A year after opening her Work It Co-Working offices on St. Paul’s Fairview Avenue, Anne Hendrickson found herself trying to justify to a city inspector the lock on her extra exit door.

Hendrickson was told the thumb lock was not up to city code because it was on the wrong side of the door, which leads to a parking lot.

“So they told me I either had to take down the exit sign or flip the thumb lock,” said Hendrickson. She recalled having little time or patience to deal with that and other code concerns as she launched a new business.

“I was like, really? We are wasting all our time discussing this? It obviously doesn’t have to do with safety because I can leave it if I get rid of the exit sign.”

Nobody likes being told what they can or cannot do, especially small businesses just starting out.

At a time of growing citywide mandates — for paid sick leave and a new minimum wage, against flavored tobacco products on most store shelves — aren’t there some old, outdated rules that just need to go away?

JETTISONING RESTRICTIONS

City officials acknowledge that there are. And they’re stepping up efforts to trim and simplify rules for small businesses where they can.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve taken a look at our licensing procedures,” said St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker, who is working closely with the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections on streamlining business licensing. “The impression I got from DSI is a lot of our requirements are out of sync with other cities.”

In that vein, the St. Paul City Council recently made it easier for restaurants that serve alcohol to move in near downtown schools or religious institutions citywide, and jettisoned restrictions against sidewalk sandwich boards citywide.

“With minimum wage and sick and safe time, I know there’s an adversarial feeling in the community, but in other areas, the Department of Safety and Inspections has actually been super responsive,” said Dillon Donnelly, a sales manager in the industrial supply industry, a vice chair of the city’s Business Review Council and a sometime critic of city policies. “They don’t get enough credit for that work. They’re really doing a great job.”

Hendrickson said she would put the lock requirement on her extra exit door toward the top of her list of rules that need to go away, but it’s hardly the only time she has butted heads with city codes that strike her as over-reaching or even contradictory.

Hendrickson — who ran the Downtown Dogs dog care business in Minneapolis for 10 years — said St. Paul has plenty of unnecessary red tape compared with its sister city, and an inspections culture she calls unnecessarily exacting.

Business advocates hope there’s more rule-trimming to come, and city officials and others pushing for greater vitality in St. Paul have their own ideas about rules that need to go away.

Here’s a selection:

NO BIKE TAXIS AT RUSH HOUR

Minneapolis generally boasts a busier downtown than that of St. Paul, so why is it that the more bustling city allows bike taxis during rush hour, while the slower-paced city does not?

Pedicab drivers say they could provide a service to St. Paul convention-goers, shuttling visitors from hotel rooms to the city’s RiverCentre, if city rules would let them.

“There was a Best Buy convention in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, and we had 12 cabs out working,” said Julian Loscalzo, a St. Paul resident and part owner of Twin Town Pedicabs, which runs up to 36 bike taxis in Minneapolis. “Folks should be supportive of what we’re doing.”

Unlike Minneapolis, however, bike taxis are not allowed to operate in downtown St. Paul during morning and evening rush hours.

Pedicab operations have had no more luck in recent years convincing business owners to welcome them in any sizable capacity to public festivals such as Grand Old Day or Cinco de Mayo, which have restricted when and where they can operate.

City officials have shown no great rush to change the rules, beyond an ordinance amendment in 2017 allowing pedicab workers to use electric-assist bikes. Loscalzo said that during St. Paul Saints games downtown and special events throughout the city, his drivers have grappled with inconsistent rule enforcement, depending upon which police officer is in charge.

“It’s more of an attitude in St. Paul than anything else,” Loscalzo said. “It’s basically too difficult to work through the processes in St. Paul. In Minneapolis, if I go and fill out my form to have a pedicab, I can walk out immediately, the same day. In St. Paul, it’s up to three weeks.”

BUSINESS ADVERTISING ON SIDEWALKS AND BEYOND

At the request of the city’s Business Review Council, the St. Paul City Council recently changed city ordinances to allow businesses to do something many were getting away with anyway — advertising their wares on A-frame sandwich boards without a special sidewalk permit.

