Residents, businesses petition to form new downtown improvement district
The St. Paul Downtown Improvement District (SPDID) announced that commercial and residential property owners are officially petitioning the City of St. Paul to create a new downtown improvement district (DID).
Petitions have been delivered to the City Clerk’s office. The City Council will need to vote to approve the new district, which is anticipated to occur in July.
The new DID would encompass all of downtown, from the Xcel Energy Center to CHS Field, and from the Mississippi River to Interstate 94 and include residential units, a change from the initial DID launched in 2021.
Governed and paid for by participating property owners, the SPDID provides services and programming within the public realm with the goal of supplementing government services, including safety and security, outreach and wellness checks, graffiti and hazardous waste removal and more.
Funds collected from this new, downtown-wide district will be dedicated to adding or enhancing existing safety strategies downtown, including additional safety ambassadors, bike patrols and added skyway coverage. SPDID will also propose to work with the City of St. Paul to hire a city attorney exclusively dedicated to pursuing chronic offenders and quality-of-life issues downtown.
When the SPDID was established, the state law regulating improvement districts allowed only commercial and industrial parcels to be included. In 2023, that law was amended to allow for residential and multi-family properties to participate, allowing all of downtown St. Paul to be part of the SPDID. To learn more about the new SPDID, visit spdid.org/faqs.
