In downtown St. Paul’s Lowertown, the once-condemned Station 4 nightclub building has a future, after all, but not as a music venue. Instead, the former rock club at Fourth and Sibley streets will be converted into 23 apartments above retail, including a possible yoga studio.

Under the LLC title 201 Opportunity Fund, developer Mike Sowers has submitted a site plan to the city for a historic renovation of the shuttered heavy metal oasis into multi-family housing. State and federal historic tax credits are the only public financing involved. Sowers said in its current state, the worn and vacant building has been widely recognized as a “drag on the neighborhood,” but it’s ripe for new life.

“We bought it on Dec. 24,” said Sowers, the CEO and primary broker of the Maple Grove-based Commercial Investors Group. “We’re keeping what’s there. We’re planning on opening in the late fall of 2019, is the goal.”

The Station 4 site, which entertained metal and underground rock fans for decades under the names The Lab and Ryan’s, closed abruptly in 2014 and was put up for sale later that year. It was condemned by the city in 2015, but its upstairs studios have continued to draw their share of lease-holders.

NOT ENOUGH FINANCING FOR ART LOFTS

Sowers said those 19 work studios — which included three residential “live-work” units — appealed to him, and he had once hoped to maintain them as art lofts. He came up $1 million short in financing, and the city showed little interest in providing the rest without a larger residential component.

“There wasn’t much traction to help with the gap,” Sowers said.

Plans now call for 23 market-rate apartments above retail, and some ground-level work is already complete. Urban Wok — a cashless counter-service restaurant — opened at 201-207 E. Fourth St. this fall.

Sowers is in talks with a yoga studio and a “cool Mediterranean food concept,” but he has no signed leases as of yet. He’s still advertising 3,000 to 6,000 square feet of retail and bar space in the corner unit — where the actual metal bar was located — on LoopNet.com:

“Corner Unit. Super High Ceilings. Expose(d) Brick Walls. Has basement underneath possibly available. New Storefront will be included. Historic building.”

“The building will be completely renovated including a new roof, passenger elevator, and all new exterior storefront. The Lowertown area has been growing in success with increased retail and lofts coming into the area around Mears Park and CHS stadium.”

DIFFICULT HISTORY, GREEN LINE ACCESS

The property sits across Fourth Street from the Union Depot transit hub and the first (or last) stop along Metro Transit’s Green Line. The block has struggled to retain ground-level tenants but has seen some signs of recent retail growth. On the other hand, residential growth in Lowertown has been strong.

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Staffers at MPR’s music stations The Current and Classical MPR vote to unionize Not far down the street at 213 E. Fourth St., the Rumours & Innuendo bar closed in 2010, and the space remained empty almost until the end of light-rail construction. The short-lived Bedlam Lowertown theater occupied the bar in mid-2014, but closed in November 2016. The Hygga Lowertown cafe moved in little less than a year later.

Sowers, whose previous real estate work in St. Paul was as a contractor, is also advertising office space for lease in converted warehouses in Blaine and Little Canada.