Independent · Resident-run · For all of us
This is your downtown.
You don’t have to live here for it to be yours. Live here, work here, visit on weekends, or just want a capital city to be proud of — it’s yours either way. Your neighbors already started building it up. Come help build the rest.
See what’s already doneThe honest numbers →
Vol. 01 · The Connected City · Est. 2026
Downtown, told straight — updated weekly
Downtown by the numbers
Violent crime, falling · 2022–2024
Homicides fell from a record 40 (2022) to ~32–33 (2024, local count) — the state BCA lists 26 on different (UCR) rules. A widely-reported '15 in 2025, lowest in 12 years' figure is single-source and unconfirmed.
Source: cbsnews.com
Downtown office vacancy — the real crisis · 2024–2025
No single 'true' number — it ranges by firm and inventory definition (Colliers ~12% to ~40%; BOMA ~31%). Always a range.
Source: minnpost.com
New homes in once-empty office towers · 2025–2026
Landmark Tower: 187 apartments, opened May 2025. The Stella: 178, due spring 2026. A Gensler study flagged ~3,951 more potential units across 10 towers.
Source: sherman-associates.com
You may also see people living unsheltered or in the grip of untreated addiction. That’s real — and it’s a housing-and-health crisis the city and dozens of organizations are working on, not danger aimed at you. Here’s who’s doing the work →
Ways in
Ways into downtown
This week on your blocks
This week on your blocks
Quiet week on the calendar —
see everything happening →Already underway — by the people who live here
We started with what we could reach.
As more of us moved downtown, neighbors started caring for the parts close to home — a park, a skyway, a vacant corner — right alongside the City, the Alliance, and the businesses doing the same. Here’s what your neighbors have already pulled off:
Since 1992, the all-volunteer Friends of Mears Park — about 50 neighbor-gardeners — have looked after the flower gardens at the heart of Lowertown, and funded the tools, plantings and lights behind them.
On the downtown riverfront, a resident-run friends group raises the money and hangs 72 flower baskets every year — a blooming corridor from the High Bridge to the Wabasha Bridge.
Downtown's long-awaited Pedro Park opened in September 2025 — and an all-volunteer Friends group plants the annuals and looks after its gardens.
On downtown's western edge, the Historic Irvine Park Association brought back the park's centerpiece fountain, repaired the gazebo, replanted its lost trees, and throws a free summer concert series — and it's raising $75,000 with the City to fix the pavement and the lights.
Neighbors in Lowertown funded and planted 14 trees, replanted the gardens after the old fountain came out, and built a free 'Share Shed' little library — one volunteer logged 585 hours in a single year.
East Side and Lowertown residents started this work in 1997 — and the Native-led nonprofit it became brought a blighted rail yard back as a 27-acre Dakota sacred-site sanctuary, now co-managed with the City, with a new cultural center that opened May 29, 2026.
See all the groups making downtown better →
…and the life growing here
Downtown gets better when people show up.
Why we live here
It’s our city — and there’s room at every level.
“It has so much potential, just needs some love.”
Saint Paul Skyway Survey, May 2026
“It can be a huge plus for St Paul.”
Saint Paul Skyway Survey, May 2026
“I feel safe because I know what to expect. It's our visitors I worry about.”
Saint Paul Skyway Survey, May 2026
The skyway system
A second-story city — your skyway runs for miles, and we map all of it.The skyway, ground-truthed
“We wanted to walk 365 days a year — the skyway was an essential part of our decision.”
Saint Paul Skyway Survey, May 2026
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