Silver Lake Village Achieving a Collective Subconscious

[ By Tom Moran ]

Silver Lake Village “Main Street” has the feel and look of a traditional small town commercial environment.

When the Minneapolis/St. Paul suburb of St. Anthony was trying to figure out what to do with a 43-year-old enclosed shopping center once celebrated as the center of the community but now nearly empty, they zeroed in on a master developer whose sales pitch included phrases like “collective subconscious” and “a good place to hang out.”

Replacing a Community Icon
Apache Plaza, the 530,000-square-foot, cosmetically unappealing mall that St. Anthony was in need of replacing, was the second enclosed mall built in Minnesota and one of the first in the country. Back in 1960, the mall’s architecture was considered bold and its common area was bigger than a football field. The mall was considered safe enough for families to drop off their kids to hang out for the day and enjoy regularly planned activities. Over the years the landmark mall began to face competition from larger regional malls; and in 1984, a tornado ripped into the south end of the mall and caused it to close for several months. First, F.W. Woolworth declared bankruptcy in 1991, and then J.C. Penney, the last of the original tenants, left Apache for a bigger and sexier mall just a couple miles down the road. “It was a bittersweet time for tens of thousands of people all over Minnesota who had an emotional attachment to Apache Plaza,” said the mayor. It was in this environment that the City of St. Anthony began to explore life after Apache Mall.

Making the Case for Community Involvement
A task force of stakeholders from the northwest quadrant of greater metropolitan St. Paul and Minneapolis was formed to come up with a plan. John Shardlow, a community planner from the consulting firm of Dahlgren, Shardlow & Uban, guided the effort to encourage community participation. The exercise resulted in a plethora of ideas ranging from refurbishing the existing mall, to reclaiming the 60 acres and turning the mall site into various combinations of green space, housing, office and retail. Shardlow recalled that as with most early planning endeavors of any size in any community, the early, and only consensus was only that “something” needed to be done. That “something” should, like Apache Plaza in the 1960s, be cutting edge, enhance the town’s ability to attract new residents, provide new jobs, additional tax base, include a community gathering place, and finally—not include “big box” retailers.

Salo Park with its large amphitheater is a perfect setting for neighborhood gatherings, concerts or a summer stroll.

In 2000, with the community’s input firmly in hand, the St. Anthony City Council issued a Request for Proposals. Among the proposals submitted were those from giant development firms such as Opus and Centex. However, one from a much smaller local developer — Pratt Ordway Properties -- caught the eye of the city council. Four years later, the mayor recalled how Pratt’s “David” felled the “Goliaths” and became the master developer of Silver Lake Village: “Len Pratt listened to us, absorbing and respecting our vision; and built a solid team of partners,” noted the mayor. Reflecting on the process, Pratt noted, “We had our challenges, not the least of which was the big box question.”

Solving the Big Box Dilemma
Addressing the big box issue was indeed a challenge. In developing his team, Pratt kept a razor sharp focus on the mission given him by the City of St. Anthony:

• Build something as progressive in the new millennium as Apache was in the old;
• Be a neighborhood of a scale, that added a significant tax base, but structurally wouldn’t overwhelm a quiet bungalow sprinkled community;
• Include a main street with sidewalks, trees and green space;
• Create a safe environment for families and seniors to walk;
• Build quality, but affordable housing that would encourage empty nesters to move from the city’s single family homes and free up housing for younger families to move in; and
• Last but not least — no Wal-Mart.

That’s when Len Pratt called Kelly Doran. “I had observed what Kelly was doing in other communities around the Twin Cities, Pratt said. “His retail developments, even those that included a Wal-Mart or Target, had a warm feel to them. Kelly believed in lots of mature trees, perennial flower gardens, distinctive architecture and the use of exterior sculpture art -- that is an attraction in itself.”

