Developer Bill Bisanz faced a challenge when he planned to buy a vacant 1950s-era office building in downtown St. Paul several years ago.

Bisanz wanted to convert all eight levels of the building — former home to the Pioneer Press — into housing. But time was running out on acquiring financing.

With just weeks to go before the scheduled sale closing, could he obtain the state and federal historic tax credits he needed for a $54 million residential makeover?

What followed was a breakneck race to persuade state and federal authorities to save 345 Cedar St. It was hardly the most architecturally compelling of downtown structures, but a notable entry nonetheless in the commercial heyday of the city after World War II.

‘A LOT OF MONEY WENT INTO THAT BUILDING’

Today, the Press House Apartments — as the building is now called — are nearly leased out.

During a recent tour, only two of 144 income-restricted apartments were still available for rent.

“A lot of money went into that building,” said Bisanz, the CEO of Selby Avenue-based Real Estate Equities. “A lot of attention to detail.”

Bisanz and other Real Estate Equities employees recently led nearly three dozen current and former Pioneer Press journalists through former newspaper offices converted into living quarters, complete with 10-foot-high ceilings.

Nobody builds 10-foot tall ceilings anymore… yet another appeal of old retrofitted buildings. pic.twitter.com/MsPiKzQXL3 — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) May 22, 2019

Former basement rooms now comprise a fitness center, as well as a television and sports lounge offering mini golf, bocce ball, pool tables and a video simulation room for testing golf swings and shooting at digital targets.

A skyway connection that grew derelict after the paper’s departure no longer smells of urine and abandonment.

The ground-floor and elevator lobbies retain the same elaborate marble wainscotting in their walls and flooring that have greeted visitors since the building first opened for business as the Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance Co. — the precursor to Securian — in 1955. The Pioneer Press moved into the building in 1984.

Wood paneling and light fixtures from two top-floor, executive-suite board rooms still line the two one-bedroom apartments there. The yellow-orange exterior is no less bulky and yellowish-orange.

“The massing of it is what I would call commercial, institutional, mid-century modern,” said Twin Cities architect Gar Hargens, who served as a consultant on the project. “It’s not Brutalist or Soviet — it’s just a very clean, mid-century design with continuous bands of windows and brick … (that had) to be interrupted or changed in subtle ways. We tried to keep the flavor, so that they are continuous, and look much the same.”

In short, a structure that was once a second home to insurance executives and “ink-stained wretches” for six decades is now home to small families. Bisanz finalized the building purchase for $8.7 million in November 2017, more than double the $3.5 million a previous buyer paid in 2015.

It’s a $54 million project that almost didn’t get done.

A FAST RACE INTO HISTORY

In 2015, shortly before the Pioneer Press moved its newsroom and newspaper operations to office space south of the Robert Street Bridge, the Stencil Group of Sioux Falls, S.D., the 162,000-square-foot building with a Rochester, Minn.-based partner, with the notion of constructing market-rate housing — mistakenly estimated at the time to be a $22 million undertaking.

Those plans quickly stalled.

“They looked at a couple different ways of marketing it, including a hotel and market-rate apartments, and it ultimately didn’t happen,” said Bisanz, noting the investment community was “in a holding pattern” around the time of the 2016 presidential election. “It was a tricky time for any developer to put deals together.” Related Articles Staffers at MPR’s music stations The Current and Classical MPR vote to unionize

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Nate Stencil remains a minority owner in the project, Bisanz said.

In stepped Real Estate Equities, which received approval from the St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority in early 2017 for $24 million in conduit revenue bonds — a type of bond market borrowing that will be paid back through apartment rents. With the city’s support, the project also qualified for federal low-income housing tax credits.

“I remember going into (then-St. Paul Mayor) Chris Coleman’s office and telling him it would be a great project right across from the light rail, and activate the skyway,” Bisanz recalled, “and he was like, ‘I’m open-minded, but I really want to explore what’s possible with startups, high-tech and modern businesses coming into that space.’ ”

A city-led task force of business and real estate experts eventually convinced Coleman the building wasn’t the right fit for the startup community.

