The single-family home at 2133 Selby Ave. was there one day, gone the next. A few days after its Sept. 19 demolition, Tim Flanigan was surprised to see its garage torn down, and then excavators digging deep into the foundation and front yard.

When Flanigan checked property records through PAULIE, the city’s new online web portal for inspections and permitting, there was no evidence the city had issued a demolition permit.

He went downtown to talk to officials in the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections in person, and was told no such permit yet existed. The property is registered to a limited liability company, MJ Properties MN, LLC of Bloomington. Efforts to reach MJ Properties for comment were not successful.

“They told me there the application had been submitted and wasn’t even yet reviewed,” said Flanigan on Tuesday. The city later issued a stop-work order, but by then, the demolition had already taken place.

Tim Flanagan stands in front of a hole in the ground which will become a six unit college housing apartment along Selby Ave in St. Paul on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Single-family zoning eliminated

If developers and property owners seem to be getting ahead of themselves in the neighborhood, there may be good reason.

In 2012, homeowners living near the University of St. Thomas convinced the city of St. Paul to slow the construction of privately-owned student rental housing in the area by creating an overlay district separating new registered student dwellings from existing ones by at least 150 feet.

Over the past year or so, developers reading through the fine print have found a work-around. That’s in turn led to the construction, permitting or conversion of some 24 new privately-owned student rental buildings in the blocks around the intersection of Cleveland and Ashland avenues, just off campus.

The St. Paul City Council voted to eliminate single-family zoning citywide in October 2023, opening the door to multi-unit residences within almost every zoning district in the city. The 150-foot buffer written into the overlay district applies to single-family homes and duplexes, but the language is silent on creating a separation requirement between other types of dwellings.

The result has effectively upended the student rental housing overlay district near St. Thomas, which has since been inundated by building permit applications.

Two large college rental apartments occupy lots that once belonged to much smaller single family homes on Ashland Ave. in St. Paul on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Student housing

Flanigan can point to two single-family homes slated to be torn down and replaced with side-by-side six-plexes at 2149 and 2143 Selby Ave., which could span 24 bedrooms between them. The properties are both registered to private investors based outside the city — the Elliot Capital Group of Eden Prairie.

“If you have entire blocks that are only student housing, it creates a tipping point and makes the neighborhood structurally different,” Flanigan said. In a single block of Cleveland, “where there were maybe 20 students, now there’s going to be maybe 80 students.”

“Essentially, what we’ve asked for is a moratorium just for this type of construction — duplex to six-plex — so as a community we can ask, ‘Why is it only happening in this part of the city?’” Flanigan added. “Should it be done in this way or is it going to create problems in the neighborhood?”

Rather than impose a moratorium on the new student housing developments, city officials have largely treated the new units as a welcome trend at a time of sluggish housing growth in a city that could use more property tax base.

A “moratorium isn’t before the council,” said Ward 4 Council Member Molly Coleman on Wednesday, noting she would continue to work with DSI on quality-of-life concerns within the overlay district.

‘A bit of a land rush’

Flanigan, who chairs the grassroots group Neighbors for Responsible and Livable Development, said he and his fellow members have tracked two dozen new student rental properties in recent months as they’ve been built, converted or permitted. The units, he said, are marketed exclusively to students at monthly rents of about $1,000 per bedroom, using a website where St. Thomas invites property owners to list housing for rent near campus.

“Most of what has gone up so far is very large duplexes and triplexes that house 12 or 15 students at a minimum. There’s that many bedrooms,” Flanigan said. “And there’s no minimum setbacks, minimum side setbacks and no requirement for green space or tree replantings. There’s no back yard so all the partying happens in the front yard.”

“It’s a bit of a land rush. None of the units have any affordability requirements,” he added. “The applications to do these were duplexes or triplexes, but they’re actually rented by the room — like rooming houses — so there’s six individual leases for six bedrooms, which is actually not a permitted structure under H1 and H2 zoning.”

Danielle Hokason grew up in the neighborhood and lives in a duplex she’s owned for 20 years near Wilder and Portland avenues, about a block off campus. She’s seen about seven homes come up on Ashland, the street she grew up on.

