LOWERTOWN REDEVELOPMENT CORPORATION:

Lowertown is a 180-acre area located immediately east of the central business district between Jackson Street and the Lafayette Bridge, Interstate Highway 94 and the Mississippi River. The area is the oldest part of the city and includes the Lower Landing, the Saint Paul Union Depot passenger station, Mears Park, and the Saint Paul Farmer's Market. In the late 1970s Lowertown consisted largely of parking lots, old empty warehouses, and a huge, defunct Union Depot used as storage space by the adjacent Saint Paul post office.

In 1978 then-Saint Paul mayor George Latimer decided that Lowertown needed revitalization. Concerned that economic risk would stall development, he approached the McKnight Foundation and persuaded it to grant $10 million to finance the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation (LRC). The LRC would be an independent organization with a mission of preserving Lowertown's unique historic character while creating new jobs, housing, parks, retail businesses, and entertainment venues. The corporation would act as a catalyst for well-designed development, and as a development bank that would provide crucial gap financing for feasibility studies, loans, and loan guarantees. It would have no legal power but would rely instead on persuasion and vision to create a new urban village.

John T. Howley was the LRC's first executive director. Howley hired Shanghai-born Lu as the corporation's designer. Howley left for Washington, D.C. in 1981, and Lu succeeded him as executive director.

Among the projects that helped Lowertown rebound were the Lowertown Commons, which featured lofts for artists studios and housing; a redesign of Mears Park; construction of the Galtier Plaza complex; and the relocation and modernization of the Saint Paul Farmer's Market. Several buildings were renovated to new housing, including the Rayette Building (renamed Cosmopolitan Building), the Parkside Building, and the Tilsner Building. The Lower Phalen Creek area was cleaned up and a nature sanctuary and trailway connecting the Swede Hollow area with the Mississippi River was established and named after long-time congressman Bruce Vento. Renovation of the Union Depot (including the creation of a light-rail hub) and the United States Post Office was in the planning stages in 2006.

In 2006, after 28 years, the investment of nearly $750 million, and the creation of 2,600 new housing units in Lowertown, the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation disbanded and Lu retired. While not all of their plans had come to fruition, Lowertown and Lu had become international models in urban design and had won a number of awards, including the President's Award for Design Excellence (1985) and the President's Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation (2006). Before disbanding, the corporation selected the Saint Paul Foundation as its partner in creating the Lowertown Fund, and contributed $1 million to help fund further growth and development in Lowertown.

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This collection contains administrative files, subject and project files, photographs, and video recordings which document the history and work of the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation, particularly in the redevelopment and revitalization of Lowertown. The records include board of directors minutes; correspondence and email messages; newspaper clippings, magazine articles, pamphlets and other publications; planning documents and reports; and financial data. There is information about the renovation of old warehouses and other buildings; the Farmer's Market; the creation of new park land and riverfront property; proposed mass transit systems; and projects for the achievement of greater energy efficiency in buildings. Other issues that are documented by the collection include historic preservation, the development of housing for artists, solar energy projects, and tax increment financing.

Correspondents include Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation executive directors John Howley and Weiming Lu; LRC board members; Mayors George Latimer, Jim Scheibel, and Norm Coleman; McKnight Foundation executives; historic preservation organizations; business people; attorneys; developers; architects; community organizations; public broadcasters; officials of state agencies and city departments; and a variety of other individuals and organizations.

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These documents are organized into the following sections:

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation Records. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 16,132; 17,091

Location of Master Files:

Digital masters of the videocassettes are maintained on the Society's secure digital collections storage servers and are managed and preserved in accordance with archival best practices.

The original videocassettes were disposed after the material was digitally reformatted into mov and wav files.

Processing Information:

Digitized by: Minnesota Historical Society, September 2019

Digitization and encoding by April Rodriguez, April 1, 2021.

Digital video transferred from the master videocassettes by the Minnesota Historical Society for preservation purposes (April, 2021).

Box 141.D.2.3B was vacated on August 25, 2021 due to the disposal of digitized videocassettes.

Digitization was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.

Catalog ID number: 990066102060104294

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Includes articles of incorporation and bylaws; board meeting materials; correspondence; documentation of meetings with McKnight Foundation executives Russ Ewald, Michael O'Keefe, and Rip Rapson; some annual and quarterly reports to the McKnight Foundation; correspondence and meetings with LRC board member Phil Nason; and correspondence with Saint Paul mayors George Latimer, Jim Scheibel and Norm Coleman. Reports on the economic impact of LRC projects, financial reports, and marketing and publicity strategy are also included. A number of pamphlets and brochures, as well as the LRC newsletters (Update and Bulletin), give an overview of the history of the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation.

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Subject files are an alphabetically-arranged series of files dealing with the work of the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation. The files include correspondence and emailed messages; newspaper clippings, magazine articles, newsletters and other pamphlet material; planning proposals and interim reports; minutes of meetings; and financial documents. There is background information on transportation, housing, historic preservation, solar energy, and tax increment financing. Material from national organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Partners for Livable Spaces is also included.

The bulk of the subject files concern individual renovation projects in Lowertown. Among the projects documented are renovations of the Army Corps of Engineers Building, Burlington Northern Building, Rayette (Cosmopolitan Building), Eisler Building (Lowertown Lofts), Lowertown Commons, McColl Building, and the Tilsner Building. Construction of the Jackson Street Apartments, Galtier Plaza and renovations to Mears Park and the Union Depot also are documented. Loft housing, artist studios, and new designs for the Mississippi riverfront are discussed.

There is little real difference between the subject files and the project files (boxes 32-50) which follow. Researchers should peruse both series since information on many projects and topics is found in both.