Candyland in the Twin Cities by Susan M. Barbieri

Author:Susan M. Barbieri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

The End of the Loop and a New Beginning

St. Paul’s business community and elected officials had been trying for years to figure out how to get shoppers back onto the streets again—particularly on Seventh Street, where they hoped to create a magnet for shoppers.

The big idea for the now-empty space on the east side of Wabasha was Town Square, a development that included office towers, a three-level retail mall, a hotel and a light-filled indoor park. As part of the Town Square development, Seventh Street was to be closed to traffic and made into a brick-paved pedestrian mall extending one block from St. Peter on the west to Wabasha on the east. It would be called Seventh Place Mall. Ironically, the city’s true town square would be killed off by a development whose name would never live up to the original.

The end of the Loop as a teen cruising destination and the end of the Seventh and Wabasha corner as downtown’s main gathering spot came in 1980 and 1981 as the long-planned and long-delayed Town Square project was completed amid much fanfare. The newspapers and local television stations hyped it. For a few years, Town Square and the adjoining World Trade Center did draw shoppers and businesses, and Candyland enjoyed a bump in the number of visitors to the store. But by the 1990s, Town Square and the World Trade Center had become troubled projects. Stores inside the mall opened up, struggled to lure customers and eventually closed. Gangs were drawn to the indoor park, whose nooks and crannies were difficult for police to patrol. The Cafesjian Carousel and its beautifully painted antique horses came to the park, languished and galloped away to a better home near Como Zoo and Conservatory.

The old Seventh and Wabasha movie district was unrecognizable and seemingly beyond rehabilitation. The Orpheum Theatre, which had hung on during the 1970s, finally closed for good after Seventh Place opened.

“Seventh Place opened in 1980. What a mess,” said Gary Brueggeman, echoing the thoughts of Doug and Brenda Lamb. Like other cities, St. Paul tried to reinvent itself but wound up ruining its city core. “A lot of cities wrecked their downtowns by making malls. It was a phase: ‘We’re going to make a mall.’ They tore down buildings, they literally closed down the street and they made a building right where the street was.”

The project turned into yet another white elephant, Brueggeman noted. The hotel and park eventually closed. Everything that was promised went bust. The mammoth Town Square project involved closing off Seventh Street, which meant rerouting traffic to Eighth Street and renaming it Seventh. Today, the street maps show Sixth Street, Seventh Place, Seventh Street and Ninth Street.

“The damage they did is incalculable. They destroyed Seventh Street,” Brueggeman said. “All these big projects they had petered out. Downtown St. Paul is a hodgepodge of different administrations starting over, having different plans. Where is the Main Street of downtown St. Paul? There isn’t one.”

When the city closed off Seventh Street, that’s when downtown became a ghost town, Doug noted.

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