In St. Paul, a major property owner and a South Dakota-based newcomer are shaking up the tenant mix at six downtown buildings.

A boutique hotel, market-rate apartments and possible senior housing are all in different stages of planning or construction.

Jim Crockarell is no stranger to downtown, but his new business partners are. The building owner controls 14 or more downtown properties through Madison Equities, the family real estate company, and he’s got a major renovation planned for his latest office acquisition, the 32-story First National Bank Building.

Crockarell has been working with Nate Stencil, of the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Stencil Group, on a series of additional downtown projects. Plans include a boutique hotel at the Empire Building on Robert Street, which is currently home to commercial offices, and a yet-to-be-determined mix of housing in the Degree of Honor Building on Cedar Street.

“They’re all fun projects to work on,” Crockarell said. “We hope this will make St. Paul a more vibrant city.”

Meanwhile, the Stencil Group has at least one project downtown that it’s pursuing on its own: the conversion of 345 Cedar St., the former home of the Pioneer Press, into housing. That project includes 154 upscale apartments and a small amount of retail.

For the past four years, Stencil has been focused on developing multi-family housing in Rochester, Minn., where it has four projects under construction and more in the pipeline. St. Paul is a new frontier for the company.

“We saw some good opportunities, starting with the eight-story Pioneer Press building, to spend some time in the St. Paul market,” said Stencil, who founded the Stencil Group in 2009. “That’s kind of what got the ball rolling. We acquired that building, and it led to other opportunities. We like what we see at the city level, and we feel like the downtown core has a lot of momentum.”

Did the Green Line light rail, which opened across the street in 2014, have any impact on purchasing 345 Cedar St.?

“That was probably one of the driving factors,” said Stencil, who called the site “phenomenal.” “It’s very centrally located between Mears Park and Rice Park, and its proximity to the light rail, the location was ideal.”

Here’s what’s happening with six major downtown properties.

LOWRY HOTEL

St. Paul's landmark Lowry Hotel building, photographed at Fourth and Wabasha streets in St. Paul on Wednesday August 28, 2013, is no longer boarded up. (Pioneer Press: Jen Westpfahl)

The Lowry Building on Wabasha Street in downtown St. Paul had a number of boarded up storefronts on 4/11/07 . (Scott Takushi, Pioneer Press)

On Monday, August 8, 2005, in downtown St. Paul, at the corner of 4th street and Wabasha, plywood covers the lower level windows of the Lowry Hotel during it's remodeling.



Crockarell purchased the former Lowry Hotel at 345 Wabasha St. for $5 million about four years ago and he’s almost halfway through a $13 million remodel. The 12-story building, previously owned by St. Paul developer John Rupp, has a storied (and some say infamous) history that dates back to 1928.

It was once the home of the popular Oz nightclub, a disco-era mainstay that operated out of the building’s basement, and Horatio Hornblower’s, a bar that caught fire Jan. 1, 1982, under what some alleged at the time were suspicious circumstances.

These days, it’s the headquarters for the Ramsey County attorney’s office. The front lobby and 90 of the 150 apartments have been renovated; the other 60 apartments are rented out to students from the McNally Smith College of Music.

Working with Heartland chef Lenny Russo, Crockarell hopes to have a first-floor restaurant installed by December and a rooftop skybar with two patios open sometime next year.

FIRST NATIONAL BANK

In October, Crockarell bought the towering First National Bank Building at 332 Minnesota St. for $37 million. The building, known for its iconic neon “1st” sign, is in line for some $6 million in tenant space improvements, as well as $3.3 million in energy-efficiency improvements supported by federal PACE clean-energy financing through the St. Paul Port Authority.

“We’ve got a substantial redevelopment program going,” Crockarell said. “The project is just starting.”

The “1st” sign, which went out after a storm in January, will be re-lit this summer after being converted to LED lighting.

“This is not an incidental, easy project,” Crockarell said. “On the other hand, it would cost $600,000 to tear the whole thing off the building. We’re going to shore up the sign and relight it, since so many people seem to think it’s important for the city.”

He’s signed on some major tenants, including the Social Security Administration, the law firm of Sweeney & Masterson, the public health consulting and contract group Maximus and the Concept Group, a downtown marketing firm.

MERCHANT’S BANK BUILDING

While the First National Bank Building dates back to 1930, its 16-story eastern tower was built between 1910 and 1915. Originally known as the Merchant’s Bank Building, the tower’s upper floors — 7 through 16 — are almost vacant and could be converted into either 100 apartments or a 150-room hotel. Either way, that alone would be a $22 million-plus project. “We’re doing a study now,” Crockarell said.

He’s seeking a federal historic designation for the First National Bank Building, which would make the tower renovation eligible for state and federal historic tax credits.

DEGREE OF HONOR

Crockarell is relocating all the office tenants from the 10-story Degree of Honor Building at 325 Cedar St. into his other properties in advance of a $20 million housing conversion. “We’ve decided that the Degree of Honor building is best used for apartments,” he said.

Some 40 employers will leave the modernist structure, but most are staying nearby. The project will move forward hand in hand with his new partners, the Stencil Group.

Market-rate apartments are likely, but senior housing could be part of the mix. The building was constructed in 1961, but Crockarell believes it will be eligible for historic tax credits. Among other attributes, it was home to the city’s first all-female insurance company, the Degree of Honor Protective Association, and designed by noted architectural firm Bergstedt, Hirsch, Wahlberg & Wold.

“It’s really in its infancy right now,” Stencil said. “It’s hard for me to give much detail, but definitely some sort of housing.”

EMPIRE BUILDING

It’s been said that St. Paul is underserved by hotels, and several new hotel projects on the horizon could help turn that around. Among them, office tenants are already leaving the seven-story, red-brick Empire Building at 360 N. Robert St., where Crockarell is hoping for an artsy, 100-unit boutique hotel. He expects the Stencil Group will partner on the project in the near future.

The one-story Endicott Arcade next door would be converted into the hotel lobby. The $22 million renovation into an “arts-related hotel” will benefit from its proximity to the Minnesota Museum of American Art, which is expanding next door in the Pioneer-Endicott buildings.

The hotel brand will be announced soon.

“We’ve interviewed two or three. We’ve picked out a brand, but we haven’t signed a deal with them,” Crockarell said. “We’re still checking.”

345 CEDAR ST.

The Stencil Group last June purchased the eight-story office building at 345 Cedar St., the former home of the Pioneer Press, to convert it into 154 market-rate apartments, with some retail on the ground level and skyway. It’s a $28 million project.

“We will be starting that up in the next 60 days. We were hoping to have started by now, but we took a step back and decided to apply for historical nomination for the building, and we’ve gotten some positive feedback,” Stencil said.

Built in 1955, the block-long building at Fourth and Cedar streets once housed the Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance Co., known today as Securian. It was occupied by the Pioneer Press from 1984 until late last year, when it moved across the Robert Street Bridge to 10 River Park Plaza on the West Side.