From the outside, the red brick apartment building on the corner of Bates Avenue and E. Euclid Street in historic Dayton's Bluff doesn't look that different from how it did more than a hundred years ago when it served as a classy home for middle-class businessmen and their families. However, a step inside either entry of the Euclid View apartments reveals years of misuse and neglect.
The prominent building, which in recent years has become a problem property, is set to be given new life with the city's request for developers to submit proposals on how the more-than-century-old building can be rehabilitated.
A step inside the three-story, rowhouse-like property reveals dirty, linoleum-covered floors littered with broken glass. Holes are in ceilings, walls and windows. Grimy fridges and cabinets are left hanging ajar. And that's the six units that are in the best shape.
Despite its crude condition, a wide-eyed Carol Carey, executive director of nonprofit Historic St. Paul, wandered through the building during a recent open house admiring the views of downtown that the bay windows afford and imagining out loud how the property could be renovated.
"What if you looked at just opening the whole space up. … The really great light that it does get, wait till you see upstairs; it's even more pronounced, would really flow through the whole unit," she said, as she made her way through the dingy halls.
Carey isn't the only person letting her imagination run wild.
City Council President and Ward 7 representative Kathy Lantry said the rehabilitation of the Euclid View apartments, which sit across the street from Dayton's Bluff Achievement Plus Elementary and the adjacent Dayton's Bluff Recreation Center, would be "pivotal" for the neighborhood.
"It really can be something," Lantry said. "It has the potential to be a real beacon."
