St. Paul earmarks $15 million, hires community prosecutor to transform downtown

Big changes are coming to downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, to improve safety and address abandoned buildings.

The city earmarked $15 million to transform dilapidated buildings into hubs for new businesses. There's also a new position called a community prosecutor.

It's an effort to clean up nuisances crimes in downtown St. Paul that make people think twice about visiting.

Two years ago, residents voted to allocate resources to the city attorney's office to focus on crime downtown. The community prosecutor is responsible for taking on quality of life issues that impact business and the people who live and work in the city.

"The kinds of things that you wouldn't want anyone to go to jail for that or anything like that, but hey, you can't do that in downtown. We all kind of have a social contract here it's part of the lower level laws that we have so let's get those enforced," said Joe Spencer, the president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance.

The creation of the downtown investment fund prompted the Bush Foundation and Experian to put money up to help St. Paul's redevelopment efforts. The St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation is adding $15 million to the fund.

"That's a commitment to downtown St. Paul and some of the distressed properties that we have," said Spencer. "The idea is these are some below market investments so we have the patient capital that we need to turn these properties around and really transform the core of downtown St. Paul."

Adam Hinz started his new role as community prosecutor on Aug. 1.