Hmmmmmmmm

GRANDMA PAT, “formerly of rural Roberts, Wisconsin, now of St. Paul”: “I do not have to do any puzzles in my old age. There are enough as it is.

“For instance: A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on my fourth-floor balcony under a clear blue sky. Two adult granddaughters and a grandson-in-law had come over with tacos. As we sat at the table laughing and talking, a silent gust of wind came and lifted the big table umbrella straight up in the air, out of the heavy base, then out of the small opening in the table. It didn’t knock over anything — not even the tall green San Pellegrino bottle. It continued upward for several feet, then tipped sideways. The umbrella closed, and went speeding over a 6-foot privacy wall and landed on the roof of my next-door neighbor’s apartment. After a few minutes, it slid down onto her balcony. Luckily, it did not hit any of us, and my neighbor was safely away at choir practice.

“I wonder: Is there such a thing as fourth-floor turbulence? Is there any scientific explanation at all? If not, then I guess I’ll just have to go with Mary Poppins — or perhaps a poltergeist. It’s a puzzle!”

Our inflatables, ourselves . . . Independence Day Division

GREGORY J. of Dayton’s Bluff: “There aren’t many outdoor inflatable decorations for the Fourth of July, so I created my own. I used the Svengoolie inflatable that I originally put up for Halloween and later repurposed for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“I bought the Uncle Sam hat at Michaels Arts and Crafts. When I went to check out, the nice cashier asked me if I was going to wear the hat myself. I told her I was not. Then she wanted to know what I was planning to do with it, because they enjoy hearing what their customers do with the items purchased at the store.

“She asked for it, so I explained that I had an inflatable Svengoolie Halloween yard decoration that I was adapting for the Fourth of July. I further explained that Svengoolie was a horror-movie host on MeTV. Remember that line from ‘A Christmas Story’ when adult narrator Ralphie said that his family looked at him like he had lobsters crawling out of his ears? Well, that was the look I was getting from the cashier and her trainee.

“But then, the woman behind me in line yelled out that she loved Svengoolie and her family watched him every Saturday night. There was another kindred soul. I was vindicated.”

This ’n’ that

From AL B of Hartland: (1) “I hate to brag, but I have a lot of pennies. I’m no billionaire, but I’ve found a penny goes a long way if I never spend it.

“I was introduced to the world of high finance by a coffee can that became my piggy bank. I grew up with real pigs and a piggy bank that looked nothing like a pig. I spent a few months in a hospital when I was a boy, and family members, friends and neighbors gave my parents silver dollars for me. My parents refused to sell me for my salvage price and put all those silver dollars into a coffee can, which was later stolen from our home.

“Now I toss coins into a jar. I make it rain! The jar fills and is carted to the local bank, which has a fancy coin-counting machine.

“Bills promise everything and coins promise little, but I can still make a big decision by flipping a coin.

(2) “I watched a coyote. If coyotes would fetch a stick and slobber on a tennis ball, they’d be widely loved.”

Muse, amuse . . . Plus: Now & Then

THE DORYMAN of Prescott, Wisconsin: (1) “Subject: ‘Sorry, Officer, we gotta go.’

“The latest cartoon in my head shows a couple pulled over by the Highway Patrol. The driver tells the Trooper: ‘I was speeding because my wife needs to use a restroom, so can she wait in your car while you write the ticket?’”

(2) “Subject: Lost but not completely forgotten.

“A minor transgression of a friend and neighbor caused a sunken response to bubble to the surface today. It was a long-dormant, flippant expression of my adolescence that would probably seem entirely new to those not Older Than Dirt.

“The friend and neighbor, who had unknowingly and inadvertently caused me a frustrating problem, needlessly apologized for the issue. My response was not the modern-day ‘No problem’; out popped the far more clever and aged ‘Twenty lashes with a wet noodle.’

“Pretty rad, huh?”

The vision thing

RUSTY of St. Paul: “As my eyes continue to age, I have found it is easier to read with my glasses off and my face close to what I am reading.

“I was reading a column today in a neighborhood newspaper about upcoming changes to Hidden Falls Park in St. Paul. New changes include replacing the picnic shelter, new pavement for the parking lots, a cultural ceremony area — and then I read that a ‘A mature play area is also under consideration.’

“While I’m not a prude (I don’t think), I’m not from California, so I wasn’t so sure about this type of play spot working in buttoned-down St. Paul. I read it again: ‘Mature play area.’ Then moved my face closer to the page. ‘Oh,’ said Rusty. ‘A nature play area.’ For kids.

“Later in the article, a woman who works for the city was quoted: ‘We’ve heard a demand for a nature play area.’ I wish my brain had been still processing it as ‘mature play area,’ as then I would know that St. Paul has become more open-minded than I give it credit for.”

Not exactly what (if anything?) ‘they’ had in mind

TWITTY of Como writes: “Subject: The world around us (or something).

“I’m not sure who had the idea first, but a year ago ‘they’ started dumping dredged-up material (soil) into Pigs Eye Lake, the stated purpose being — as reported in the Pioneer Press — to create island habitat for migrating waterfowl. And ‘they’ worked at it all summer, finally removing the last backhoe from one of the low-lying manmade islands late last fall.

“I have reason to drive Highway 61 frequently, and the constant question that ran through my mind as I watched ‘their’ progress in working to create these islands was: ‘Do they know the water level of the river fluctuates dramatically?’ Because Pigs Eye Lake is just a backwater of the river, and the islands ‘they’ created were barely above even the lowest water level last fall.

“Sure enough, when spring melt came — and at a time when migrating waterfowl might actually have made good use of them — the islands were all underwater. As they have been all summer, what with the constant rain we’ve been having. Sigh.

“I can’t but wonder how much of our taxpayers’ money it cost to build those islands. and, while I could be wrong, could it be that this project was poorly thought out? Maybe ‘they’ll’ add more dirt. I don’t expect a reward, but for the good of mankind (and waterfowl), I’ll keep an eye peeled.”

The simple displeasures

BIRDWATCHER IN LA CRESCENT: “A trip to the grocery store brought about a summer displeasure. I found a good parking spot in the huge lot, opened the car door, stepped out onto the hot blacktop right on a very soft piece of gum! It is that time of year when we have to watch where we walk in the parking lots, thanks to rude people.”

Today’s helpful hint . . . Or: The Permanent Family Record@@

KATHY S. of St. Paul: “Subject: Spreading Our Roots.

“A public-service message to any BB reader given up for adoption (plus the birth parents) in Minnesota:

“1. Effective July 1, 2024, any Minnesota adoptee aged 18 or older will be able to request their original pre-adoption birth records. Note the word ‘any,’ since some records were closed by court orders.

“2. Birth parents may file a Birth Parent Contact Preference form with the State of Minnesota, to say if they want to be contacted by adoptee(s). This form does not keep adoptees from accessing their birth records; it lets adoptees know if their birth parents want to be contacted.

“Tracing the families of adoptees used to be difficult, if not impossible. Adoptees weren’t often told of their birth families, and many records were (or still are) sealed. For at least 10 years, I knew that one of my dad’s second cousins was rumored to have given up children for adoption — back when I couldn’t figure out how to find them.

“In fact, Dad’s second cousin in Iowa gave up two boys for adoption, Curt in 1946 and Tim in 1949. Per my DNA test, I figure that Curt is her son, and Tim is a more distant family member. I located Tim without DNA, by posting a mini family tree on Ancestry. A ‘leaf’ popped up on the birth mother, and I contacted the genealogist who had posted information on her. She gave me Tim’s name, address, and phone number.

“Eight days after I called Tim in Iowa, he and his wonderful wife, Pat, came to St. Paul to meet me and learn about our family. On a gorgeous day in October, I drove them to the historic cemetery of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Mendota. Looking down from the cemetery, I could see a wealth of history in the rivers and places where local peoples and my ancestors lived.

“In the 1970s, I befriended Sadie, the last Travers member of my great-grandfather’s generation line, at my great-aunt’s funeral. I took her out to eat, and to St Peter’s Cemetery to visit her family’s graves. I also photographed her next to the small monument at the gravesite of my great-great-grandmother Mary — Sadie’s aunt. When Tim and Pat visited, I gave Tim a copy of that picture, and watched his wife photograph him in the same place.

“Some time later, Curt’s wife contacted me about our mutual DNA, and I helped bring Curt and Tim together. They seem to have much in common, and to enjoy having ‘roots.’ I hope to see Tim again someday, and to meet Curt — but I’m not counting on it.

