Love it or hate it, St. Paul’s green Spruce Tree Centre is having a moment

From the State Capitol to the cathedral to the mansions of Summit Avenue, St. Paul is full of beloved buildings.

Then there’s the forest green, tree-shaped, tile-clad building at the corner of University and Snelling. Universally beloved might be a stretch, but Spruce Tree Centre has developed its own cult following.

Reminiscent of a Christmas tree and polarizing from the time it opened in 1988, the building is now old enough to be a quirky landmark in the Midway neighborhood. The intersection around it is changing, with development at United Village across one street and the coming demolition of a blighted CVS Pharmacy across the other. But Spruce Tree Centre is a constant, and is even having a bit of a moment.

On Reddit, users passionately debate Spruce Tree Centre under headlines like, “Anyone else genuinely love this heinous monstrosity?” On X, people jokingly pitch it as a solution to various St. Paul problems: Dead downtown? Make it an emerald city full of Spruce Tree Centres. Even Minnesota United fans who cheer on their team at the stadium across the street are in on it, knitting the building into scarves along with a laser-eyed loon.

“I just love it,” said Penelope King, who serves on the Union Park District Council, headquartered in Spruce Tree.

She remembers seeing the building on trips into St. Paul from the suburbs as a kid. Even then, she said, it registered as different.

Now that she lives in the neighborhood, King and her spouse have discussed renovating one of their bathrooms to look like the building, with sidewalk-gray floors and green tile walls.

The woman in question was Marie Slawik, one-half of the real estate power couple that also produced Roseville’s HarMar Mall. (HarMar is a portmanteau of Harold, her husband, and Marie.)

Their grandson Brien Slawik, now the president of Har-Mar Inc., said the city approached his grandparents and asked them if they’d ever thought of redeveloping their plot at the heavily polluted corner of University and Snelling. Marie Slawik was game, and wanted to bring a breath of nature to the busy intersection. She also wanted to help modernize the Midway, a neighborhood she loved.

In Spruce Tree Centre, in her eyes, those things came together.

“My grandmother was really fond of — guess what, spruce trees," Brien Slawik said. Her property on the St. Croix River was full of lush spruce trees, which also inspired the family business’ logo. And so, the inspiration for the new building.

“She was like, we should have that baby shaped like a spruce tree,” Brien said. “And make it green.”

“Marie whipped out her business card and said it’s going to be [this shade of] green,” said Mike Koch, the executive vice president of MetroPlains Management, which manages the building and has offices there. The large tile panels were imported from Germany. “And then she whipped out her lipstick and ... said the accent’s going to be red. That’s the lore.”

BRW Architects helped Marie design the mixed-use retail and office building with the tapered treelike shape to disperse air pollution. The new Spruce Tree Drive helped route some traffic off the main roads. The city helped with tax subsidies and the project was awarded bonding money, Brien Slawik said.

When the building opened, Slawik herself admitted it might be too green.

“I still wish it didn’t have so much green,” she told the Star Tribune at the time. “But it is beautiful. I guess it is ahead of its time.”

Marie died the year after Spruce Tree’s completion, and the Slawiks sold the building.

“Of course, I’m biased, but I think it’s a modern building in an old city, in an old area of St. Paul that is still underdeveloped,” he said.

Spruce Tree Centre is part of a long tradition of polarizing architecture, said Brian Sirman, an associate professor of law at Syracuse University who taught a class on reviled architecture and wrote a book about one of the genre’s poster children, the Brutalist Boston City Hall.

Spruce Tree Centre, Sirman said, combines a mundane effort at an Art Deco shape with the “relentless assault” of clichéd mirrored glass and loud green tile more commonly seen in bathrooms. The dissonance, he said, prompts a reaction.

“To be able to combine the ridiculous with the soul-sucking is, I suppose in its way, it’s quite an accomplishment,” Sirman said.

In some ways, Spruce Tree Centre hasn’t lived up to Marie Slawik’s vision. Ground-floor retail didn’t fully take off, and after the 2007 closure of the Applebee’s restaurant, many passers-by don’t have a reason to go inside.

The building underwent a big renovation about a decade ago, and includes a fitness center, heated bike storage and other amenities. And it’s not just green on the outside: With improvements to energy efficiency and the addition of solar panels, it’s LEED-certified.

Over time, Spruce Tree has averaged a 95% lease rate. Today, that number is closer to 56% as it faces the same post-pandemic headwinds as other office spaces, Koch said. Leasing interest has picked up recently, said Brett Draxler, a vice president at Transwestern who markets the building. Current tenants include nonprofits, government groups, law firms and medical services.

Spruce Tree’s management is bullish on its future.

Draxler said he sees the addition of an under-construction office building across the street at United Village as a complement to Spruce Tree Centre — not competition. Neighborhood amenities like restaurants planned for United Village will benefit Spruce Tree Centre, he said.

Over the years, architects have suggested replacing the green tiles on Spruce Tree. But building manager Jason Sklar said that won’t happen. They’re part a selling point other office buildings in the area don’t have: