A 16-story building in downtown St. Paul is expected to stand vacant by next Tuesday.
The property owner, Madison Equities, hadn’t been paying Alliance Bank Center’s utility bills. In mid-March, it told tenants they had two days to leave the building before the lights went off.
St. Paul officials negotiated with Xcel Energy to keep the lights on until the end of the month, buying the small businesses inside just enough time to move thousands of products and pieces of equipment.
Rico’s on Wabasha is a small restaurant on the first floor that sells tacos, burgers and ice cream. Its owner and sole employee goes by “Rico.” He started his restaurant five years ago.
Despite the news of the building’s closure, business is good. A regular, Megan Burchett, stopped by the store last week to grab a burrito and find out when Rico was leaving.
“Rico’s is honestly my favorite place to eat,” she said. “Definitely bummed to hear that they’re not going to be in the neighborhood anymore.”
Rico said he’d been considering moving out of Alliance Bank Center for a while when the notice to vacate arrived. Spring is already a busy season for him. He was in the middle of planning a seasonal menu change and scheduling special events.
A sudden move was not part of his plan.
“This all just threw me for a loop. I was completely shocked,” he said. “There’s no way I ever thought this was going to happen.”
The future of Rico’s on Wabasha is uncertain. Rico hasn’t found a place to move. He wants to stay in downtown St. Paul near where he grew up but doesn’t know if that will be possible.
He doesn’t want to lose the successful store. He said he’s earning about five times as much as he was when the store first opened, and the hours let him spend quality time with his three children.
“I’m just trying to build some generational wealth for them. When I grew up, I didn’t really have anything,” Rico said. “I had a dad that lived in another state. I always told myself I was going to be there for my kids.”
Rico and multiple other tenants said Alliance Bank Center has been poorly maintained for years. The gate in front of Rico’s store broke last fall, and Alliance Bank Center still hasn’t fixed it. While the gate was broken, someone reached inside and stole the iPad Rico used to take orders.
The gate is currently held together by thin gun locks.
His heater broke last winter. He said he asked Alliance Bank Center for a space heater, but they never provided one.
“When it was negative, I just didn’t come to work because it was so cold,” Rico said. “I went and got my own little space heater because I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to make some money.”
Other tenants said one winter, pipes in the parking garage leaked so much they flooded the floor. Broken windows around the outside of the building are covered by wooden planks.
A couple of vacant storefronts separate Rico’s on Wabasha from a jewelry store owned by Paul Hartquist. He’s been moving things out of the store a little bit at a time. A stack of old watch catalogues sits on the windowsill outside for people to take.
In the almost 36 years he’s been in Alliance Bank Center, he’s watched people leave downtown St. Paul.
“It used to be so vibrant downtown. It used to be just thousands of people walking around,” he said. “It was teeming with people. Just an incredible difference. It’s sad.”
Like many tenants, he’s moving his business to Town Square, a building next door.
“I like this location because I have got a view over the street and the sun comes in,” Hartquist said. “In Town Square, there’s no sun.”
Hartquist said all of his business comes from word-of-mouth referrals. He sometimes ends up fitting multiple generations of the same family for wedding rings.
Mike DeTomaso is one of his loyal customers. He works for the St. Paul Police Department and Hartquist has been his go-to jeweler for about 15 years. When he heard Hartquist had to move, he organized a group of friends and police officers, also Hartquist’s clients, to move larger items.
“He’s been an important staple in this community,” DeTomaso said. “He has a very loyal client base, and we want to help him.”
A few doors down is the Skyway Mart, a convenience store owned by Eli Johnson. He has hundreds of chip bags, snacks and fridges full of drinks to move.
“It’s a lot because you've got to update everything with the state of Minnesota, as far as the licensing,” he said. “I say the physical moving is probably going to be the easy part.”
Just past the dirty, immobile escalators is shoe store Classic Kicks.
Its owner, who uses the name Petty Wapp, said he suspected Alliance Bank Center would shut down for months. He started renting from Madison Equities in March, at first without an official lease. He said he heard of many tenants who’d paid rent in advance not getting refunded when their Madison Equities buildings suddenly closed.
He said he didn’t want to risk losing money to a landlord that could kick him out at any time. So, he stopped paying rent in August.
Madison Equities didn’t ask for it until the end of January.
“My rent was only $200. So, I’m putting it to the side like maybe they’re going to give me this eviction notice after 60 days,” he said. “They never did it.”
He said it almost seemed as if Madison Equities “forgot” he was renting.
Madison Equities is downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner and facing massive debts. Its downtown portfolio was placed on the market last year.
The company has relinquished multiple buildings to lenders.
In its notice to Alliance Bank Center tenants, the company blamed its financial hardships on the “deteriorating conditions of downtown St. Paul” and its proximity to Central Station on the Green Line.
“Unfortunately, landlord cannot sustain the costs to operate the building any longer and will be closing the building,” the notice reads. “Landlord did not want to make this very difficult decision, but it had no choice given the unsustainable financial situation that exists at the building.”
Madison Equities has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
According to a study by the University of Toronto School of Cities, since 2019, foot traffic has fallen 26 percent across 52 major U.S. downtowns. Alliance Bank Center had less than 50 percent of its storefronts occupied when it was placed on the market. Its namesake, Alliance Bank, moved a few blocks away to Wells Fargo Place last April.
A spokesperson for the St. Paul mayor’s office, Jennifer Lor, said the city hasn’t decided what to do when Alliance Bank Center becomes vacant. They stress that Madison Equities acted on its own when asking tenants to leave. Because Madison Equities is no longer providing security, she said tenants might see more police officers patrolling around the building.
For now, it appears that Alliance Bank Center will be cold, dark and empty by the end of the month. The building is an important skyway connection downtown, and a notice from the city posted on the building’s entrances said the building will have restricted skyway hours: closed on weekends and shorter hours during the week.
City officials plan to discuss the future of access to the building’s skyway at a public Skyway Governance Advisory Committee meeting on March 28.