“Meanwhile, I have boasting rights among genealogists for finding Tim without using DNA. Sometimes that is enough.”

The Literallyists

From BOB WOOLLEY: “At the completion of a workout video, the relentlessly cheery instructor said: ‘You guys literally killed it today!’

“I think I need to know what, exactly, I killed before I decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.”

Fellow travelers

THE AQUA AFICIONADO (real name S—): “Subject: It’s a small world, after all.

“When I visited the Peloponnese area of Greece, I based myself in Nafplio and took day trips from there. One morning, I decided to take the local bus to see the archaeological site in Mycenae. At the last minute, I changed my mind and hurried over to take the bus that went to the Epidaurus ruins instead.

“After I climbed into the bus, I heard a passenger exclaim: ‘It’s American S—!’

“It turned out that British friends Dick and Nada were visiting Greece, too. I happened to take the same bus that morning that they did. We spent a fun day together touring the ruins. Nada even had a postcard they had written to mail to me.

“We still exchange travel postcards, too, more than 20 years later.”

BAND NAME OF THE DAY: Slobber and the Wet Noodles

Your stories are welcome. The address is BB.onward@gmail.com.

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Marcie Rendon (Courtesy of Soho Press)

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When Madison Equities placed a series of vacant and semi-occupied St. Paul office buildings and parking ramps on the market together this spring, some observers feared the ramifications may extend beyond downtown.

If the 10 buildings sold for a pittance, wouldn’t that lower market values for all the other office buildings across downtown? And generally speaking, don’t lower market values yield lower property taxes?

If that’s the case, homeowners throughout St. Paul could feel the effect down the line through higher property taxes, after absorbing a larger share of the city’s tax burden to make up for the loss in downtown values.

Given widespread reports that the buildings need care and maintenance, Madison Equities’ portfolio “could have a real chilling effect on our property values downtown,” said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, in an interview last week.

“And if our values and property tax collections dip downtown, then (the taxes) go somewhere else,” said the mayor, emphasizing that many downtowns across the country face similar challenges in the post-pandemic era of remote work. “We have to invest in downtown, not just as an investment in downtown, but because we’re all connected in this web.”

The Alliance Bank Center building in downtown St. Paul, as seen on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, is among the buildings Madison Equities is selling. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Downtown values

Still, the mayor acknowledged that the reality could be much more complicated.

That’s in part because a lot of downtown St. Paul office value is already encumbered in tax increment financing districts, where a large share of property taxes are spent within the district. It’s also in part because of how valuations are processed for commercial properties — especially for “distressed sales” of foreclosed properties and other buildings sold at a loss.

Those values typically aren’t taken into account at all when determining market values in a specific neighborhood, according to Ramsey County officials. In fact, downtown office values — which have not commanded high rents in years — have held fairly steady in recent years.

For the Madison Equities properties, “it’s our understanding that they’re being marketed as distressed properties,” said Corey Erickson, deputy Ramsey County assessor. “They have below-market occupancies, and below-market rents. Whenever they do sell, they’re going to be off-market sales. When that happens, we don’t use a property to set (values for surrounding properties).”

Ramsey County Assessor Patrick Chapman agreed.

“A lot of this transaction is going to happen outside of the typical market,” he said. “If they sell a bunch of them together, that bulk sale would be deeply discounted.”

Park Square Court in downtown St. Paul on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. Park Square is among the buildings that Madison Equities has put up for sale in downtown St. Paul. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Predictions are tough

Whether the entire Madison Equities portfolio qualifies as a distressed sale remains to be seen.

In its memorandum of offering, the seller has advertised all 10 properties together en masse, but if the right buyer comes along, it’s possible that the company may splinter off a particular building or two from its sale offering, such as the First National Bank Building, Alliance Center or U.S. Bank Center, and sell those separately from the group.

Given that Madison Equities only recently acquired some of the properties it’s now attempting to sell, “the loan amounts are likely exceeding the values on the properties,” Erickson said. “In a situation like that, you’re more likely to accept a lower sale price.”

Chapman and Erickson are quick to point out that assessors are experts at looking backward, not forward, and dislike making predictions about how market values will play out in the future.

