St. Paul Real Estate

Bluffs

by Erik Hare

Most people think Minnesota is a pretty flat state for a good reason – most of it is.  Yet there are the rolling hills of the “Driftless Zone,” which the glaciers missed in Southern Minesota.  We also have the majestic Lake Superior shoreline of tall cliffs.  But we can’t forget the bluffs of the Mississippi River that start in Saint Paul and define the town – not for the great beauty of them, but because they are why Saint Paul is what it is.

It all starts at the end of the last ice age, when a tremendous amount of ice melted and rolled south.  A great valley was carved by this river which had its top at what we now know as either Cathedral Hill or Yorg’s Bluff on the West Side.  Over time, the glaciers finally melted and all that was left to feed the river was the rainfall that makes Minnesota so fertile.  The river retreated into a much narrower valley and became the Mississippi of today.

The floor of the ice age river that still exists is often known as the “Downtown/West End Shelf”.  It’s about 70 feet above the Mississippi itself, but the uncarved land of all points around it is another 70 feet or so higher.  The result is a rugged land that seems like a strange place to build a city.

The reason that Saint Paul is here, however, can be traced to these bluffs on the Mississippi.  Practical  navigation on the great river ends roughly at Fort Snelling, where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers converge.  Above that there just isn’t a lot of water, which is why Josiah Snelling stopped where he did to build the fort in 1819.  In practical  terms, it’s one end of America.

The high bluffs at Fort Snelling are good for building a fort, but not much use for a city.  The closest place to the end of navigation on the Mississippi where there was a break in the bluffs, meaning you could easily get down to the river, was at the Upper Landing.  In the 1890s, Saint Paul was built from there.  This is what we now know as Chestnut Street, and the Lower Landing was just downriver a little bit.  All together, it was the last place you could build a working city on the Mississippi, at least until it was dredged.

The river was dredged, and eventually Minneapolis became possible.  Perhaps not all technology is a benefit, after all.  But Saint Paul was already well established, and continued to be the place where the great wealth of this land was shipped out to the rest of the world.  The railroads came in and built their tracks along the Mississippi, using clear, flat swampland along the shallow river.  Gradually, fill along the banks made everything we see down on the “flats”, creating a third distinct level for the city.

The bluffs themselves are often hidden by buildings and concrete, but they can be seen in many places.  The picture above shows the bluff just below Kellogg Park in Downtown, one of the best preserved natural bluffs in the heart of the city.  These bluffs are not only beautiful, they are why we are.  Saint Paul always has been a city defined by the bluffs of the Mississippi.

All that remains

Demolition of the xcel energy high bridge plant continues. We can hear the jackhammers and heavy equipment from up on the river bluff. The stack was removed in June of 2008.  It seems that they are taking the rest of the building down one brick at a time and making a mess too.

Monday, all day

It is hard to get into the swing of things after a holiday weekend and I had a great weekend.  The 4th of July is one of the few times that banks and real estate companies close. I can work, and I did work some but I worked on some of my own projects, not my business. Here are some photos I took in the last few days. Who has time to read on Monday?

The most colorful street in St. Paul,Cesar Chavez Blvd, formerly Concord Street.

The view from the steps of the Science Museum of Minnesota

The flowers hanging from the light posts downtown in front of the Landmark center.

I promise that tomorrow I will have some exciting numbers . . well as exciting as numbers can be.

Downtown St. Paul closed on July 3rd

I went downtown yesterday and discovered that it was closed.  The shops had signs on them indicating that they are closed until Monday. The streets were empty during the morning rush hour, and there was an eerie silence.

The photo is of the Landmark Center, the side that no one ever photographs.

Home

by G. Sax

I was a renter until the age of 37. According to the National Association of REALTORS® and other surveys, that's fairly old to become a homeowner. Most new owners come in below 30. Power to 'em. At 29, I was flopping around in one of the most expensive cities in the nation at the most expensive time in our nation's residential real estate history. A 2-bedroom, 2-bath (2 BR, 2 ba) house at $625,000 wasn't a good option.

So I held my wallet and waited it out and eventually moved back to the country's middlemarch and bought a decent 5 BR, 2 ba for well under $200,000. Life is good for me as a homeowner. Fixed rate. Solid neighbors. Comfortable mortgage payments.

You can have this, too, if you consider the great city of St. Paul. There are good people who can help you attain this dream. Maybe you can find them if you click somewhere near these words.

But this is not an ad for REALTORS® or for St. Paul or even for homeownership, although all of these things are worthwhile and worth promotion.

