Stand with Saint Paul Brewing, Prioritize Preservation

The City of Saint Paul purchased the Hamm’s complex in 2004, aiming to redevelop and reuse the historic Hamm’s Brewery site’s oldest structures. Over the past 20 years, the city has maintained the parking lot, including plowing, and has supported various adaptive reuse projects to revitalize the historic site. The City has invested more than $1 million to renovate the surface parking lot to attract business owners to the historic site.

The shared parking lot was a driving force behind several business’ decision to invest in the buildings, including Flat Earth, and 11 Wells Distillery and Saint Paul Brewing.The lot also supports the East Side St. Paul community, serving as Hope Academy overflow parking, a launch point for bicycle groups, and a gathering space for the Hamm’s Memorabilia collective. 

In 2022, the HRA tentatively awarded JB Vang & Partners' development plan for the remainder of the complex. The proposal included the removal of a significant portion of the shared parking lot to build a modern apartment building. Reducing this shared lot - originally built to support early businesses who invested in the site’s transformation - has raised concerns from East Side community members and business owners.

The City’s project proposal removes the city’s shared parking lot making it impossible for existing on-site businesses – including Saint Paul Brewing and 11 Wells Spirits – to survive. The City has acknowledged that this proposal lacks sufficient parking. This problem will only grow with the development’s proposed marketplace, featuring 30-50 vendors and requiring 200+ parking spaces, and any other future business expansion on the site.
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We see a disconnect between the City’s goals to support affordable housing and small business development and their actions to ignore community concerns and proceed with a proposal that doesn’t set existing and future businesses up for success.
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Our primary goal is to advance a proposal where the new development and the existing businesses can succeed and grow while honoring a historic St. Paul landmark.
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We want to make this work: We have brought solutions and attempted to find an alternative path forward with the City, but our suggestions have been ignored or dismissed, and time is running out.

Local jobs, significant community investments, and the livelihoods of business owners are on the line if the current proposal proceeds. The updated proposal removes critical parking areas on the site, ignoring parking needs for businesses and future residents in an area lacking public transportation options. Saint Paul Brewing’s future and our reinvestment in Hamm's is at risk.

This isn't an 'either or' situation: We support redevelopment at the Hamm’s site, we support affordable housing and we believe a phased approach to the development will help everyone be successful. We've asked the City and developer to prioritize redeveloping the existing Hamm’s building, which includes 89 affordable housing units and a 30,000-square-foot marketplace, and pause on the new construction, which would replace a large portion of the shared parking lot with a modern apartment building.

Once we understand the combined impact of the new marketplace, affordable housing units and Saint Paul Brewing expansion, the community can choose the best next step for the complex. This redevelopment could be transformative for the East Side – let's take the time to do it right.

We love when locals walk, bike and transit to the brewery. However, the Hamm's complex, like much of the East Side, has limited transit connection. We look forward to the 2027 completion of Minnehaha Avenue as an off-street bike connection and continue to push for ways to connect the Vento trail to the Hamm’s complex. Beyond these bike connections there are limited modes of high frequency or nearby public transportation to bring people to Hamm’s.

Saint Paul Brewing is a destination location that brings in customers from throughout the Twin Cities metro, the state and beyond. The reality is most people – around 95% of Saint Paul Brewing customers – drive to us and we need both locals and visitors to survive.

The City-owned shared lot, which will be reduced in the current proposal, is the only parking available near the brewery. Nearby lots, including the lot across the street, are privately owned by another company and not accessible to visitors and staff. While we are in favor of the much-needed bike lane that will be installed as part of upcoming updates to Minnehaha Avenue, this project will remove the limited on-street parking spaces currently available.

Ultimately, the City proposal reduces existing parking options while adding parking demand, which doesn't add up to success for anyone.

We are committed to historic preservation of the Hamm's Brewing site and fully invested in its successful future. We recently opposed the advancement of a federal designation in order to pause the fast track financing of a development plan that will harm our business. And we weren’t the only business to oppose the designation: Everest LLC on Minnehaha Ave and Hope Community Academy on Payne Ave also objected. We recognize the benefits of historic designation and related tax credits and will be supportive of that once there is a go-forward plan that protects the existing businesses and their future growth.

We support redevelopment at the Hamm’s site and believe we can find an alternate solution that benefits everyone. We’re asking our community to stand with Saint Paul Brewing and encourage the City to work with us on implementing a phased approach to the development, which prioritizes development of the existing historic buildings first. This thoughtful, phased approach still supports development of 89 units of affordable artist housing within the existing Hamm’s Brewery building (West End), protects these important buildings, and allows the Hamm’s complex to receive historical designation and the benefit of historic tax credits for the project.
This redevelopment will  be transformative for the East Side – let's do it right.

The City needs to know that the community is concerned: Tell the Mayor and Councilmembers, particularly in Ward 2, 5, 6 and 7, that you’re concerned about the current proposal for the Hamm’s Brewery site and encourage them to find ways to ensure the go-forward plan will protect existing businesses and support the overall development goals for this historic site.