Lowertown and downtown Saint Paul in general needs usable retail space. Right now there are lots of great buildings but no ground floor retail in them because they were originally warehouses factories etc.Re-purposing these amazing old buildings is essential, if done right downtown Saint Paul could be one of the most amazing urban areas in the country.

Downtown St. Paul needs population, and lots of it, before it can support any new retail space. Minneapolis is able to sustain downtown retail (relative to St. Paul anyways) due to a much larger daytime workforce population, as well as over 30,000 downtown residents. Last I heard there were about 7,000 people living in downtown St. Paul, granted in a much smaller geographical area. St. Paul should be shooting for around 20,000 people living downtown (including the Sears parcel so they have a fighting chance). Back to the topic at hand, the sale of the post office to someone who would turn it into roughly 300 market rate apartments would be great news! St. Paul has really been missing out on the apartment boom that's been going on in Minneapolis (primarily downtown, Uptown and the U) the last couple of years.

I agree twincitizen and thumbs upped you but before people will move to an area they have to have a reason to want to live there. Right now Saint Paul doesn't. It has to be an inviting, interesting and hopefully bustling cosmopolitan place, relatively speaking. It's the chicken and the egg thing man. I'm telling you though, people especially younger people are moving to "cool" areas like Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland and then looking for work, not the other way around. A lot of people have just given up on a lot of the old notions, about work, homes, lifestyles or how to live.

Also your point Twincitizen I live a mile out of downtown Saint Paul, in a house on the west side. I live and work in downtown as well. Adding more people physically in downtown is great for sure but there are a couple hundred thousand people around Saint Paul to utilize retail space, if it's inviting and done right. I hate having to go spend my money in West Saint Paul (Robert St is awful) or the beige strip malls in Woodbury and I know I'm not alone!