“Everything is concrete now,” said Hokason, who can point to blocks where century-old trees no longer stand. “They’ve paved over parking lots and cut down trees. All the noise is amplified when you get rid of all of the green space.”

“You lose some of the buffer,” she added. “Saturday was pretty loud.”

Related Articles

Essentia exits talks with UMN, Fairview on ‘All-Minnesota’ health solution

St. Paul Regional Water Services opens $250M new McCarrons treatment plant

St. Paul: I-94, I-35E closures this weekend, also John Ireland Blvd. bridge work in October

St. Paul: Osborn Plaza is getting a renovation, possibly a new name

New map highlights Washington County home deeds with racial covenants

Call for moratorium on new student rentals

In response, Neighbors for Responsible and Livable Development have called for a temporary moratorium on the construction of new student rental housing within the overlay district until new rules can be sorted out. Their proposal has won the support of the Union Park District Council and the West Summit Neighborhood Advisory Council.

The Macalester-Groveland Community Council’s land-use committee supported the moratorium, but after lengthy discussion, the full Mac-Groveland district council did not.

“The voices that were coming through were the voices for the need for housing, not a moratorium,” said Laura Wallace, executive director of the Mac-Groveland Community Council.

University of St. Thomas responds

Jerome Benner, a spokesperson for St. Thomas, said the university has not taken an official stance on the moratorium proposal. However, it has held space to facilitate community discussions, which Flanigan called helpful.

Benner said the university wants more on-campus housing, but city regulations dictating building heights, campus boundaries and other details have been tough to navigate.

“Our overall student population has held steady in recent years, and our residence halls are currently at capacity,” said Benner, in a written statement. “We are seeing growing demand from students who want to live on campus, and we believe expanding on-campus housing would benefit both students and the neighborhood, as well as contribute to the city’s broader effort to increase housing availability. Right now, that option is significantly limited by the current Conditional Use Permit, which has been in place since 2004.”

No council support for moratorium

The neighbors group has held at least three community meetings in the past nine months, drawing 75 to 150 residents at a time, and hosted the candidates for the Ward 4 seat on the city council for a discussion this summer.

They’ve since held talks with Coleman, who won the seat in August, and heard mixed response.

Coleman “has not endorsed a moratorium but said she would discuss some of the other issues related to the developments — pollution, noise, parking constraints, people crossing intersections that weren’t designed for hundreds of people,” Flanigan said.

Ward 3 Council Member Saura Jost “has not responded to any communications that have been sent to her office at all,” he added. “We’ve included her with almost every email we’ve sent out.”

Jost noted Wednesday that 2133 Selby Ave. does not sit within her ward. Still, Ward 3 includes the section of the overlay district that stretches south of Summit Avenue down to St. Clair Avenue, which she described as “a very tiny amount of the overlay district.”

During his time as the interim Ward 4 council member this year, Matt Privratsky spoke with concerned residents and acknowledged that the transition from living next to single-family homes to suddenly residing by multi-unit student dwellings could be disconcerting for long-time homeowners.

Nevertheless, said Privratsky in a written statement this year, “all advice I’ve received from legal and policy experts in City Hall — in addition to my own professional policy read — about the student housing overlay is that it is likely either unconstitutional or, in the very least, not good public policy.”

“I am not personally or professionally comfortable re-affirming the city’s role in regulating how residents live in our neighborhoods based solely on whether they are enrolled in or accepted into an undergraduate or trade program,” he added.

In fact, at a time of relatively sluggish housing construction, “new developments like these six-unit apartment buildings are some of the rare examples of dramatically increasing the property tax value of a given lot and reducing property tax burden on others,” Privratsky said. “None of these citywide dynamics erase the thoughts and concerns of nearby neighbors, but they do impact the way citywide zoning changes need to be contemplated and analyzed.”

Related Articles

New map highlights Washington County home deeds with racial covenants

Divided St. Paul council votes 4-3 against 28.5% rent hikes on Ashland Ave.

