St. Thomas is moving ahead with plans to appeal the zoning restrictions limiting its development of mid-campus to the city of St. Paul and could reach a resolution as early as this July.
In the meantime, university officials have been running the gamut of district council meetings and talks with neighborhood groups to accrue feedback about the changes it seeks to make, which include allowing for new classrooms, residences and retail space to be built on mid-campus and adding two levels of parking to Anderson Parking Facility.
St. Thomas is also seeking the power to purchase new land in its immediate surrounding area, something that Jim Brummer, St. Thomas’ vice president for facilities management, said the university hasn’t done since the 1980s.
While the university can technically appeal to the city without community approval, St. Thomas neighborhood relations director Jerome Benner told The Crest that the university wants “a good amount of check-in with neighbors” before it proceeds. St. Thomas has scheduled further check-ins before July, in addition to sending out a survey to neighbors for direct feedback.
“We’re definitely keeping our options open and making sure that neighbors have enough information that they feel confident in what we’re proposing,” Benner said. “I think this is a really complex issue, and we wanted to give space and time for neighbors to really just take it in.”
St. Thomas first proposed the zoning changes to neighbors in February.
Buying neighborhood land
While most of the university’s requests for zoning changes concern its existing property on mid-campus, Benner said that the university hopes to open up the possibility of buying new land, as well.
At the Macalester-Groveland Housing and Land Use meeting on April 22, university chief of staff Amy McDonough said that St. Thomas is the only entity in the city that is prohibited from buying land within a one-mile radius of its current campus bounds, which she called “an undue hardship.”
“I think we want the same ability that other colleges have: to look at opportunities for specific pieces of property, just the way other colleges do,” McDonough said. “Don’t shoot the messenger here; we don’t have any plans to do that.”
At the same meeting, Brummer said that the last time the university purchased land outside its current boundaries was in 1987, when it acquired South Campus.
The university has made some notable property moves since then, including:
- Buying land on its mid-campus, such as the house at 2133 Grand Ave., which is exempt to the restriction because it is already within the university’s existing boundaries, according to Brummer.
- Buying land a little over two miles south of campus for the site of a proposed baseball and softball stadium, which falls outside the current range restriction.
- Offering to buy Town & Country Club golf course north of campus, which likely would have conflicted with the purchasing restriction if the deal had gotten off the ground.
In the April 22 meeting, MGCC representative Mimi Gingold said she opposed lifting the university’s purchasing ban because “that’s how we’re losing property” for residents.
“Gosh, you may be the only campus with restrictions on buying more property, but I certainly don’t think that’s reason to change what we have,” Gingold said. “This has been going on for years in one form or another, the buying of properties. This campus creep happens, and I don’t see it being in our interests to want to stop that restriction.”
District council member Elizabeth Wefel said that the idea concerned her because of “skyrocketing” property taxes.
“We have a problem in St. Paul that our net tax capacity keeps going down,” Wefel said. “And so, I’m sure you guys would do some wonderful things with land, but I get concerned any time that … land would sort of move off of for-profit to a non-profit just because that just makes the burden harder on other taxpayers.”
Meanwhile, board member Catherine Plessner said that the issue is bigger than neighbors’ concerns and added that many residents would be happy to sell their house to St. Thomas if the restriction were removed.
“The only constant in life is change, and we’re not going to be here forever, either, so I just think they need to have more leeway, and they’ve done such a masterful job,” Plessner said. “I think they bring the only diversity we have here.”
McDonough emphasized that the university has no current plans to purchase or develop on new property.
Committee member Tom Moss responded: “With all due respect, there were no plans to build a giant arena a few years ago, too.”
Consolidating neighborhood organizations
Two of the four main stakeholding organizations involved with providing feedback on St. Thomas’ proposition are the Union Park and Macalester-Groveland district councils — city-funded governing bodies for the neighborhoods St. Thomas resides in.
The other two are the West Summit Neighborhood Advisory Commission and the Summit Avenue Residential Preservation Association. WSNAC was created in 2004 in part to resolve a legal dispute between St. Thomas and SARPA — the same dispute that instituted many of the zoning conditions that the university now seeks to revise.
One of the university’s goals in its appeal to the city is to consolidate the functions of WSNAC and fold them into the existing district councils according to Benner, who is also one of WSNAC’s co-chairs.
Benner pointed to the fact that, unlike WSNAC, the district council’s members are paid to address neighborhood concerns. Meanwhile, he said that neighbors “aren’t terribly familiar” with WSNAC and that the councils would be a better way to facilitate communication between university leadership and neighbors.
“At the end of the day, the city recognizes the district councils as the main platform for university and community relations, and so we want to recognize what the city recognizes,” Benner said.
At the April 22 MGCC meeting, Wefel said that she has seen an uptick in participation with the district council that she attributes to St. Thomas-related concerns. Still, she said the council has other stakeholders to be mindful of when it comes to issues like promoting the housing overlay.
“I understand why there has been folks who are not happy with what’s going on in that side of the district, but there’s a whole lot more to Mac-Groveland,” Wefel said.
Neighbors express communication concerns
Benner said that the results of St. Thomas’ survey to community members will be discussed at an open house on campus in June. From there, he said he hopes that the board of each district council will submit its recommendation to the St. Paul Planning Commission before the university makes its appeal.
Benner said that “it depends on which issues that are the sticking points” in terms of whether a negative response from the boards would pause the university’s plans.
Josh Capistrant, a St. Paul resident who lives several blocks east of the university, said he was concerned by the district councils’ lack of involvement with the survey, as St. Thomas is under no obligation to implement feedback from it. As a former member of WSNAC and the Union Park district council, he was present for the controversy that led to the 2004 conditional use permit.
“I think St. Thomas, more than anything, wants to be able to point to things and say, ‘Hey, we did all this. We did this work, we did this, it’s good,’” Capistrant said. “And, yeah, I’m grateful they have a process they’re adhering to, but I’m not sure how transparent it’s going to be.”
Capistrant said he hopes neighbors have “some good asks” from St. Thomas that go beyond smaller issues. He said such concerns, like parking on streets, might be better addressed if neighbors used their leverage with the CUP to mandate that St. Thomas subsidize incentives that encourage students to take transit or bike to school rather than driving.
“I feel like what St. Thomas wants is going to get railroaded, and the community is going to lose out, and then in five years there’s going to be another thing we’re reacting to that kind of had the roots of its injustice in our inattention to it,” Capistrant said.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
