The Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul is pushing ahead with an expansion project at the Pioneer-Endicott complex, regardless of whether the Legislature gives the effort long-hoped-for bonding money.

To make this happen, the art museum has split the project into two parts, one that depends on state bonding and one that does not, according to documents at the city of St. Paul that surfaced last week. If all goes according to plan, this quarter the organization will embark on the first phase, which calls for the construction of an $11.8 million arts education wing on the first floor of the complex at 141 E. Fourth St.

The Museum’s executive director, Kristin Makholm, declined to comment on the project.

The expansion has been a long time coming, thanks to partisan spending battles at the Capitol, which have stalled bonding requests for dozens of projects across the state.

The museum moved into a 6,660-square-foot space at the three-building complex in 2012, and its building project has been officially on the books since late 2015. In December 2015, St. Paul’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority OK’d a development agreement and tax increment financing package for the project, which then included a $19 million build-out with 30,000 square feet of new galleries, classrooms, and community spaces on the first floor of the complex.

The development agreement hinged on the museum’s bid for bond funds from the state, which was put forward by the St. Paul Port Authority for the 2016 legislative session.

The museum’s proposal made it into the omnibus bonding bill, but has been stymied by bickering and political gridlock at the Legislature. On May 23, 2016, lawmakers rolled out a “hastily assembled” $1.1 billion bonding proposal with just an hour to go before the midnight deadline, according to the nonpartisan House news service. The proposal died a sudden death after 60 “chaotic” and “stormy” minutes of floor debate, the agency reported. The GOP and DFL could not resolve the impasse at a special session, and thus the museum’s proposal has been on hold.

But no longer.

Last Wednesday, the museum asked St. Paul’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority to lift that bonding requirement from the TIF package and allow expansion plans to go forward in truncated form. The HRA granted the request unanimously.

The museum is now able to move on its revised plan, which calls for turning 20,000 square feet on the first floor of the Pioneer-Endicott complex into an education wing dubbed the “Center for Creativity.”

The center will include classrooms, community spaces and a tie-in to the second floor skyway. It is hoped that the center will be “the go-to art education resource” for St. Paul public schools. It will be funded by a mix of private donations, New Markets Tax Credits (through Sunrise Bank), Historic Tax Credits (through US Bank), Cultural STAR funds, and city TIF assistance.

The center will cost an estimated $11,824,187.

The museum has chosen two Minneapolis-based companies to spearhead the “Center for Creativity” project: VJAA is the architect, and Greiner Construction will be tasked with the build, according to the city of St. Paul.

Greiner will begin work on the center before the end of the second quarter of 2017, with completion in the first quarter of 2018. The center should be fully operational by next summer.

Phase II will include expansion of the museum gallery, which is still dependent on the organization’s $8.5 million request for state bonding funds.

The fate of the omnibus bonding bill is unclear. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton put forward a bonding proposal at the beginning of the 2017 session.

However, neither his proposal nor any other has seen action since the session began. Though only a few weeks of the session remain, there are no immediate plans to take up the bonding issue, said Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, chair of the Capital Investment Committee in the House. Wednesday, he said he hoped the GOP would have a bonding bill to consider “soon,” but could offer no further information about when it may resurface.

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