The Press House has a mini-golf course in the basement … ! pic.twitter.com/oFHjHTXyjd — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) May 22, 2019

‘TIME WAS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL’

As it turned out, that was the easy part.

Getting the secretary of the U.S. Interior Department to award the redevelopment project federal historic tax credits would require a buy-in from the State Historic Preservation Office, which had its questions.

“Time was absolutely critical,” said Hargens, who held his first lunch meeting with Bisanz in June or July of 2017. “This was a huge project. They didn’t own the building. They were buying it, and that closing was in August. The granting of historic tax credits had to happen before the closing.”

Hargens, who had chaired the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission under Mayors Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly, had a full Rolodex of contacts in historic preservation.

Not the least of them was a specialist who had worked closely with him for years in city government — Amy Spong, now a division director with the State Historic Preservation Office.

Convincing the state office that an open-floor office building built in 1955 was a historic gem worth preserving took careful prep work.

Making the case that subdividing it into 144 apartments would preserve rather than upend that history was no less challenging. Questions arose about where to situate walking corridors to reflect the intent of the original architects.

FIRST NEW DOWNTOWN CONSTRUCTION AFTER WWII

Following a 72-page nomination signed by Spong, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June 2017, a requisite step to become eligible for the tax credits.

“It was the first new construction building in downtown St. Paul following the Great Depression and World War II,” said Spong, deputy state historic preservation officer.

She noted the building met two of the National Register’s four standards for eligibility, including its “International Style” architecture — which represented a novel departure for the period — and its early contributions to the post-war commercial boom.

To prepare the application for the historic tax credits, officials with the state office met with Bisanz at length, with Hargens serving as a special consultant.

Former Pioneer Press architecture critic Larry Millett, who had spent nearly 20 years working in the building, also advocated on the developer’s behalf.

“The crux of the disagreement was SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office) has never had to deal much with mid-century modern open-floor plans, as opposed to old Victorians,” Hargens said. “That’s my opinion. The fact that it had this open-floor plan and Real Estate Equities was going to chop it all up bothered them. After lots of modifications … we finally got consensus. SHPO sent it to National, and National (the secretary of the Interior) understood the urgency.”

“It’s newly minted as a historic building, in relative terms,” Hargens added. “It’s sort of a new category. And they rightfully were approaching it carefully. It merited a lot of discussion. We got it done, and I think it looks great.”

In the end, the developer agreed to keep the ceilings largely as they had been for decades.

“The one thing they insisted is that we re-create the acoustic ceiling tiles that were in these big open spaces,” said Hargens, who called the pockmarked ceiling material an emblem of his own childhood. “Every elementary school classroom I was in in the 1950s, that’s what was on the ceilings — Armstrong cellulose.”

WORKFORCE HOUSING

The apartments, which range from studios to three-bedroom units, are income-restricted as “workforce housing,” meaning they’re targeted to modestly middle-income working families.

To qualify, a single renter can earn no more than $42,000. A family of two would be restricted to a household income of $48,000. A family of four could earn $56,580. Monthly rents — which start at $970 for studios and $1,032 for one-bedrooms — include most utilities.

Cynthia Louthenbach, who used to live in another income-restricted building in downtown St. Paul, said her previous landlord declined to install a grab bar in her shower, despite the fact she uses a wheelchair. Relocating to the Press House Apartments has been an upgrade, she said. Related Articles St. Paul City Council approves $600,000 charge for downtown improvement district

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“I’m very, very pleased,” said Louthenbach, who moved in a few weeks ago, while outside the building one afternoon. “There’s a gentleman that’s always out here picking up the trash and cigarette butts. It just feels better.”

When it comes to “adaptive reuses” of post-war buildings, Spong foresees many such historic preservation projects ahead.

“We’re definitely moving into mid-century buildings being eligible for the National Register and historic tax credit program,” she said.