New St. Paul Sears site owner envisions community hub, market

About a dozen vendors lined the parking lot of the former Sears department store near the Minnesota State Capitol for a market event Sunday, selling everything from mochi doughnuts to apparel, gifts, lunch items and smoothies.

The pop-up St. Paul Marketplace, the second weekend market event and the last for the fall, is an effort to build excitement for the re-development of the former Sears site into a community hub, said John Yang, the executive director of the Asian American Business Resilience Network, an organization partnering in the project.

The future of the former Sears site has been in flux. The longtime department store closed in early 2019. Shortly after, the company that owned the site at the time envisioned a mix of apartment and office buildings at the site. Those plans never came to fruition. In May, the parcel sold to Pacifica St. Paul LLC, and in June, to Asian Media Access, a Twin Cities nonprofit.

Asian Media Access and partners' recently announced plans for the site include a charter school, wellness center, event center, food court, Zen garden, 3-D theme park, kids zone and housing.

Because of the site location, redevelopment plans must be approved by the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, which oversees planning for the area surrounding the State Capitol.

Sarah and Mike Sonn and their two kids were some of the few people milling around the marketplace shortly after it opened Sunday, having biked over from the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.

The two said they were heartened by the prospect of re-development at the site. "The space is underutilized and obviously a prime location, so to see something come of this would be amazing," Sarah Sonn said.

Sears was the sixth-largest corporation in volume when it opened the Rice Street store in 1963, according to an article in the St. Paul Dispatch at the time. The store had 61 departments and its sales area spanned more than 100,000 square feet.

As many retail sales move online, developers are adapting former large-format stores to serve communities around Minnesota in new ways. In Eden Prairie, the former Gander Mountain store is now Asia Mall, a partner of the Sears project that is home to restaurants, groceries and other businesses. Former Shopko stores have been turned into everything from a gymnastics studio in Fergus Falls, to a sports complex in Mankato, and broken into several retail spaces in Rochester.

Yang said in contrast to the Sears site's earlier retail purpose, the idea with this re-development plan is to be community-focused.

"It's really to help serve the community with the vision that we have, versus trying to just do business here to earn income," Yang said, adding that the location — close to underserved and low-income communities — is prime for community impact.

While some anticipated St. Paul Marketplace weekend events were canceled this year due to weather or vendor availability, Yang said the plan is for the St. Paul Marketplace to return next year, bigger and with entertainment. Yang said he plans meetings over Zoom, which will be open to the public, to discuss the re-development project.