No, this post is for the concept of "home." Even when I was renting, I often felt at home in the place where I slept each night. But I'm more settled now, and I intend to bask in the glow of homeownership for a good many years.

I feel particularly reflective on where I've been and how I got here this week because we have a Big American Holiday coming up: Independence Day. The only summer holiday draws people out of their homes and into yon neighborhoods and townships afar. Minnesotans notoriously travel north, but even in other parts of the country the kids are packed up and the minivans are driven here and there to experience something other than...home.

My wife is in California and I miss her. I thought of making an airplane dash to her this week. I have great friends in Milwaukee, and I thought of making an automobile dash to them this week. And then I took a deep breath and I looked around my house and yard and decided to do something I can't say that I've ever done. I'm going to stay put this year. I'm going to stay home.

Last year at this time, I had six guests in the heat of July. This year, it's just me and my dogs. I've said all of a dozen words in the past couple of days while hanging around my home. It's new and different and borderline un-American. I pay no mind to that line of thinking. Because I'm home. And, damn, home feels better than it ever has before.

Find yours. Live it. Live in it. Love it. Take the time to not take home for granted.

Happy 4th.

Slow Trains

There is a city ordinance that requires trains to go slowly.  I can't find it on the city web site but as I recall they can't go any faster than about 10 miles an hour. I guess that cuts down on noise.  I know they are not supposed to toot their horns at the crossings either. There is a downside to the slow trains. The intersection of Chestnut street and Shepard road has been a challenge for years.  When a train comes through no one goes anywhere for a long time.  The trains are long and slow.

On Saturday I was walking near the science museum and waited for a very long train.  When there were about five cars left to cross the tracks it just stopped.  I guess we like things slow here in St. Paul.It seems to me that we were promised a pedestrian bridge but it never materialized.  There will never be any kind of a bridge over the tracks for cars because the immediate neighbors don't want one. Shepard Road and Chestnut would be a great place for a hot dog vendor to hang out.

The Street - Where You Live

By Erik Hare

You drive on the street in front of your house every day, but how often have you looked at it?  Perhaps on a sticky hot day a crew comes through, spreading the scent of tar low and wide across the street.  Beyond those days, you might rarely the street where you live anywhere near as much though as the people and houses that live along it. No matter what, though, your taxes paid for what the Public Works Department has given you.  What did you get?

Most of the streets in Saint Paul are not, technically “paved”.  That term refers to streets that have been set with asphalt curb to curb, and in Saint Paul that only happens on major streets (on the left in the composite picture).  The neighborhood streets are done with “chip and seal”, or crushed rock that has some oil applied to keep it together (on the right).  You can see in the picture that on the right it is mostly rock but on the left it is mostly not-rock – pavement is mostly tar, not stone.  What’s the difference?

It all goes back to the first paved streets in about 1820.  John McAdam discovered that if you seal the water from below a road, you didn’t have frost heaving and other things that break up the surface.  His method of sealing the road was to put down sharp crushed rock that was compressed to make a “macadam” surface.  It worked.  Our neighborhood streets are a simple variation on macadam where the stone is put down, compressed by cars running over it for a few days, and then sprayed with an oil that seals it all up. 

If you ran this kind of surface with tar, you’d have a “tarmac”.  That’s what many of the main roads are in Saint Paul, and what is pictured.  You can also make a surface that is as smooth as glass with nothing but tar, but it doesn’t wear as well as a tarmac paving.  Our Public Works Department prefers the tarmac type of paving just for the durability. Since they spend $28 million a year on "right  of way maintenance", every small savings adds up. 

There are problems with the “chip and seal” or sealed macadam kind of paving we use on our neighborhood streets.  For one thing, they do require maintenance every few years to keep cracks like the one I pictured from forming.  When cracks do develop, they often widen and spread much quicker, as you can see in the composite photo.  But this kind of surface is still much cheaper in a place where there isn’t a ton of traffic forcing high maintenance, so it’s the choice for our neighborhood streets.

The way our streets are made is easy to ignore, if you choose to.  That’s by design.  We have a good Public Works Department that does its best to stay on top of things.  It’s good to know what they are up to if, for no other reason, than we’re paying for it.  I think we’re getting a pretty good deal in Saint Paul, too.

Orange Flowers

By Erik Hare

It’s the first day of summer, one of the four seasons we love so much in Minnesota.  To many people, though, it’s nothing more than the “other” season.  We have Winter, which we’re famous for, and we have the flowering of tubineus naranja – the orange cones that sprout like a kind of weed in the middle of our roads.  It’s road construction season in Minnesota!

