St. Paul to sell Payne Avenue lot for $17.5M affordable housing, commercial project

The same development team currently working on a new, 175-unit apartment building near the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul is pitching a mixed-use project for a long-vacant lot on the city's East Side.

The firm Schafer Richardson and developer Peter Brodd last year bought a city-owned lot at 217 Chestnut St. that is near the arena and revealed plans for a multifamily building in the neighborhood along W. Seventh Street.

Now they have been granted "tentative developer" status for another city-owned parcel in a less bustling, but still promising, part of St. Paul, which has also seen significant redevelopment activity. The parcel on Payne Avenue is between the Ward 6 restaurant and Kendall Ace Hardware, which are anchoring a revival on the southern end of the thoroughfare.

The developers' plans call for a four-story building with 97 units of affordable workforce housing, 7,500 square feet of first-floor commercial space and 92 underground parking spaces. The housing mix would include 47 efficiency, 32 one-bedroom and 18 two-bedroom units.

Under the deal with the city, Schafer Richardson and Brodd have until the end of 2018 to line up financing for the $17.5 million project. They are seeking city and state assistance to help fill a projected $1.5 million funding gap.