Following years of preparation by staff, the St. Paul City Council recently adopted sweeping changes to its comprehensive plan — a planning document designed to guide the city’s development and infrastructure priorities for the next 10 or 20 years.

The “St. Paul for All” 2040 Comprehensive Plan now goes to the Metropolitan Council for final approval.

The 239-page document is split into eight chapters focused on land use, transportation, parks and recreation and open space, housing, water resources management, heritage and cultural preservation, the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area and general implementation.

“We’ve been working on this for four years,” said principal city planner Lucy Thompson, addressing the city council on June 19. “We’ve engaged 2,300 people at least, at 70-some events. It’s been a really good process and we’ve worked really hard at it. Ours sets the stage for the next level of regulation and study.”

Once the plan is official, it will be used to inform zoning decisions and review and update other plans adopted by the city, such as the Central Corridor Development Strategy, station area plans, master plans, area plans and district plans.

The St. Paul Planning Commission began prepping for the comp plan update in 2015, and the city began holding open houses and outreach events in 2016.

Here’s what the new plan covers:

LAND USE

Where the 2030 Comp Plan looked at increasing real estate density along specific corridors, the 2040 plan focuses on “neighborhood nodes,” or 72 intersections primed for mixed-use development. The goal is to have every resident live within a 20-minute walk of a node, which would be a suitable location for a grocery, coffee shop, housing, transit station and other amenities.

In addition, the chapter maps out 35 “Opportunity Sites” where even more intense real estate development could have a transformative impact, such as the vacant Sears building on Rice Street, the former Ford campus in Highland Park, the former Hillcrest Golf Course off Larpenteur Avenue, or the “SuperBlock” at Snelling and University avenues.

Elsewhere throughout the city, the plan supports smaller increases in density, mostly through mother-in-law or “accessory dwelling” apartments and additional three-plexes, four-plexes and multi-family residential buildings of six to 20 units.

The plan also supports cultural and arts-based business districts, such as Little Mekong, Little Africa, Rondo and the Creative Enterprise Zone.

TRANSPORTATION

The plan calls for a pedestrian-first approach toward new street facilities, including filling in dozens of miles of “missing” sidewalks throughout the city, “generally on both sides of the street.”

The priorities of cyclists come second, followed by public transit and finally “other vehicles.” Throughout the chapter, there’s added emphasis on safety and “equity” — or reducing racial disparities — when funding city infrastructure such as sidewalks, streets and utilities.

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Another approach calls for the city to “minimize and consolidate driveway curb cuts” as redevelopment opportunities arise at sites that can be accessed through side streets, alleys or shared driveways, especially in areas with plenty of foot traffic or planned bikeways.

PARKS, RECREATION AND OPEN SPACE

The city is home to 179 city-managed parks and open spaces, 25 recreation centers and more than 100 miles of trails, aquatic facilities, municipal golf courses and the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.

With a nod to racial equity and disparities, the plan states that “a person’s access to the benefits provided by our world-class parks is not predetermined by race, ethnicity, age, income or ability.”

To that end, the plan calls for a stronger reliance on data to better assess service levels at park facilities, and it calls for “embrac(ing) and integrat(ing) emerging cultural and recreation trends, particularly those that meet the recreational needs of youth, underserved populations and emerging resident groups.”

HOUSING

A decade ago, city officials were grappling with the mortgage foreclosure crisis, which left the city pockmarked with vacant homes. The 2040 plan shifts gears to focus on providing affordable housing, both rental and home ownership, and addressing homelessness at a time of rising housing costs.

Those aims are weaved into 56 policy goals, such as supporting new senior housing near public transit, and supporting “alternative household types,” such as co-housing, inter-generational housing, “intentional communities” and other shared-living models that allow residents to age within their own neighborhoods instead of leaving them.

Specific zoning studies, such as allowing tiny houses or triplex housing in residential districts where they’re not currently permitted, will be taken up in 2020.

“Our city council asked us last June to study triplexes and four-plexes in single-family housing neighborhoods,” Thompson said. “That’s not part of the comp plan, but that will get underway later in the year.”

The plan notes that about 72 percent of the city’s housing stock is at least 50 years old. Older homes are often more affordable than new construction, but they also carry higher maintenance costs.

WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

You’ve probably seen a storm water pond at the far edge of a shopping mall’s parking lot, surrounded by boulders to discourage kids from climbing in. The latest trend in water management is putting it front and center in new development using green, “stacked” infrastructure, such as storm water facilities that double as creeks, rain gardens and green space, serving both public and private needs.

“It’s kind of where the industry is going — thinking about a shared storm water system on a district level, rather than building by building and parcel by parcel, and using your infrastructure as an amenity,” Thompson said.

The plan puts new emphasis on integrated water resource management — how surface water, groundwater, potable water and storm water all intersect in the same ecological system.

Examples including using rain as a resource to “achieve multiple benefits when managing storm water, such as harvesting water for irrigation or flushing toilets” and promoting “visible green infrastructure landscape features, such as rain gardens, constructed wetlands and tree trenches, that contribute to placemaking and welcoming public spaces.”

HERITAGE AND CULTURAL PRESERVATION

A decade ago, the 2030 Comp Plan introduced a chapter on historic preservation for the first time. The city’s 13-member Heritage Preservation Commission plays a key role in the city’s historic districts and structures.

This time around, the chapter also emphasizes “cultural preservation” as a goal, with the aim of protecting places and traditions (not just buildings) that show “physical evidence or place of past human activity … or a site, structure, landscape, object or natural feature of significance to a group of people traditionally associated with it.”

The chapter also prioritizes “publicly-owned facilities — particularly those owned, maintained or supported by the city and related development authorities — for evaluation, designation and preservation.”

MISSISSIPPI RIVER CORRIDOR CRITICAL AREA

This chapter addresses management of the 26 miles of Mississippi River corridor in St. Paul and its 17 miles of shoreline. It’s almost a complete rewrite from the 2030 Comp Plan, given new state rules mandating river planning.

In four key areas along the Mississippi River — the former Ford site, the Shepard-Davern area, the West Side Flats and Pig’s Eye Lake — city zoning conflicts with state-mandated regulations for “critical area districts,” with the city generally allowing higher building heights.

At Pig’s Eye, there’s also a conflict over whether future land use will be zoned for industrial use or “rural and open space.”

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“We’d have to ask for exceptions in those four areas where we’ve identified conflicts,” Thompson said.

The river corridor chapter is intended to work hand-in-hand with the city’s Great River Passage Master Plan and the master plans for development sites such as Ford, Victoria Park, Upper Landing and the West Side Flats, or regional parks such as Harriet Island and Lilydale.