Roseville licensing center is always crowded, but voters rejected a sales tax to fix it. What’s next?

It’s almost always bustling at the Roseville License and Passport Center, one of the busiest registrars in the state, serving more than 200,000 people per year.

But the city of Roseville has to decide whether the city operation stays or goes after voters rejected a new sales tax that would have gone toward revenue for replacing the cramped office on Lexington Avenue N.

It can’t stay where it is — a sweeping plan to remake the city’s civic campus will likely see the License and Passport Center office torn down to make way for a new maintenance operations center.

Roseville Mayor Dan Roe said the city will probably keep the licensing operation in some form, but whether that’s with a new building or in an existing city building remains to be seen.

“We want to be extra careful about the cost,” he said, given that voters rejected the License and Passport Center portion of a two-part sales tax referendum last fall by a vote of 10,831 to 9,465. On the question of using a local sales tax to pay for a new maintenance operations center, voters said yes.

For now, the City Council on Monday directed City Manager Patrick Trudgeon to prepare the necessary paperwork to hire an architect who would help the council determine the cost of building a new structure for the License and Passport Center. Earlier estimates said it could be about $12 million, but council members said the estimate was made during a time in the pandemic when construction costs were soaring.

Trudgeon said he thinks the number could be lower now. The architect would also examine using some of the vacated maintenance operations center when it moves to a new building.

The License and Passport Center processes applications for driver’s licenses, vehicle tabs, hunting and fishing licenses, passports, motor vehicle titles, and special plates for vehicles to anyone who needs it, not just for Roseville residents.

It generates annual revenue for the city‘s general fund; some $200,000 in revenue is expected this year, the same amount that was generated in 2024, according to city figures.

The center had about 204,000 transactions in 2019, with 80% of those customers coming from outside of Roseville, according to a city study.

The center moved into its current space in 2000, when the city leased space from the Lexington Shops strip mall. The city ended up buying the property as the License and Passport Center grew. A 2017 analysis determined that the center needed about twice its current space of 5,000 square feet.

The office was once at Roseville City Hall, but that was years ago when it didn’t serve as many people, said License Center manager Pam Ryan Senden. “It has just evolved into a much larger creature,” she said.

As the office’s traffic has grown, so too have the headaches for people coming in to submit their paperwork.

Ryan Senden said the staff works diligently to get people in and out as quickly as possible. As the office grew, it took over space in the Lexington Shops retail center that was once a video rental business, and then another space that was a TV repair business.

City Council Member Julie Strahan said she thinks city residents don’t want to lose the license center.

“Historically, there’s been a very strong interest in keeping it,” she said, noting that nearby Maplewood closed its passport center last year, adding even more demand in Roseville.

The city’s operation could even be expanded with Saturday office hours.

“We have some homework to do in order to figure out how much all of this could cost,” Strahan said.

The public will get to weigh in on the License and Passport Center’s future, along with the rest of the city’s Civic Campus Master Plan. The city expects to name an advisory group later this year made up of local residents, a City Council member, and members of various city commissions.

The 10-member Civic Campus Final Design Stakeholder Group could be chosen this spring or summer, Trudgeon said.