Work Around The Edges or Completely Reimagine: St. Cloud Mayor Candidates Differ on Downtown

(KNSI)—During the St. Cloud Mayoral Candidate Forum, which aired live on KNSI Monday morning, candidates Jake Anderson and Mike Conway agreed on many topics. One of the first differences appeared when discussing St. Cloud’s downtown area.

Anderson thinks it is time to rethink the historic business district completely. “I really think we need to set a vision for downtown and where we want to be in 10 years with it. We need our renaissance. We’ve seen it happen in communities like Duluth and Rochester, where they focused on a goal, working with the business community and the public sector to figure out what they wanted their downtown to be.”

The issue is top of mind, especially after three businesses closed within about a six-week span in August and September. Conway says the failure of the Business Improvement District measure hurt. A silver lining is it shed light on how businesses in the rest of the city view the importance of a thriving downtown.

“They wanted to actually impose an extra tax on themselves to spend that revenue. But more importantly, over $750,000 of pledges to support that BID came from businesses that were not downtown. Other businesses who don’t physically reside downtown see the importance of that area growing.”

To enact the tax measure, a super majority of commercial property owners in the BID must support it. St. Cloud’s vote ended 62-38%, but that is not enough.

Conway also floated an idea of a Tax Increment Financing district. TIFs allow a city to borrow against the future increase in property taxes resulting from development.

___