ST PAUL, Minn. — Few people know downtown St. Paul as well as Miyoko Omori.
For three decades, Omori has owned Sakura on St. Peter Street, one of the most popular Japanese restaurants in the Twin Cities.
"My restaurant has grown up in St. Paul. I hope it can prosper for everybody in this neighborhood," Omori said. "St. Paul is doing better, I think, than a couple of years ago."
But it's not perfect.
The office crowd, for one, hasn't come back fully since COVID, leaving a particular void for Sakura -- which is located in a business district just steps from City Hall.
"It's hard to fill this place up, other than a Wild [game] or any kind of events in the Xcel Energy Center or Ordway Theater," Omori said. "There's a lot of places that you can come to visit in St. Paul, but if you don't have an event, it's very sad."
That's what the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance hopes to change.
This month, the group announced a new Downtown Investment Strategy, which aims to triple the population of downtown St. Paul from 10,000 residents to 30,000 residents. Other goals include adding 20,000 workers downtown and boosting annual visitor numbers by 20%.
"The best, most vibrant downtowns have a really great, healthy mix of people there to work, people who are there to come and visit, and people who live there," Saint Paul Downtown Alliance President Joe Spencer said. "It's something we know isn't going to happen overnight, but thought it was really important to put it out there."
According to Spencer, the population of downtown has already doubled over the past decade from 5,000 to 10,000. If downtown can reach the 30,000 mark, it would make up about 10% of the city's population -- a barometer the Downtown Alliance wants to meet.
To accomplish those goals, Spencer points to a number of important developments on the horizon, including the RiversEdge plan on the waterfront of the Mississippi. In that case, developer AECOM has proposed investing $800 million to build four towers overlooking the river, which could include hundreds of new residential units.
"There's going to be probably a great mix of new construction, and probably conversion. That's the way the growth has come so far," Spencer said. "We've seen a lot of new construction over the last 10 years. That's where a lot of those new units have come from, but we've also seen former office spaces, or even former warehouse spaces that get converted into apartments or condos. That's how we see that growing."
But can downtown really triple its population?
Nikki Frahm, who recently moved back to downtown St. Paul after living in Forest Lake for 30 years, said it's not an impossible goal.
"Oh, I think it's doable," Frahm said. "I can see it coming back."
But downtown St. Paul -- like many downtown corridors across the country -- has struggled in recent years with shopping and retail options.
"If I want to buy a pair of shoes, I have to go to a mall," Frahm said. "There's restaurants, and there's theater, and there's activities outside and farmer markets. But as far as retail goes... the retail is minimal."
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