“As appraisers, or assessors, we’re historians,” said Chapman, in an interview Wednesday. “For the 2025 values we’re working on right now for the taxes payable in 2026, we’re seeing kind of a stable environment down there (in downtown St. Paul) right now. There’s small increases and decreases.”

“With the Madison Equities (portfolio), what’s going to happen, we’re still a couple of years away from figuring out what that would be,” he added. “We’re still a little ways off from figuring it out.”

For now, the dominant reality in the downtown real estate market is that nothing is changing hands — commercial or residential.

Beyond the sale of the Cosmopolitan Apartments in Lowertown this year to Bigos Management, “there’s been very few sales of multi-family (buildings). There’s been very few sales, period,” Erickson said, while declining to predict how that might impact future values. “We are historians. We really try not to be in the forecasting business.”

Values hold steady

For now, rather than plummet, the estimated market value for downtown St. Paul office space this year constitutes a larger share of the downtown tax base this year than last year or the year before, largely because apartment values downtown have dipped somewhat in light of higher expenses.

In 2022, about 24% of the city’s downtown tax base was considered office space. In 2023, that dropped slightly to 23.7%, according to the assessors. As of January, for the purpose of calculating taxes payable in 2025, office space values constituted 24.7% of downtown values.

To determine the estimated market value of a single-family home or duplex in a typical St. Paul neighborhood, the county assessors use software that can quickly examine five recent, comparable sales in the same area to see if values are going up or down, and by how much. Evaluating how much value commercial properties and large, multi-family apartment buildings have gained or lost is more complicated. Potential income — how much revenue could the building generate through rents? — factors in heavily, but a long checklist of other factors is also considered.

For those larger properties, the assessors attempt to contact every buyer, and then most sellers, to interview them for a formal sales review, which helps inform their financial assessments. Key questions surround capitalization rates — a metric used to evaluate real estate investments by comparing their potential value and risk level to other properties. Those cap rates are calculated by dividing a property’s net operating income, which are mostly its rents after expenses, by its market value.

“Market values on apartments went down more than commercial, because of increased capitalization rates,” Erickson said. “And the other things were expenses have gone up for all properties, but it seems like it’s hit apartments a little more. For apartments, we would consider that to be more short-term, temporary. When interest rates begin to decrease, hopefully, we’d expect to see that (trend resolve).”

Residential transition

The two assessors see some bright spots for downtown St. Paul.

Judging by recent sales, market values for office buildings in downtown Minneapolis have fallen heavily, leading to some soul-searching across the river about possibly converting more office buildings to residential units. St. Paul has more experience in that area, given that former office buildings such as 345 Cedar St., the Custom House, the Rossmor Building, the Great Northern and other properties have long made the transition to residential.

“St. Paul has been doing this for a long time,” Chapman said. “We’ve been transitioning to residential for a long time. St. Paul is comfortable in this space.”

St. Paul City Council member Rebecca Noecker now co-chairs a downtown real estate committee with Chris Hilger, the chief executive officer of Securian, which is examining how to jump-start more office-to-residential conversion. The effort, which also includes the St. Paul Port Authority and the Bush Foundation, is taking a close look at the Madison Equities portfolio, and examining downtown building by building, Noecker said.

Inspired by the Downtown Alliance’s “Downtown Investment Strategy,” the scope of work “has broadened as a result of Madison Equities’ portfolio,” said Noecker on Wednesday.

Candidates for residential conversion

Among the key candidates for a residential conversion would be the government building situated across Fourth Street from St. Paul City Hall, known as the City Hall annex building. The mayor said this week that he plans to hire a consultant to look at potentially transitioning the annex building for sale to the residential market, which would allow the city to consolidate some offices or rent space in office buildings downtown.

“We’re actively talking about converting that into housing,” Noecker said. “I think it would be a great prospect for housing.”

Compared to Minneapolis, those conversions are generally more easily done in downtown St. Paul, where it’s not as hard to offer daylight because many small offices already have windows.

“Our buildings have smaller floor plates than, say, in downtown Minneapolis,” Chapman added. “They’re more susceptible to transition. Some of the properties that could be impacted can transition to residential a little bit easier. The bigger buildings, they’re hard to make residential because they’re so expensive.”

Added Erickson, “You need natural daylight.”

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