St. Paul: Housing, Grand Casino Arena remodel among roundtable topics

The Fed cut rates. Will it help the housing market?

St. Paul looks to rewrite rules around sober housing, supportive housing

By CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists” as he expands his controversial deployments to more American cities.

He made the announcement on social media, writing that he was directing the Department of Defense to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.”

Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for details on Trump’s announcement, such as a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved. He previously threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago without following through. A deployment in Memphis, Tennessee, is expected to include only about 150 troops, far less than were sent to the District of Columbia for Trump’s crackdown or in Los Angeles in response to immigration protests.

Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for information.

Since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the Republican president has escalated his efforts to confront what he calls the “radical left,” which he blames for the country’s problems with political violence.

He deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles over the summer and as part of his law enforcement takeover in the nation’s capital.

The ICE facility in Portland has been the target of frequent demonstrations, sometimes leading to violent clashes. Some federal agents have been injured and several protesters have been charged with assault. When protesters erected a guillotine earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security described it as “unhinged behavior.”

Trump, in comments Thursday in the Oval Office, suggested some kind of operation was in the works.

“We’re going to get out there and we’re going to do a pretty big number on those people in Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists.”

Earlier in September, Trump had described living in Portland as “like living in hell” and said he was considering sending in federal troops, as he has recently threatened to do to combat crime in other cities, including Chicago and Baltimore.

“Like other mayors across the country, I have not asked for -– and do not need -– federal intervention,” Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said in a statement after Trump’s threat. Wilson said his city had protected freedom of expression while “addressing occasional violence and property destruction.”

In Tennessee, Memphis has been bracing for an influx of National Guard troops, and on Friday, Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who helped coordinate the operation, said they will be part of a surge of resources to fight crime in the city.

Related Articles

Trump says he’s ordered the declassification and release of all government records on Amelia Earhart

Atlanta forfeits $37.5M in airport funds after refusing to agree to Trump’s DEI ban

Supreme Court keeps in place Trump funding freeze that threatens billions of dollars in foreign aid

Trump’s transportation department pulls trail and bike grants it deems ‘hostile’ to cars

Census Bureau to test using postal workers as census takers in 2030 field trials next year

Amy Lindgren

Today I’d like to make the case for earning a bachelor’s degree. Four-year degrees, as they’re called, are usually a bachelor of arts or science, depending on one’s discipline.

And they’ve come under fire in recent years, for everything from sky-high tuition to lack of relevance for modern life.

Much of the criticism is deserved and I don’t plan to defend the missteps of higher education. Nor do I have a reflexive admonition about how these degrees lead to higher lifetime earnings or better career prospects. Higher than what? Better than what? These studies have never sat well with me, but even less today.

By contrast, vocational training is finally having a moment, as are apprenticeships and other pathways into careers in the trades. This is good news, but I hate to see the pendulum swing too far the other way. Even those working as trades people could find they need more “book learning.” And of course, not everyone is cut out for the trades.

Hence, my reasons for encouraging someone to consider a bachelor’s degree:

1. Key to promotion. While it’s becoming easier to start a career with less, different, or even no training, candidates with higher degrees are almost always favored for higher-level jobs, even in the trades.

2. Chance to explore. Pursuing a bachelor’s degree presents a rare opportunity to delve fully into a liberal arts course, or to switch career paths on the strength of a newly-discovered interest.

3. Exposure to different views. Theoretically, exposure to ideas can happen anywhere but realistically, it doesn’t. Workplaces aren’t set up for the exchange of ideas, for example, while trades training is focused on specific practices, not philosophy.

4. Training in thinking and communication. One of the superpowers students learn in trades school, in any discipline, is problem-solving. For bachelors’ grads, the superpowers are analysis and communication. Their classes frequently require writing and presenting, while their coursework leans to gathering, evaluating and synthesizing information.

5. Pathway to specific careers. If you want to work as a lawyer, librarian, doctor, or in dozens of other occupations, your path will include a bachelor’s degree.

6. Networking. It’s wrong to assume one type of education would provide better lifelong contacts than another. But in general, institutions offering bachelors’ degrees facilitate the networking, making it easier to build or maintain connections through one’s lifetime.