“You can have a sandwich board across the city,” said Suzanne Donovan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Safety and Inspections. “It doesn’t require a permit. They’re now literally permitted in the right-of-way.”

There are stipulations, of course, ensuring that pedestrians and wheelchair users have ample room to get by.

Business advocate Joe Spencer, president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, considers that a positive start, but he’d like the city to allow retailers to display their merchandise on sidewalks, as well, and loosen other signage and advertising restrictions.

That’s not a simple request.

The city has a long history of neighborhood activism against excessive advertising, from billboards to storefront displays that make it harder for patrons to see inside a shop.

“Sandwich boards means a lot to small-business owners, and we should give credit where credit is due,” said Donnelly, the Business Review Council co-chair. “We should highlight the small wins. They were already on the streets. Nobody was enforcing the rules as they were written.”

SOUND-LEVEL VARIANCES

Event organizers who wish to exceed city sound-level requirements with music, fireworks and other festivities must win the approval of the seven-member city council, which can be time-consuming and intimidating.

Instead of handing that decision to an elected body, some city council members say they’re open to delegating the authority to city staff to allow for a quicker turnaround.

“We almost never have objections to sound-level variances,” said Noecker, the council member who represents downtown and Grand Avenue, two areas where outdoor events are common. “That’s work that staff can track if there are complaints.”

TEMPORARY ENTERTAINMENT LICENSES

When parades, fireworks and special events such as Red Bull Crashed Ice come to town, not all bars and restaurants can fully take part.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the city has long limited the number of outdoor events that downtown businesses can host on their own to three temporary entertainment licenses apiece.

The licenses cover amplified music, outdoor stages and outdoor liquor sales.

Assuming the city council agrees, Department of Safety and Inspections director Ricardo Cervantes hopes to allow downtown businesses to obtain up to 10 such licenses annually, putting the city in line with the state cap.

SIDEWALK CAFES

Why does St. Paul make sidewalk cafes apply for a special sidewalk license, and then head over to St. Paul Public Works for an “obstructed sidewalk” permit on top of that?

One of them has got to go, Cervantes said.

Assuming the city council is on board, “we’re eliminating the license requirement,” he said.

45-DAY WAITING PERIOD FOR LIQUOR LICENSES

Those applying to sell alcohol in St. Paul need to wait 45 days. Under city codes, that’s how long the waiting period has to be for restaurant liquor licenses, in part to give nearby residents ample time to digest the news and raise concerns.

Noecker is working with the Department of Safety and Inspections on what she hopes will be a shorter waiting period.

“There’s a couple different liquor licenses that require a 45-day waiting period for public objections, and they can be waived with approval of the district council,” Noecker said. “It seems like an unnecessary additional burden for a business. We’re not necessarily getting rid of that, but what we’re doing is a community process to see whether some of this red tape can be lifted. It’s still important to have neighborhood voice.”

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO APPLY FOR A BUSINESS LICENSE?

The liquor license discussion isn’t happening in a vacuum.

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Council members Noecker, Dai Thao and Jane Prince have set out on an six- to eight-month study with the Department of Safety and Inspections to streamline the process of acquiring “Class N” business licenses in St. Paul, which encompass 24 different license types — including liquor and entertainment, pawn shops, animal day care, gas stations and more.

In particular, the city will ask for public input on the process of notifying neighbors that a new business is moving in nearby, which allows neighbors 45 days to appeal “if someone didn’t like the business model or the business type,” Cervantes said.

“Then that starts the clock again for the city council to have a hearing, and that can run another 45 days to have a hearing, results and then recommendations with conditions,” Cervantes said. “It can run 90 days, and if there’s any glitches, it can run longer. When I think of the (entertainment, animal boarding, outdoor alcohol sales) licenses that require a door-to-door petition, that’s even longer.”

The first of a series of public brainstorming sessions and outreach events was held at the Rondo Library on June 27.

SUNDAY SALES, DISTANCE REQUIREMENTS, WARD LIMITS

If there’s an industry that has undergone a regulatory journey in St. Paul, it’s alcohol sales.

In 2014, the city began allowing breweries to sell growlers on Sundays, and then followed the state’s lead and allowed Sunday sales at all off-sale liquor stores in 2017. Distance requirements between taprooms were also lifted.

Just as dramatically, in late 2015 the city eliminated “an antiquated charter law that stopped restaurants from getting a liquor license,” Cervantes said.

The number of liquor licenses awarded to restaurants had been limited through a ward system, with some wards routinely hitting their cap while others rarely did.

“For restaurants, you’re now able to have those anywhere in our city,” Cervantes said.

As a trade-off for being allowed to serve stiff cocktails, the city changed the definition of a restaurant in licensing ordinances, so sites outside of downtown must close by midnight instead of 2 a.m.

Additional rules that have fallen by the wayside once limited restaurants to obtaining no more than 40 percent of their proceeds from alcohol sales, and the rest from food. Rising cocktail and craft beer prices made the 60/40 rule difficult to abide by, Cervantes said, so it got dropped.

“As drinks become more expensive, it became harder to comply,” he said.

The city council this year eliminated a 300-foot-distance requirement between restaurants that serve hard alcohol and churches citywide. The 300-foot buffer with downtown schools also disappeared.

“They can co-exist,” Cervantes said. “Typically, schools are during the day, and most of the liquor sales are during the evening.”

REDUCE OR ELIMINATE MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS?

At St. Paul City Hall, the word “Cupcake” draws knowing nods all around. In 2012, the owner of the Cupcake bakery and wine bar threatened to leave Grand Avenue before even opening there after the city blocked his license to serve.

Liquor licensing at the time required three times as much parking for restaurants that serve alcohol as for those that do not.

When developers propose a new residential building or entrepreneurs set out to open a new business, the city of St. Paul takes a close look at how much off-street parking would be available for patrons. San Francisco does not. Neither does Seattle, at least in areas with frequent transit service.

Those cities have joined a growing municipal movement to reduce or eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements.

Advocates say it’s ironic that many of the most popular, long-standing small businesses have been “grandfathered in” and would not be allowed to open today if they had to meet modern parking requirements.

“Almost every new business in St. Paul that opens in an existing building has to jump through the hoop of getting a parking variance,” said Dan Marshall, co-owner of Mischief Toy Store on Grand Avenue. “And no business owner enjoys spending money on building and maintaining a parking lot. Functionally, the process acts as a check to give the city and neighborhoods power to veto a new business, as happened with Cupcake years ago.”

Since the Cupcake debacle, St. Paul has lessened several of its parking requirements, though not quite as dramatically as some other cities have.

In 2012, the St. Paul City Council eased parking space requirements for restaurants that serve alcohol from one parking stall for every 125 square feet of usable business space to one stall for every 400 square feet.

In 2014, the city council did the same for residential developments in areas zoned Traditional Neighborhood “T1” and “T2,” allowing them to offer less than one parking spot per housing unit, or 75 spaces for every 100 units.

For all TN sites within a quarter-mile of University Avenue, there is no minimum required number of off-street parking spaces for any type of use.

The department of Planning and Economic Development is studying even more ambitious approaches toward parking minimums this year, such as reducing residential parking requirements citywide to one stall per unit.

City Council Member Mitra Nelson has said she would like to see the city go even further and eliminate parking minimums altogether. Related Articles Staffers at MPR’s music stations The Current and Classical MPR vote to unionize

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Nelson and other advocates say allowing developers to convert more of their property to its core use, rather than parking, would provide a greater return on investment, making real estate more profitable and hopefully stabilizing the rising cost of housing.

The prospect of abandoning parking minimums, however, is a tough sell for some residents near busy business corridors such as Selby or Grand avenues, as well as many seniors and the disabled. Near the Allianz Field soccer stadium, the city is making new efforts to preserve parking for residential users. The St. Paul City Council last month approved permit parking along three streets south of Interstate 94.

In 2012, the debate over reducing parking minimums for restaurants split the Summit Hill Association, which was unable to support or oppose the rules after multiple votes.