Cray Plaza (formerly Galtier Plaza), located in the Lowertown neighborhood of

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County, Minnesota, Ramsey County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, ...

, United States, provides space for working, living, eating, and recreating on one square city block opened in 1986. Features include 365

apartments An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement (Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that ...

, 121 luxury

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

s, 16

townhomes A terrace, terraced house ( UK), or townhouse ( US) is a type of medium-density housing which first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row ...

, of

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

and

restaurant A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and Delivery (commerce), food delivery services. Restaurants ...

space, of office space, and a 5-level underground

parking garage A multistorey car park (Commonwealth English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistorey, parking building, parking structure, parkade (Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck, or indoor parking, is a building designed fo ...

for 829 cars.

History

At that time the Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation, a non-profit coordinator of development in St. Paul's historic

warehouse district This is a list of notable warehouse districts. A warehouse district or warehouse row is an area found in many urban setting known for being the current or former location of numerous warehouses. Logistically, warehouses are often located in indus ...

, had sought to fill Block 40 for some three years. The site on Mears Park just east of the downtown business district represented the keystone in Lowertown's revitalization, and Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation's executive director Weiming Lu had persuaded developers with the concept of a mixed-use development and one tenant, the downtown

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

. Efforts to put together a project reusing existing properties on the block had fallen through, as had a modest proposal for housing and service retail by the Carley Capital Group of Madison, Wisconsin. The city had already secured an Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) from the federal government for the Carley development, and called for new developers with a three-month deadline looming. Boisclair and Omni Venture, Ltd. the developers of Minneapolis' International Market Square, responded. Robert Boisclair took on the development. Miller, Hanson, Westerbeck & Bell were selected as architects for the project. They had done studies of Block 40 for the Lowertown Corporation and had a history of designing housing for Boisclair which included Lakepoint Tower and the Falls and Pinnacle at Riverplace. Galtier Plaza was named after Father Lucien Galtier, a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priest who has historical involvement with the founding of the city of St. Paul. In the summer of 2009 it was announced that the naming rights to Galtier Plaza had been purchased, and the building would become known as Cray Plaza, as the building's then new "anchor" tenant was

Cray Inc. Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

The complex won the award for the first place design award excellence from Development Design Group, First Place from National Mall Monitor Center's of Excellence, and Signs of the Times award for electric sign graphics.

Design

The location and form of the architectural elements was the subject of negotiation between the developer, the city and Lowertown Corporation. In addition, the financial partnerships involved in the project had to be expressed architecturally so that ownership of the complex space could be divided by multiple tenants. The six-story base along the street front was needed to maintain the

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

of the surrounding six-story buildings and was dictated by both historic and design considerations. The decision to fill out the block to its fullest extent met economic goals. The housing, proposed as one corner tower cascading to the base, was instead split between two towers. The taller one, the Jackson Tower, falls just under

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

limits at . The lower one, the Sibley Tower, is located back of the Mears Park facade. The atrium beginning at the building line, became instead a gabled roof extruded beyond the building facade and stepping back to its seven-story peak. The developer wanted it to be wide but it was narrowed to 90 feet. The

skyway A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of Cover ...

linking Galtier Plaza and the Farm Credit Bank toward downtown was proposed as a "festive" design with gabled peaks, much glass, and cream and red aluminum trim to match Galtier's. Lowertown's Weiming Lu and the city planning staff stood fast for the standard Vierendeel

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as Beam (structure), beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so ...

and bronze aluminum. Galtier Plaza opened in 1986.

Project difficulties

The project cost at least $140 million to build, not including the YMCA and other portions. Various parts of the project were funded separately. The rental apartments were funded by bonds sold through the Port Authority to private institutional investors; the YMCA was on a separate parcel; and much of the other private funding came from investors as equity and from Chemical Bank as a loan. There were issues with construction, cost overruns, inadequate financial resources, high interest rates, delays, and strategic errors made in market analysis and design. As the project was delayed, it found difficulty attracting tenants. Eventually, private investors are said to have lost about $42 to $45 million in equity and Chemical Bank is said to have lost about $90 million on their loan. The Port Authority took over the rental apartments after the default on that part of the project—for which they had loaned $32 million and which would have cost about $36 million. Excluding the YMCA, rental housing, and the energy plant, the balance of the project (retail, offices, condos, and the parking garage) was sold in 1989 to a Canadian investor in the range of $10 to $12 million. Henry Zaidan's thought to market the condos, and to reposition the retail space from the regional high end target and toward services for the neighborhood and downtown. He relocated the food court to the ground level. After filling the vacant retail and office space during the recession, Zaidan left the Galtier Plaza project in 1992, and in 1996 the holder of the mortgage obtained title through foreclosure, changed the management company and made some nominal improvements before selling Galtier in 1999 to an investor group managed by Wasmer, Schroeder & Company. The Wasmer group invested in an extensive remodeling project, including conversion of much of the vacant retail space into office space. The residential towers at Galtier were sold to Bigos Investments, owned by Ted Bigos, in 2003, and the Wasmer group sold the commercial and parking facilities in 2006 to a group based in California. The commercial portion of Galtier containsed several restaurants, a convenience store, a conference facility, and a credit union, Unity One Credit Union. Retail and office space were about 85% occupied.

Today

Over the years, the building has seen sporadic success, first as a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

, then as an entertainment center, with restaurants and a food court. Today, only the residential side is significantly occupied. In 2019, Bigos Properties acquired the retail portion, and plans on converting the space into residential apartments. As of 2024, the space remains empty due to construction delays from the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. The former site of the YMCA has been converted to amenities for the residents of the plaza and sister properties.https://www.twincities.com/2024/03/27/bigos-management-reopens-former-downtown-st-paul-ymca-to-1500-tenants-as-lowertown-skyrec/

References

External links

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Galtier Plaza: A Case Study
- A college thesis analyzing Galtier's troubles {{Twin cities shopping malls Apartment buildings in Minnesota Residential condominiums in the United States Shopping malls in Minnesota

Plaza A town square (or public square, urban square, city square or simply square), also called a plaza or piazza, is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town or city, and which is used for community gatherings. Rela ...

Residential buildings completed in 1986 1980s architecture in the United States Residential skyscrapers in Saint Paul, Minnesota Postmodern architecture in Minnesota