This year is like pretty much any other in most ways, but it seems a bit worse.  We don’t have to worry about ice and snow hampering our way to work, but we do have to wait in a long line to squeeze through one lane.  Which season is more frustrating?  At least during road construction, we have a guide.

The websites provided by MnDOT can tell you just what to expect in either text or graphics.  There’s no reason to not know just what’s up.  This naturally creates a lot of discussion about how to get from one place to another once the best ways are marked off by the orange cones.  It’s not the most exciting discussion in the world, but it’s terribly important all the same.  It might make the difference between getting home in time for dinner or not.

It’s entirely possible to get into an elaborate discussion with a perfect stranger in a bar about the best way to get to, say, Shoreview.  Road construction eventually becomes something like a pastime to be analyzed the way you might follow the batting averages of your favorite Twins player.  There are so many of the orange cones flowering through the asphalt that it becomes something like a sport.

This won’t go on forever, of course.  Sooner or later, the cold weather will return and the orange cones will wilt like any flower.  But at the start of summer, they have their magnificent blooms all over Minnesota.  It’s worth visiting the websites to know exactly where this show is playing – so that you can do your best to avoid it.  Good luck!

Around the Town

by G. Sax

I work in real estate, and I play in St. Paul. Sometimes I work in St. Paul, too. Like last Friday. I went on my final longish training run before my first ever marathon this upcoming Saturday up the way in Duluth, Minnesota (wish me luck!).

I see a lot of cool things while running around St. Paul. Cool houses. Cool coffee shops. Cool parks. Cool dogs. Cool people. And sometimes I see cool, photoworthy stuff. I'm not so cucumber cool as to carry a camera with me while I'm cruising the capital city like Ed does over in Minneapolis. Ed's done the marathon thing a few more times than I have; plus he thought of the camera thing first, and I try not to be too much of a copycat.

But after my run, I did retrace my route via car and took a couple of shots that caught my eye.

In the Northwest Como neighborhood: Quotable Cooper. I like an elementary school that draws inspiration from the shock rock lexicon.

Off of Pierce Butler Route: The final day of Minnehaha Lanes.

It was a little sad to see the teardown of the old bowling alley. My grandma bowled in leagues there. My mom bowled in leagues there. I had a red, flame-painted bike with a banana seat get stolen from there. My five-year high school reunion was held there several years ago (and I got really, really drunk there). I took my kids there a little over a year ago, and we had so much fun we bought an extra game. Even then, the employees knew the Lanes' days were numbered.

So long, old friend. Here's to hoping your land is redeveloped right. I'll think of you fondly while finishing off spares over at Midway Pro Bowl.

Stormdrains

By Erik Hare

Keeping a city like Saint Paul clean isn’t easy.  A lot of the work is done by nothing more than a good summer thunderstorm that rinses the city down and floats off al the garbage.  This all winds up in the Mississippi, however, and we can’t pollute what we share with so many other people.  That explains the little sign on the left.

Many years ago, sewers from houses and streets all wound up in the same place:  the Mississippi.  It’s hard to imagine how horrible the Mississippi must have smelled and looked in that era, but it’s clear that people wanted to do something about it as soon as they could.  As early as 1912 Saint Paul began routing the sewers to a treatment plant at Pig’s Eye Lake, a backwater of Ol’ Muddy.  It was an impressive start.

There was a side effect, however, that no one really saw coming.  Since storm water and household waste went to the same place, a really good storm would increase the amount of water into the plant.  It kept over-flowing, dumping the raw sewage into the Mississippi without any treatment at all.  A better fix had to be found.

In 1985, Saint Paul started separating all of the sewers in town.  What this means is that household and industrial waste went to the plant to be processed and storm sewers were sent to the Mississippi directly.  The problem was solved, or at least mostly solved because this solution had a side effect as well – there was nothing between the storm sewers and the Mississippi.

This isn’t a big problem, at least not as long as people don’t dump horrible things down the storm sewers.  This explains the decals and signs on every one of our storm drains, as shown here.  They go directly to the Mississippi, they do not pass the treatment plant, and they certainly do not get $200.  We trust people to be kind to the Mississippi, and so far it’s been working out pretty well in general. 

The next time a summer rain washes down Saint Paul we’ll see them fill up and neatly carry the water off.  We can only hope it happens soon, given the drought we’ve been having.  The concrete and asphalt of the city means that water enters the Mississippi a lot faster than it would naturally, but we seem to work on one problem at a time.   In the meantime, if you want to save up rainwater in a barrel it is great for watering your lawn and other uses, but that’s a different story altogether.