Doran, who currently has his own development and construction company (Doran Companies), but at the time was president of the Twin City-based Robert Muir Company, recalls his first meeting with Len Pratt: “I looked at the plan and told Len I wasn’t interested because it wouldn’t work. I told him they needed a big box.” Pratt listened to Doran’s analysis and eventually convinced him to present his ideas to the city council. The big box was in and so was Kelly Doran. “These main street things can work, but they have to have an anchor component,” Doran told the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) newspaper after the March 2003, meeting with St. Anthony officials. “It’s going to create the energy that makes the rest of it successful…”

Today, Doran says that St. Anthony made the right decision. It wasn’t without some consternation and several community meetings, but in the end, the community was supportive and the plan was revised. Within a few months Doran had a commitment from Wal-Mart to join the development. Key to the deal was Doran’s insistence that Wal-Mart agree to adjust their normal architectural design to accommodate a “softer more inviting neighborhood feel and look” and to contribute $1 million toward the development of the site.

If It Isn’t One Thing—It’s Another

Condominiums and rental units line the courtyard and walkways extending from Salo Park at Silver Lake Village.

With a key component to viability now in place, another arose. In an earlier, but futile attempt by the City of St. Anthony to redevelop Apache Plaza, the developer and the city parted company but not before he managed to purchase a Cub Foods store built on the 60-acre site in 1996. In the process, the developer had obtained several easements and concessions that in Doran’s estimation made the current re-development impossible. This hurdle was especially concerning because it had the potential to add significant cost and delay. But Pratt and Doran stayed focused. “In today’s fiscal environment there is likely to be less government financial involvement in projects so we have to figure out how to make them work on our own—and that’s not a bad thing,” Doran said. (Silver Lake Village had a $5 million tax increment subsidy but the $140 million project was mostly financed by private funds.)

After some months of haggling and the Cub Foods store finally purchased, the remaining obstacles, while formidable, seemed much less daunting. It was now late in 2003 and still to be accomplished was the purchase of 12 additional private properties located on the site, some remaining tenants to be relocated, significant site contamination and an extremely challenging problem of how to handle storm water drainage and retention ponds.

Out With the Old and In With the New
In the meantime, Len Pratt was busy adding to his team. With Robert Muir Company and Pratt Ordway Properties partnering on the 320,000 square feet of retail development, the project’s 700 housing units, included condominiums (Hunt Associates & Pratt Ordway Properties), town homes (Pratt Homes) and apartments for general occupancy and senior rental (Dominium Development and Acquisition). But before bringing in the new, it was time to say farewell to the old. Understanding the emotional attachment to the Apache Plaza, the City of St. Anthony and the local chamber of commerce persuaded Pratt and Doran to hold an appropriate “memorial service” dubbed Apache Plaza’s Ultimate Evening — The Bulldozer Bash. On March 20, 2005, just ahead of the bulldozers, over 4,000 people showed up to pay their respects to the old mall. For Len Pratt and Kelly Doran the event was a motivating moment that they carried with them through the fall of 2005 when a new gathering place came to life in St. Anthony. “The goal for those of us who create these spaces is to develop a positive collective subconscious among its users,” says Pratt.

Today, a walk through the new Silver Lake Village gives pedestrians a warm feeling of attachment. The narrow streets, with angle parking up to wide sidewalks, allow for steady, but slow movement by a mix of health care services, locally owned restaurants such as Cabina Italian Kitchen and national brands such as Pei Wei and Chipotle, and a variety of financial and personal service storefronts.

Residents of the Village and Senior Condominiums, the Landings Apartments and the Cottage Town Homes are nestled just down Main Street and adjacent to Salo Park’s amphitheatre and community gathering place. Two strategically placed ponds add a natural setting to the flower gardens that grace both the residential and commercial areas.

A Collective Subconscious
“Len’s a very creative guy,” comments Doran. “As he says it, he likes to ‘rub up against it’ to get a sense of what people want in a gathering place. As a result, his instincts are good, and he’s not afraid to act on them.”

Doran says that to achieve a new urbanism concept of suburban infill -- contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and be walkable, comfortable and welcoming -- you need that creativity. “You can’t be restricted by the image of a romantic European village that evolved over hundreds of years. A European village concept with vertical mixed-use isn’t going to work in most suburban communities and Len understood that.”

Indeed, for the City of St. Anthony, there is now great satisfaction in creating a real neighborhood with a component that, in the beginning, some thought would be a problem in the community’s collective subconscious. Happily, in the end, it became part of the solution.