Joe Thornton and his colleagues in the Lowertown offices of the marketing firm AIMCLEAR aren’t holding out for a downtown promenade overlooking the Mississippi River, a longtime goal of outgoing St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s administration, as well as the mayoral administration before it.
Thornton can trace his St. Paul roots back generations — his uncle was once part of a private partnership that owned the downtown St. Paul Union Depot transit hub. Nevertheless, he’s not rooting these days for a towering mall where West Publishing once sat along Kellogg Boulevard, or any other among the longstanding efforts that begin with the words “reimagining downtown” or “reinventing downtown.”
Instead, he’s holding out for air conditioning.
In fact, he’s been praying for a fix to his downtown office building’s rooftop air conditioning unit for nearly eight months, long enough that the higher-ups in his St. Paul and Duluth-based company have begun scouting out potential new homes for their marketing business, which employs 20 people across the street from downtown Mears Park.
“We have space identified, some in downtown and some outside of downtown, some outside of St. Paul,” said Thornton, a vice president with AIMCLEAR. “It’s unfortunate because we want to be part of downtown. The owners of our company bought a condo (downtown).”
‘Up to 90 degrees’
The long saga of the Railroader Printing House building on Sixth Street and its malfunctioning rooftop air conditioning unit has become something of a metaphor for the nuts-and-bolts challenges facing downtown, if not the city as a whole, at least in the minds of Thornton and other commercial tenants in the five-story, red brick office building at 229 Sixth St. E.
The street corner structure, which faces Mears Park and dates to 1892, hasn’t had a working rooftop HVAC unit since at least May, when, for lack of a better term, the AC conked out.
“The temperature in the space would get up to 90 degrees,” Thornton said. “After about a month, they brought in five portable AC units and broke out windows to vent them, with water draining out onto the sidewalk on Wacouta Street and the patio by the Bulldog restaurant all summer long.”
“There was one really well-watered plant by Bulldog,” Thornton recalled. “It was the healthiest plant in downtown St. Paul. We couldn’t have clients coming in because it looked so janky.”
A surprise owner responds
Thornton took it upon himself to reach out to Bryan Larson, a former downtown resident who was part of the partnership that purchased the Railroader building in 2021. He soon heard back instead from Madison Equities, previously downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner, which has sold or lost several downtown structures following the death last year of its founder, James Crockarell.
“We acquired it jointly,” explained Larson, over coffee at the Bulldog restaurant on Thursday, the building’s most public-facing tenant. “Madison Equities is a 51% owner of that building. Madison Equities is involved … to the point that my hands have been handcuffed.”
To Thornton, that was not good news.
Madison Equities, which once owned 20 buildings downtown, put 10 structures up for sale together en masse in April 2024 and, since then, has been the subject of foreclosures, sheriff’s sales, legal disputes and other entanglements that have shuttered the massive Alliance Bank Center, boarded up the historic Lowry Apartments and led to widespread concern about the future of many of downtown’s most prominent properties.
“Any issues with the building, I was to route them to Madison Equities, and not to Bryan,” Thornton said he was told. “And all of a sudden it’s ‘Oh my God, it’s Madison Equities!”
When will the HVAC system get fixed?
What might strike the casual observer as a picayune air conditioning problem weaves in, in the telling of it over coffee at The Buttered Tin restaurant, many unruly elements. They include the fentanyl crisis, the homelessness crisis, city permitting and government bureaucracy, the uncertain fate and complex ownership surrounding any number of downtown office properties, and public and private efforts to maintain downtown as the economic engine of St. Paul rather than a drag on city coffers at a time of rising property taxes.
Still, where some might see incoming Mayor Kaohly Her inheriting a capital city with a number of tough, almost existential questions before it, Thornton and his colleagues share one question that in the near term for them trumps all others: When is the building’s HVAC system going to be fixed?
The downstairs restaurant maintains a separate HVAC system.
“I have my own,” said Bulldog owner Jeff Kaster. “But obviously, I walk through the building, and it’s hot. Obviously, it’s problematic.”
Park Square Court’s troubles
The Railroader Printing House adjoins the Park Square Court building, which was once slated by Madison Equities to be converted into apartments or a Marriott hotel. Instead, Park Square Court and its distinctive atrium remain vacant and boarded, with the Madison Equities-affiliated limited liability corporation that owns it having declared bankruptcy following a dispute over an unpaid loan.