In presenting these reasons I’m not trying to promote one type of training over another, but to demonstrate that there’s more to the decision than a cost-to-earnings formula.

That said, I’ve never been a fan of the four-year model of bachelor’s training, for reasons ranging from the sudden boulder of debt to the forced delay in a student’s process of “adulting.”

Luckily, we have abundant options today that weren’t as available in years past. In addition to a surprising range of grants and scholarships, there are also lower-cost community colleges and free college courses that help high school students shave years off their bachelor’s degree.

Perversely, I most often recommend going slower rather than faster. Instead of pushing hard for a bachelor’s in four years (or fewer), I often advise intentionally setting your sights on longer.

This advice stems from my own college years, when a series of life events unexpectedly stretched my four-year degree into seven. Essentially, it took about five years for me to complete my junior and senior years of college.

Disaster? Actually, no. In that time I took a number of internships, guided a campus organization I had founded, worked way too many jobs, and started my business. Although they were somewhat haphazard, I wouldn’t call those wasted years.

Now I tout (planfully) pursuing a slower path by noting the potential benefits of a lighter courseload: Extra time to work, which provides both experience and potential tuition assistance; the possibility of more internships; an opportunity to join or lead more campus clubs; the chance to use that student ID for more discounts than usual.

That last point is light-hearted, but the others are spot on. When I meet recent early-graduates I’m often wondering if that date on the résumé will prove more valuable than the work and leadership experiences they could have built on the slower path.

The answer could be decades away, but one thing we know now is that internships — however the student squeezes them in — create strong inroads to work post-graduation. Come back next week for a look at how students can access and leverage these valuable components of their education.

Related Articles

Working Strategies: Lessons from building walls, watching movies and riding bikes

Working Strategies: Career planning for your 60s and beyond

Working Strategies: Pursuing two careers at once

Working Strategies: Finishing the summer strong

Working Strategies: Arguing in favor of staying in your job

Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

By Redd Brown, Bloomberg News

Lisa Reich studied hard to become a forensic accountant. She worked in the field for eight years, and enjoyed interacting with her clients. But the divorce cases she often dealt with were becoming depressing.

Related Articles

$600M renovation nears completion at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport

The Kahlo family opens the doors of their house, inviting visitors to Frida’s beloved basement

Colorado’s best mountain towns for live music fans

These historic San Francisco Bay area sites offer a reset for mind and body

Visit a national park for free on Saturday, Sept. 27

One day, she wandered into a local travel agency looking to book a trip and got chatting — they offered her a role as an independent contractor that day.

“I’m working half the hours and making quadruple my salary,” said Reich, 42, who started her own agency in 2021 and said her annual sales have been around $3 million to $3.5 million for the past three years.

“When I was moving fields, my mother said to me ‘You’ve got a master’s in accounting, what am I going to tell the family?’” said Reich. “She’s eating her words now.”

Reich is one of a growing number of professionals who’ve left the security of jobs in finance, law and other white-collar industries to join the rapidly swelling ranks of travel advisers — a line of work that once seemed destined to disappear as travel planning moved online.

Over the past three years, the number of people describing themselves as travel agents or advisers on LinkedIn increased by more than 50%, making it the fifth-fastest growing profession over that time.

For now, the demand is there, too. Travel booked through advisers — which includes accommodation, flights and activities — is expected to hit $141.3 billion next year in the U.S., equal to 26% of the total market, the American Society of Travel Advisors estimates.

“Curation and support are the main selling points,” that distinguish in-person advice from online services or AI booking options, said Eric Hrubant, founder of New York City-based CIRE Travel, in an interview. Hrubant, 48, said he gets about three emails each week from people asking what it’s like to be a travel agent, and whether there are entry-level jobs available at CIRE.

“I’m thinking about developing my own coaching business,” he joked.

Hrubant said some of his ultra-high net worth clients easily spend in excess of six figures on personal travel annually, while the average couple he books for spends around $40,000 per year on two weeklong vacations.

