Bite by mechanical bite, the former West Publishing buildings in downtown St. Paul are slowly disappearing.

What might replace the multi-building complex being hammered off the bluffs along St. Paul’s riverfront? Maybe a five-star hotel, housing units, commercial office space, retail and restaurant space.

The $17 million job to demolish the West buildings, along with the adjacent former Ramsey County jail, is more than 80 percent complete, according to the county.

The county expects to have the complete deconstruction job, including a concrete retaining wall built along the bluff, completed on schedule by this August.

Deconstructing the old West Publishing building in St. Paul. pic.twitter.com/PUbzSBDxMz — Richard Chin (@rrchin) January 18, 2017

The four-acre site will then be available for sale and private development.

A county task force is considering a proposal by a Phoenix-based developer, Cardon Development Group, for the site touted as having about one-third mile of sweeping, unobstructed views of the Mississippi River.

Cardon’s proposal has not been made public, although it is under review by the Solicitation Review Task Force, which includes county and city staff and civic and business leaders.

Ramsey County property management director Bruce Thompson has said the proposal includes commercial office space, a five-star hotel, housing units, hospitality and event space as well as retail and restaurant space and supporting parking, according to county spokesman John Siqveland.

“In our request for proposals, we called for a ‘bold and architecturally significant redevelopment’ and that’s what we are looking forward to for this iconic and vital site,” said Heather Worthington, deputy county manager and co-chair of the review task force.

Siqveland said the proposal will become public once it is presented to the county board with a recommendation from the task force whether to move forward with Cardon. That’s expected to happen early this year.

The Ramsey County Board voted in the fall of 2014 to pay to raze the six-building former West Publishing complex and the former adult detention center on Kellogg Boulevard in an effort to make it more attractive to developers. Related Articles St. Stanislaus’ longtime priest the Rev. John Clay leaves legacy of love. He died Sunday at age 94

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The county tried for more than a decade to sell the properties as-is, but developers balked at the unknowns associated with taking down a mammoth building built into the bluff.

The demolition job started as an $11.5 million project, but the price tag climbed to $17 million driven by unanticipated costs of asbestos removal and costs associated with stabilizing the river bluff.

The site has been off the tax rolls since 1992, when West Publishing moved to Eagan. The former West buildings were later converted into government offices, but the county then moved out of the facility in 2013. The jail was closed in 2003.