“St. Paul Police found people who had scaled up the atrium and basically made an entire encampment up there,” Thornton said. “It’s in receivership, but that’s been vacant for five years.”
For months, if not years, squatters making themselves at home in the derelict Park Square Court space would traverse the skyway over to the Railroader building, where office tenants would sometimes call police to get unruly characters out of the bathroom.
Thornton, a vice president of strategic communications who has worked downtown for 17 years, including a decade with AIMCLEAR, was no stranger to snooping on behalf of his colleagues and his employer. It took him five years to gain regular access to the building’s security camera footage.
“We were having so many problems,” recalled Thornton, who found the security footage to be one of the greatest tools in his arsenal as he appealed for help to property owners, the St. Paul Police and the downtown improvement district’s street ambassadors. “Once I got access I showed (Larson) video clips of people defecating, doing drugs,” he said. “We want people to be treated humanely, but at the same time our building is not a shelter.”
Permitting issue
While far from perfect, the general situation has improved at the Railroader Printing building over the past year, with the notable exception of the malfunctioning rooftop AC unit. Thornton was told by a Madison Equities manager that a contractor had been assigned the task of fixing the unit and hopefully relieving his office of sweltering heat.
The latest visit was from Minnesota Total Refrigeration of South St. Paul.
“There were at least two if not three HVAC contractors that came through in May and June,” Thornton recalled. “I let him in, let him check our thermostat and up to the rooftop.”
A Madison Equities manager informed Thornton last month that progress had been delayed since then by the cyber-security incident that crippled city permitting over the summer.
Still, using the city’s new permitting interface, PAULIE, the contractor finally submitted an online permit application for a crane rental on Nov. 3, and “reached out to St. Paul Public Works many times,” Thornton said he was told, and “the equipment is waiting in their shop for installation.”
‘We’re waiting’
Efforts to reach Madison Equities for comment were unsuccessful Thursday, but a Nov. 13 email from Madison Equities real estate manager Derek Hennen to AIMCLEAR executives reads: “The city experienced major delays due to the hacker which impacted most city operations. … The contractor’s office has been contacting the city Public Works … often. I have also left voice messages following up on the permit approval as well.”
Thornton double-checked with the city. A right-of-way permit manager with St. Paul Public Works informed him they had not yet received a crane permit application. Instead, the company had submitted an application for licensing registration.
“He said, ‘We’re waiting. We don’t have a backlog of applications. We’ll be on it as soon as it gets in,’” Thornton said.
Larson also looked into the situation, and said Thursday he believes the problem could be as simple as the contractor reaching out to the wrong office. “There is some disconnect there,” he said.
Thornton then got the director of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections on the phone, who told him that given the lack of appropriate paperwork, “We’re on standby.”
After playing go-between, Thornton said he’s hoping someone will pick up a phone soon and talk to someone else directly. He’s also praying for AC before summer hits, which isn’t so far away.
“I’m just a PR guy, and I can get a hold of these people,” said Thornton, who is discussing with his higher-ups the growing likelihood of leasing in another building in or outside St. Paul, and possibly moving to more of a hybrid work model. “We have multiple spaces identified. The frustration level, we have zero confidence that this thing is going to be done.”
Plans for parking ramp, vacant restaurant spaces
Meanwhile, Larson said that holding minority ownership in the Railroader Printing partnership means he’s not in control of next steps, but he’s hoping to step in where he can as Madison Equities retrenches from downtown.
If all goes well at closing on Dec. 15, he’ll be the new owner of the Stadium Ramp at 255 Sixth St., which overlooks CHS Field, home of the St. Paul Saints.
The parking ramp, which has been in receivership, hosts the A’Bulae wedding venue on the sixth floor, as well as ground-level and rooftop restaurant space, both of which are vacant.
His goal is to have both restaurant spaces occupied and greeting customers by spring.
“St. Paul is a beautiful neighborhood city that you can also do business in,” Larson said. “You can still feel that in the air.”
Grammy-winning Mexican band Los Tigres Del Norte to headline Grand Casino Arena
Curtiss A moves his longtime John Lennon tribute show to St. Paul
Plans in the works to honor Gordon Parks in downtown St. Paul
Influential CEO of City & County Credit Union plans to retire
History and fantasy blend in ‘Rollicking! A Winter Carnival Musical’