For Amira Bixby, 58, the catalyst for switching careers came during the pandemic. After almost three decades on Wall Street as an equity sales trader, Bixby realized while working from home that it was the first time in years that she’d been in the house when her children woke up. When her employer called everyone back into the office five days a week, she knew it was time to make a change.

Travel was an obvious choice. “I was a luxury travel adviser before I was a luxury travel adviser,” said Bixby, who said she would regularly help friends and clients plan trips, and organized for her daughter’s travel lacrosse team to stay at a Four Seasons hotel each season.

She values her newfound flexibility above everything else.

“When you can work from anywhere your life changes drastically for the better,” she said. “My son just graduated from UVA and you can imagine all the parties. I was in UVA four out of six weekends. Before that, I was skiing in the Dolomites,” the mountain range in Italy.

Almost anyone can set themselves up as a travel adviser, though some U.S. states do require agents to register and apply for accreditation. Many new agents will take online courses to boost their credentials, and can join established travel networks to get access to insider deals at top hotels, airlines and tour operators.

While some agents charge a fee, the majority of their earnings come through commissions from hotels or tour operators on services booked for customers. Commissions can fluctuate depending on the service, but for some of the biggest brands advisers usually get around 10% of the value of the booking.

The amount that vacationers spend with travel agents also varies widely by agency. A survey of ASTA advisers from 2024 found that the biggest proportion of clients spent between $100 and $400 per person, per night with their travel planners. At those rates, a weeklong trip for a couple would range from $1,400 to $5,600.

Lisa Tucker, a law professor in Philadelphia, started working with a travel agent about a year ago to plan vacations for her and her four children. In April, a getaway to Rome was disrupted by an overzealous party in the boutique hotel where they were staying, and the front desk insisted no other rooms were available. Then her travel agent intervened.

“He made one phone call and suddenly they moved us into the presidential suite,” Tucker, 57, said.

Not everyone who makes the switch to a career in travel planning increases their earnings — at least not at first. Julia Flood, a former litigation lawyer in Toronto, knew she’d be making less when she stepped away from her job to become a travel agent. The flexibility and freedom she gained from the switch were worth it.

“I don’t necessarily work fewer hours,” Flood, 34, said. “I do what I want and where I want — I might be booking someone’s trip while I’m sitting in a café in the South of France.”

Booming growth across the travel industry means that companies like Expedia Group Inc. and Booking Holdings Inc., which are integrating artificial intelligence into their online booking services, have avoided any notable financial impact from the revival in travel advisers. This year, travel is forecast to contribute $11.7 trillion to the global economy, accounting for 10.3% of total output, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. By the end of the decade, that figure is expected to climb to $16.5 trillion.

At the same time, new agencies are making the most of the resurgent interest in travel careers. Fora Travel Inc. was founded in 2021 to give wannabe travel advisers easy access to training and technology, as well as a network of mentors and events. In April it announced it had raised $60 million in a Series B and C fundraising, led by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Insight Partners.

Co-founder Henley Vazquez said about 97% of the company’s agents are new to the travel industry, and 86% are women — many of them parents who appreciate the flexibility of the job. For some recent entrants, it doesn’t take long to start making decent money.

“In the past three years, we’ve had 35 advisers who have hit $1 million in sales in their first year joining,” Vazquez said in an interview.

Flood was introduced to Vazquez through a mutual friend in 2021. At the time, she was still working as a lawyer but feeling increasingly disillusioned with her job. She knew she wanted to do something linked to travel, and Vazquez was just getting Fora off the ground. What did she have to lose, her new friend asked.

“I didn’t have a mortgage, I didn’t have children, I don’t have any of those things that affect your thought process when making a big financial decision,” Flood said. “So it was a great time in my life to make that transition and to make the leap and, of course, I’ve never looked back.”

For Bixby, coming from a business background — especially one involving close client relationships and money management in New York’s lucrative finance industry — has been a boon. The first three trips she planned were for a former coworker, a mutual fund client and a close friend. Recently, a hedge fund manager she’d worked with called her up to help him plan a vacation.

“They know I will protect their investment, and it’s not just money, it’s time,” she said.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.