianz Field.
The Kimball Court Apartments, a destination for the recently homeless, sits two blocks north of the Snelling/University intersection at Charles and Snelling. Under pressure from the community after sometimes daily police visits, Beacon Interfaith switched security partners multiple times in 2022 and added new property management. If funding comes together, it plans a $13 million expansion from 76 to 98 units, which organizers say will help fund more on-site staffing and new office, service and programming spaces.
A giant loon — and eight-story hotel?
In what some see as a hopeful sign, McGuire — team owner of the Minnesota United — has said he is lining up some $200 million in private equity funding for an eight-story, 160-unit hotel, two restaurant pavilions, an office building and parking along the south side of University Avenue, with construction likely to get underway next year. An outdoor, all-abilities playground opened this summer adjoining the soccer stadium, and a giant sculpted loon measuring 35 feet in height and almost 90 feet across will be installed this month at the southeast corner of University and Snelling.
Demolition of an old Little Caesar’s pizza shop and adjoining vacant businesses was completed along University Avenue over the past month, and the existing McDonald’s could be taken down soon after it closes Dec. 8.
“There’s no intent to leave that building up for months,” said Mike Hahm, a project adviser and former city parks director, who is working with McGuire on community outreach.
As for the sculpture, “the first half of the trucks with the Loon left Los Angeles over the weekend, and should arrive in the Midway early this week,” said Hahm on Monday.
Allianz Field, which hosted the two-day Breakaway Music Festival in its parking lot in June, will host another electronic dance music festival — the Forbidden Festival — on Sept. 21.
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