St. Cloud Unveils Draft Downtown Plan, Invites Public Input at April 22nd Open House

(KNSI) – After more than a year of community input and behind-the-scenes work, the city of St. Cloud is pulling back the curtain on its draft downtown plan, and officials want residents to take a close look before a public open house next Wednesday.

The open house is set for 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. on April 22nd at the Rivers Edge Convention Center, where residents can view detailed drawings and renderings showing what key downtown sites could look like in the years ahead.

Staff and consultants will be stationed at tables throughout the mezzanine area to discuss specific drawings one-on-one with attendees.
Community Development Director Matt Glaesman told KNSI News he’s excited for what comes next. “We’re really at the fun in the planning process where we go from list building, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and we transition into viewing drawings that are the end objectives that we’re trying to achieve with this grand vision.”

The draft plan covers the downtown core and the Division Street corridor. Work began last spring with early community conversations about strengths and weaknesses before moving into brainstorming sessions about key development sites last fall. The winter months were spent translating all of that input into the visual concepts now available for review.

Several prominent sites are featured in the plan. Among them is the current Stearns County campus downtown, where county offices and courts will eventually vacate once the new Stearns County Justice Center is built. Drawings in the plan envision what redevelopment could look like on that eight-to-nine-acre site once the existing buildings come down. Other drawings focus on the Lady Slipper block, the riverfront area near the Rivers Edge Convention Center, and additional locations along the corridor.

One of the most notable shifts from the city’s last comprehensive plan in 2015 is the emphasis on housing over office space. Glaesman says the post-COVID shift has reshaped the development landscape. “Much of the plan now for downtown is looking at housing as that solution of bringing people down 24-7, 365, have an active public realm, public spaces downtown, creating safety, creating vitality, and really making commercial development possible.”

Glaesman says the logic is straightforward; commercial investment follows rooftops. Without a residential base downtown, amenities like a grocery store simply aren’t financially sustainable. The plan envisions a mix of housing types, from smaller apartments to larger units and potentially row houses in areas that transition into adjacent neighborhoods.

Glaesman says those aspirations are measured against a set of standards. “Any good planning process really falls back on good guiding principles. So, when we do present an aspirational image that there’s something you fall back on as the criteria to determine whether that was accurate or not. And in this plan, it’s called the big moves. They’re the themes that we heard from the early public input,” said Glaesman.

Those themes include reclaiming the Mississippi River as downtown’s front door, expanding downtown living and neighborhood identity, positioning downtown as a regional destination, and creating a more walkable and connected urban core. Some of the more aspirational drawings even depict a large arena or event center downtown, though Glaesman acknowledges those ideas may not be financially feasible in the near term.

Beyond development sites, the draft document also addresses parking, streetscape improvements, wayfinding and signage, and the role of arts in downtown placemaking.

Glaesman points to past success as evidence that these plans lead to real-world results. The 2015 comprehensive plan produced projects, including the redevelopment of the former Tech High School site into the current city hall complex and the interchange at Highway 15 and 33rd Street South.

Glaesman says there is roughly a six-week window to continue making revisions based on public feedback.

The planning commission is expected to hold a public hearing in May, with the city council beginning formal consideration of the document in June.

The draft downtown plan and a separate Division Street subarea plan are both available for review now on the city’s planning webpage.

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